Microsoft SharePoint, at the scale of a large org, has no rivals outside of Microsoft Teams
Updated January 21, 2020
Microsoft SharePoint, at the scale of a large org, has no rivals outside of Microsoft Teams
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with MS SharePoint
SharePoint is used organization-wide from our parent company to each of the operating companies underneath it. It is a collaboration solution within the Office 365 toolkit and has been used in our company since 2007. SharePoint is has been paired with a few tools to run in parallel over the years, but the current deployment is almost purely off-the-shelf Microsoft.
- SharePoint allows information to self-organize well. One version of the truth visible in multiple contexts (views).
- SharePoint allows for a really good relationship between Microsoft Office products and allows for collaboration in those tools to happen a bit more seamlessly.
- SharePoint allows for permissions to govern access to information very well from any level in the site.
- SharePoint in Office 365 allows for information to be accessed in a mobile environment without the need for VPN or server access that has traditionally been somewhat difficult to navigate on a phone.
- SharePoint sometimes has a challenge with the Share feature in Office 365. Traditional best practices are to govern collaboration with permissions groups and manage access at the group level. Share can sometimes undermine that by creating ad-hoc situations unintentionally.
- SharePoint's success in many organizations is really a function of user adoption and training. It is such a large platform that it is often deployed without much governance or direction.
- SharePoint's lists and libraries can leverage Excel services and like-kind tools, but the ability for a list to do math in the same way that Excel does is very limited. It still has a room for improvement in the business intelligence features of metadata management.
- It has democratized collaboration - giving power at the point of use.
- It has allowed us as a regulated industry to be compliant.
- It has allowed us to share information from a central point rather than just bouncing emails and storing files on desktops.
- It has allowed us to automate business processes.
There is no competitor to SharePoint for an organization our size. The integration into our development environment, active directory, and other office tools just can't be matched (specifically from a contractual agreement and holistic perspective with ALL of our toolsets). Microsoft Teams is the only real analogy and it is just a next generation of SharePoint, so the comparison is not 1:1.
SharePoint Feature Ratings
Using MS SharePoint
SharePoint is used across our organization; deployed from the parent company through all operating companies. The common governance is Office365 centrally governed and managed at the OpCo level.
4 - The support staff is nuanced. We have 4 dedicated resources in our operating company who represent the administration team. 2 of those resources are primarily focused on SharePoint, 1 is a manager of collaboration and communication tools, and one is a generalist that overlaps because of work on security. The rest of org is able, in part, to self-serve. At the parent company level, we have another layer of dedicated IT support that provides common governance over the entire O365 deployment.
- Collaboration - file sharing
- Collaboration - metadata-based lists managing lightweight business processes, WIP tracking
- Communication - serves as a lightweight supplement to our intranet connecting specific groups to specific contexts.
- Regulatory approval process enabler (we are FDA regulated)
- business process creation (small scale). we are able to build some pretty excellent small scale processes on an ad-hoc basis that keep us from having to buy larger tools that have overkill functionality for what we need.
- Permission controlled document system. We have a Documentum system that is a pain for general collaboration. We are able to use SharePoint as a buffer to get actual work done and keep company confidential and context confidential information under control.
- We use it also as a communication tool based on the outcomes of business processes that are built in Lists, Calendars, and Libraries.
- It depends on the maturity of complementing apps in the Office 365 environment like Flow, PowerApps, PowerBI, etc.. We just migrated to Office 365, so we are rebuilding out toolkit and learning the new environment.
- Mobile is significant because it is underexplored. Moving to Office365 has opened the possibility of mobile development and integration.
- We are currently looking at the future of SharePoint weighed agains the future of Teams. SharePoint and Teams are not the same, but finding a harmonious way to weave the two together is important to the survival of each through consolidation.