What's SharePoint?
Microsoft SharePoint can be integrated with Microsoft Office to store and share files. It is highly configurable and customer-oriented. It's a straightforward content and document management software. It provides secure workspaces that allow employees to collaborate and communicate with each other. It will enable employees to create tasks, track their schedules, and get details about their day jobs and projects.
SharePoint Intranet Features
- Collaboration - Apps can allow teams to work together on a single project. App developers can modify or create the apps.
- Extension - SharePoint Online Service can help you deploy your applications to the cloud. All you need to do to get more capabilities is to sign up for Office 365.
- Interoperability - SharePoint allows you to combine office and web-based documents and create custom solutions with different technologies.
SharePoint Business Intranet offers many features. A website can be created for customers or your internal team. Information can be shared with business partners. These are just a few of the SharePoint intranet's capabilities. Still, they are only a tiny part of many platforms with pros and cons.
Let's have a closer look at SharePoint's pros and cons.
Sitecore developers and Microsoft technology partners have helped businesses grow faster and increase productivity. These Demand app developers offer many features that make it simple for companies to complete most tasks. We will be discussing the pros and cons of each solution for enterprises.
Sharepoint development services have proven to be an excellent solution for enterprises. They've used them to create intranet applications. An enterprise's most significant risk is using a company's file manager software. It is because their files are secure.
Sitecore: Description, Pros, and Cons
Sitecore is a CMS. It is a content management platform. Sitecore can be used to help companies improve their content marketing and management. Sitecore software offers many benefits to all types of businesses. This software is an excellent tool for content creation and editing. This software can be customized and used to schedule your content. This tool is perfect for data collection, analysis, and even personalization. These features allow marketers to create better plans and better marketing campaigns.
These features allow enterprises to build trust with their customers. Companies can quickly create content to improve online visibility and post it frequently. These are some of the many benefits and drawbacks of this content management system, which has an excellent reputation on the market. Software tools should be chosen by all digital marketing agencies as well as content creators.
Pros
- Personalization can be improved by analyzing customer behavior.
- For maximum impact, use targeted content.
- How to convert more people into prospects and customers for your brand
- Increased customer trust
- Sitecore software can make significant changes to your website.
- To create more attractive digital content, you can use keywords and trends.
- You can also integrate digital marketing tools to make your intranet applications more efficient.
Cons
- Many features can be used, but they may not all work for all businesses.
- Sitecore developers with extensive experience and high skills are needed by companies.
- Integrating Sitecore features into other mobile application development projects can be difficult.
- Sitecore's app development services are expensive, so not all companies can afford them.
SharePoint: Description, Pros, and Cons
SharePoint is essential in intranets for knowledge workers. It includes the leading intranet portal, delivering associated collaboration sites and document repositories. Many reasons are driving users to upgrade to SharePoint App Development. Microsoft's latest Web development platform significantly improves mobile and social computing. This solution is perfect for almost every company.
Pros
- Parity cloud versions allow seamless file access.
- Smartphones with mobile app developers' access capabilities
- Social media platforms now allow for the enhancement of social networking experiences. This feature was not present in previous versions of SharePoint. This feature was only made available in SharePoint.
- To enhance the management and publishing interfaces, use the Microsoft Office ribbon.
Cons
- Although creating customized designs is easy, personalizing your homepage is not easy. This is a significant drawback in branding.
- SharePoint contains some features that cannot be accessed via the central intranet.
- Searching is not optimized well. It requires configuration work and a lot of effort from the users.
- It is essential to adhere to content management policies. This can be time-consuming.
Technology
Sitecore and SharePoint both use Net platforms, but they are architecturally very different. Sitecore processes incoming requests using a network of pipelines and routes them to either a controller or a file. Sitecore sites can contain web forms and MVC components. SharePoint is strictly an asp.net platform for web forms.
What's Possible?
SharePoint makes it simple to quickly create functional intranet pages without writing code or making complicated customizations. These websites are responsive and can be viewed from any device or screen. These sites also offer engaging experiences for their users. SharePoint in Microsoft 365 is easier to use if SharePoint Server is used to manage your intranet. It is simple to create responsive and dynamic pages. It is needed to maintain and develop custom solutions.
As a guideline, we recommend looking at the SharePoint lookbook to get an overview of SharePoint's capabilities. This lookbook includes many examples of adding news, events, or resources to SharePoint sites. It is easy for anyone to manage. The Guide to Modern SharePoint Experience in SharePoint provides an extensive explanation of how the components work. To create a SharePoint intranet, find an Accelerator workshop near your location.
We'll discuss where to set up your SharePoint intranet and how to prioritize the solutions that you require. These references will help you to collaborate with your stakeholders. These references can help achieve the highest value and fastest time-to-value for your intranet solution.
