SharePoint Knowledge Base

It is a well-known fact that many people do not do well with change. In the work place it is no different. When people become used to a certain way of doing something it can be extremely hard to change that process and update it. When a company starts to incorporate SharePoint into their daily business use it can be a rough transition. The interface is new and different and can be very confusing for users. It's the goal and hope of managers to make any transition as smooth as possible and this post will take you through some main concepts to think about when SharePoint is being implemented. In our experience as SharePoint consultants we see an S curve and we strive to make it a ┛curve. It is launched and we make it useful and so it takes off. Every company has that one big thing - like Curly's law. We have seen it in many forms or apps than made it click. For one hospital it was an online today's cafeteria menu, for another company - "a vacation calendar".

Curly's Law from "City Slickers"

STEPS FOR SUCCESS

Define Your Vision

• Establish the business priorities that SharePoint will address
• Determine your timeframe
• Establish metrics by which you'll measure success
• Conduct a pilot to gather initial feedback

Identify Relevant Business Cases

• Determine the most appealing scenarios for business users
• Identify "low-hanging fruit"
• Review the list of use cases provided with this white paper to determine which ones apply to your business

Release your SharePoint functionality in phases
(we call this "the continuous wow" effect)

• Start Small and Stay Focused
• Select a pilot group of users

Increase awareness by creating a communication plan

• Leverage Experts and Champions
• Engage Leadership by identifying executive sponsors
• Conduct town hall meetings to discuss your portal
• Create a plan for continuous communication

Support users by creating a training plan

• Establish short, just-in-time training options for users (like our InfoPedia)
• Ensure that your site owners are properly trained before giving them site ownership
• Provide regular training to content contributors to ensure effective content management
• Create a site owner community to enable users to help each other

Ensure ongoing success by creating a user support plan

• Establish a contact person for every page (and show it on the page)
• Establish a SharePoint Center of Excellence within your organization to provide high-end support for users
• Survey users on a regular basis to gather feedback and establish metrics
• Ensure content gets moved from legacy platforms to SharePoint in a planned manner

Generate excitement by creating an incentives and rewards plan

• Demonstrate with real data how features are useful
• Make it fun (buck the company culture)
• Use an online scavenger hunt as a fun way to encourage usage
• Provide recognition for content contribution

We love helping with SharePoint and it's all we do so feel free to contact us!

Mention this post and we'll send you a white paper on all of the ways we can help you with SharePoint!