Why You Need A SharePoint Consultant For Your Small Business

You’ve managed to build a small business and established yourself in the market, Congratulations!

However, let’s face it: running and managing a business is hard. More specifically, if you’re a new small business operating in a competitive market space, then running a business is a real challenge. You probably have various key decisions to make with very little time. You are also unlikely to have a very large budget. One key investment you might make, or have already made, is Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365 Software.  You may have already got the initial setup process completed, with documents migrated to one central location. However, now you need to dive deeper into the software to fully realize its benefits.

This is where a SharePoint Consultant for your small business is required. How do you leverage this multi functional software to inject efficiency, collaboration and productiveness into your business?

There are two courses of action:

Do it Yourself

Hire a Third Part SharePoint Consultant for your small business.

If you lack the required SharePoint expertise and experience, then hiring a SharePoint Consulting Firm is a must. One key challenge for SharePoint effectiveness lies in how well it is implemented. If you fail to plan and understand how SharePoint can be integrated in your business, you are certainly going to be making a loss. Businesses will small budgets can soon end up having a major chunk of their expenditure being consumed by SharePoint. All because of proper implementation.

This is where a professional SharePoint Consulting Firm, such as Code Creators, can give you an edge. Our experience and expertise will ensure proper implementation of SharePoint, catered to your business requirements. Our SharePoint Consultants will cover all the key stages of implementation, namely Assessing Requirements, Choosing the right SharePoint Version and Training staff.

Apart from implementation, there are other SharePoint challenges that need to be overcome. For example, you need to keep in mind that SharePoint was not developed for small businesses. In fact the original version was a super complex, large software that was only suitable for large and midsized organizations. Only once a later, cloud based version was launched, small businesses could start to take advantage. Keeping this in mind, it is no surprise most small businesses will struggle with SharePoint. You need to have the technical know how in order to take full advantage of the solution.

Additionally, once installed and integrated, SharePoint management is a full time job. You cannot just leave the system on autopilot after installing. Managing the software, ensuring smooth function and taking care of any issues and errors is necessary for the business. Therefore, having a full time SharePoint Consultancy Firm, solely focused on SharePoint service is critical for continual business success.

The margin for error with SharePoint is also very small. You will need to have a long term strategy, with clearly defined goals before you start using the software. Some of the things a business will have to think about include, site navigation, sub-site structure, information architecture, permission setup, governance etc.  Failure to pre-plan will soon lead to cluttering of files on SharePoint server with no clear categorization and order. It is best to start off in the proper way, rather than try to fix something in the future.

SharePoint, much like other Microsoft products, is always upgrading and evolving. The interface and dashboard can change overnight leaving users confused and unable to work. You must have knowledge and expertise in SharePoint to keep up with these changes.  It is unlikely that one person will be a complete expert in SharePoint, it is a very complicated bit of technology with numerous groups, and conferences dedicated to it. Considering the amount of time required to achieve a minimum level of proficiency in SharePoint, hiring a SharePoint Consultant for your small business is a much better option.