Understanding Current Business Goals And Key Participants
Successful intranets don't look great. They're focused on helping people do their jobs and encouraging engagement. This guide will help you think about how your content might appear. Establishing your business goals before determining which content and functionality are most important for your users and company is essential.
Each organization must have strategic goals. These goals are the driving force behind investment behavior. These goals will ensure that your intranet is successful and receives the proper funding. These goals can be used for prioritizing intranet projects. Like many technology projects, an intranet project is never completed. Over time, your priorities and interests will shift. It is essential to keep your intranet projects in line and aligned with your business ideas, preferences, and key stakeholders.
You can also view the most recent employee satisfaction survey data. These surveys show the top pain points identified by employees. This will allow you to be better informed about the Information and tools available to your employees.
Understand Your Audience
It's a brilliant idea to imagine what your intranet might look like after it is life. What are they capable of accomplishing? What are they going to do to get started in their day? What will they talk about on the intranet? To help you define the goals of your intranet, a cover story exercise is a good idea. This is an imagination game. This exercise will encourage you to create a magazine cover focusing on the intranet.
If you keep the end in mind, personas can help critical users. Personas are fictionalized descriptions of intranet users, such as new employees, field workers, sales reps and people managers, content writers, and knowledge workers. You must research and meet these people to understand their information needs. Creating an intranet is impossible if you don't understand the people who use it. Site owners are not enough. Their viewpoint is the content they want to be published. Often, this is not the same thing as what users wish.
Have a Look at Governance
Users complaining about not finding the right content online could indicate a governance problem. Before beginning your intranet project, consider how Governance will be handled. These essential decisions will be easier to implement and make early in an intranet project. Take a look at the following:
- Who can provision new sites? How do you make sure sites are found in search and navigation when they have been provided?
- Do you want to see a familiar pattern across all websites? This will allow users to find key content as they move from one site or another.
- Who is responsible for web content? How often should content be reviewed?
- Is it possible to include intranet site content management goals in job descriptions or performance goals for people with edit or owner permissions?
- Do you require intranet content to be retained by your retention policies?
Even though you don't have to make every decision immediately, it is essential to create a plan to ensure your intranet works well for your company.
Examine your Existing Intranet
Sites may belong to different business planning groups such as IT, HR, Facilities, Engineering, etc. It is a good idea for SharePoint users to review their sites and meet with their owners to plan the intranet. Inventorying your content and deciding how much you need to move it to create a new intranet is essential. Look at your current content to determine if it is up-to-date. It is common to find existing content left behind during a migration strategy. This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to move any content. Creating new content optimized for modern SharePoint may be easier than moving out-of-date content. These meetings will enable you to identify your business processes and requirements for new sites.
Meeting site owners and organizing a group for new employees is possible. The intranet is an influential audience. The intranet is a valuable resource for new employees. They can share their experiences and offer valuable insights into what they are missing, what they find difficult, and what resources they wish were available back when they started. Their previous employers may have great ideas to help them think of new and essential capabilities you could incorporate. This is a chance to learn. This step will help you identify the essential information for your users and business. This information can be used to identify potential intranet initiatives.
Identify Initiatives
You can use the information you have gathered through your research to collaborate with intranet stakeholders to find and implement initiatives that best reflect your company's priorities. You might not be able to implement all the identified projects, but prioritizing which projects you focus on will help you achieve user engagement and early success. You should examine each initiative you identify that meets the following criteria.
- Can it solve real problems?
- How many people will use it?
- Is it possible to do it in a reasonable time frame?
- What is the return on investment?
Each initiative should be examined to assess its impact on users and ease of implementation. A great first project has a high impact and requires minimal customization. It might be worth plotting your business's growth activities on a grid like the one below. Discuss the options with IT and intranet stakeholders to determine the best option.
Choose Pilot Scenarios
To find the best solution, discuss each scenario with the owner.
- Who are your visitors?
- What goals and lessons would visitors like to learn from the site?
- What tools and technology are they using?
- What Information would you like us to share?
- What technology or tools would you recommend visitors use to accomplish their critical tasks?
- Who will be their champions in getting them to the new location?
- How can you tell if your solution has succeeded?
Identify the most important scenarios and then identify those that match these criteria.
- Is it possible to build a prototype quickly (in less than a week)?
- Is there a sponsor that is committed to the cause?
- Are there enough current resources to demonstrate critical capabilities?
- Is there a specific audience for pilots?
Choose Solution Components
SharePoint offers many building blocks that can be used to create an intranet.
- Communication Websites - Share news and statuses via communication sites that use various web parts and templates.
- Your Homepage on the Intranet - This is your landing page.
- Hub Sites - Create hub websites to connect similar sites and talented team members, centralize news, content management, search, and organize information and search.
- SharePoint News - Use this section to post announcements, news from people, and status updates. Rich formatting and graphics are also possible.
- Yammer - Yammer lets you connect with people from all areas of your company beyond the boundaries of projects, business functions, or departments.
- Forms - Use forms for creating custom surveys, quizzes, and questionnaires.
- Stream - Use stream for live and on-demand meetings, events, and training.
Select the components necessary to reach the business goals of the scenario you've chosen. It is a good idea to create a prototype and give access to key stakeholders quickly. This provides a solid foundation for revising and discussing the design.
Your help desk should be included so they can answer questions when the site launches to a broader audience.
Rollout, the Pilot
Once the prototype is ready to share, you can roll it out to a smaller group or the whole organization. The success of an intranet site depends on its users' adoption. To drive site usage, we recommend both a top-down and bottom-up approach.
- To ensure that the intranet project is funded, find executive sponsors. These executives can help communicate this site's importance and benefits to other employees.
- Empower champions within the organization to promote the new site at the grass-root level.
These are also things you can do to make sure success.
- Launch events and communication campaigns.
- Provide formal training.
- Users can seek help during regular office hours.
You can track your success metrics as the site launches and increase user engagement. You can make adjustments as needed to drive engagement and satisfaction.
After the site runs, you can review the lessons learned and move on to the next intranet-related task.
SharePoint Intranet - Is it Right For You?
We have now covered the pros and cons of the SharePoint intranet. We hope you have better understood the different aspects to consider when choosing the right platform for your company. Your business's budget, size, and specific needs will all impact your decision. SharePoint is an excellent choice for small, medium, and large companies with many employees and collaborative programs. It's also simple to install SharePoint in an IT department. Smaller companies may also be interested in office 365 or SharePoint online solutions. We are confident you will find this helpful information and enjoy the benefits.
When SharePoint Makes Sense, and When it Doesn't
This statement might seem surprising from someone whose Twitter handle references SharePoint directly. Let's look at the reasons SharePoint is often chosen by companies for an open-facing internet situation. These are the most important points to consider in any decision-making process:
- There is a substantial amount of investment in SharePoint infrastructure.
- We are able to understand SharePoint and the people who can maintain it.
- It is cost-effective because we already have SharePoint licensing under our Microsoft Enterprise Agreement.
SharePoint can still be a great choice for Web Content Management (WCM). SharePoint offers a wide range of services to help you do this. Sitecore is the best option when one or two of these drivers are unavailable or nonexistent. Sitecore is a great choice for those who have significant digital marketing business drivers.
What is Sitecore's Customer Engagement Platform?
Sitecore, in layman's terms, is a platform that can be used to deploy public-facing websites. It can be used for both on-premise and cloud deployments. Skilled developers can use this framework to create an internet website. They have access to powerful web content management features that are probably more user-friendly than SharePoint's WCMS interface and digital marketing functionality. This particular set of services is very popular among CMOs, who usually own the customer-facing sites Sitecore powers. Organizations can use digital marketing functionality to communicate directly with users who visit their sites, collect information about their behavior, and target them with relevant offers based on that data. SharePoint can perform WCM, but Sitecore is not the best in Digital Marketing.
Microsoft clearly has realized this. Microsoft has realized this. The Digital Product Marketing Group, which used to promote SharePoint as a CMS system solution, was disbanded recently. Microsoft is now much more interested in Sitecore, which is a good thing since Sitecore is built on Microsoft.NET and Microsoft's SQL database servers. Sitecore is a great option for moving your web infrastructure into the cloud. This can be done either directly with Microsoft's Azure PaaS (Platform as a Service) or with third-party providers such as Rackspace and Savvis. Sitecore Azure, Sitecore's specialized Azure offering (called "Sitecore Azure"), is a great option in this space. In addition to Azure PaaS and other Azure benefits, Sitecore Azure offers a few additional benefits.
Make a Recommendation
It's simple. SharePoint is still a good choice if you have certain criteria. Sitecore is a compelling alternative that offers business owners superior customer engagement tools. Isn't this always the purpose of a website?
SharePoint & Sitecore - Best together!
They work well together. Sitecore integrates seamlessly with SharePoint, allowing you to reuse any content on the internet. This allows SharePoint investments to be extended. Sitecore and SharePoint can be used together to maximize your SharePoint and Sitecore investments.
Sitecore is a website platform that you use with SharePoint. One of your biggest concerns is how to make SharePoint public. SharePoint can be difficult to brand and customize, even for developers. Integrating both SharePoint and Sitecore might be an option.
Conclusion
Each software has its advantages and disadvantages. Companies can choose which software they prefer. This software is helpful, and although enterprises have to deal with many downsides, it can still be an excellent tool for their growth and productivity. They can improve the quality and productivity of employees' work. Many tasks can easily be automated, which makes it easier for marketing departments and file-handling teams. Intranet applications must provide tools that allow personalization, customization, and security.
