SharePoint: The Ultimate Collaboration Tool

SharePoint has quickly become one of the most powerful tools in any companies’ collaboration toolbox. With its intuitive interface and easy-to-use features, SharePoint provides all the functionality necessary to boost collaboration and productivity within your company.

With these benefits in mind, here are some reasons why you should use SharePoint to transform your office from an uncoordinated group of cubicles into a unified team that collaborates more effectively both internally and externally.

‍What's possible with SharePoint?

SharePoint is a platform that helps teams work together effectively. It facilitates information sharing, access to content, discussion, and collaboration across an organisation. SharePoint comes in many forms from modern(cloud-based) to on-premise, and is an easy to use and cost effective platform, making it an ideal collaboration solution for businesses of all sizes.

SharePoint makes it easy to set up document libraries, content and workflows so that teams of employees can collaborate more effectively on projects and daily tasks, making business processes more efficient.

SharePoint is like the glue for your business, the one stop shop for your team to collaborate, store and manage content, share news and quickly find information across your organisation.

Further reading: keep learning more about SharePoint’s features.

Who Uses SharePoint?

‍SharePoint can be used by anyone. Whether you’re a small business owner, or in charge of a large team at a big corporation, SharePoint is here to make your job easier. It allows you to create an online space where everyone in your business can store files and access important information from any device with an internet connection. It also helps organise department spaces, calendar events, contacts and documents into one central location which makes it easier for everyone involved to know what’s going on.

Further reading: see our SharePoint FAQs

‍Better Management of Documents

No matter your industry or business, you’re likely already familiar with document management. If you have employees and you have procedures, odds are high that you need to store documents somewhere.

SharePoint is a document management system that allows users to store and share documents in an organised manner. It is one of the fastest document management systems available, and once it has been successfully implemented it saves a lot of time for your employees, especially those managing a plethora of files and policy documents.

Sharing documents in SharePoint is fast, providing you with well-organised document libraries. This way your employees can find and share the files they need quickly without wasting any time at all. Collaborating across different departments isn’t a headache because everyone has access to the same file simultaneously - so no more waiting for a file to work on it!

SharePoint’s cloud-based capabilities also give you access to up-to-date files wherever you are, whenever you want them. This means that your employees can always access important files, the same ones they need every day, on their phones and laptops at any time.

Enhanced Internal Communication

Internal communication is a key part of any business. Whether it's talking about a project, discussing an upcoming event, or sharing important news, you need to be able to communicate with your co-workers, across departments and teams.

One way to do this is through SharePoint. SharePoint allows you to create websites that will serve as hubs for all your company's internal communication needs. You can share documents, images, videos—anything really—with colleagues who have access to the site and make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to business information.

An effective way to do this is using Communication Sites. Communication sites are a great way to keep your employees informed about important company news from a particular department or team (e.g. Finance or Marketing). With a communication site, typically only a small set of members contribute content that is consumed by a much larger audience. This is an ideal way to distribute information to large groups of people in an easy-to-read format.

The content on your SharePoint communication site can be customised to suit your department needs. You can add links to other SharePoint pages, such as an employee directory or a calendar of upcoming events. You can also customise the look of your site using themes and colours that match your branding.

In addition to this, SharePoint web parts can be added to the homepage to highlight key business information– grabbing users’ attention as soon as they log on. Use the News web part on the home page to post interesting or important stories. With this web part, you can quickly create eye-catching posts such as announcements, people news, status updates, and more.

Integration with Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft Products

SharePoint and Microsoft Teams are completely integrated. You can move seamlessly from one to another, and you can store documents in both locations. The most important thing is that you don't have to move your files between different locations. When you edit a document in SharePoint, it appears in Teams automatically and vice versa.

With SharePoint’s integration to Microsoft Teams, you can share a file in a team or channel and the file will become accessible to everyone in the respective team. The file will also automatically sync to the corresponding SharePoint site document library.

SharePoint ‘Sites’ can be connected to Teams providing the additional capacity for staff teams or groups to communicate and meet using Channels and Chat, all underpinned by a SharePoint site where documents and information is stored.

SharePoint is also a powerful tool for streamlining your business or work processes. With the integration of Microsoft’s Power Platform, such as Power Automate – you can maximise your Microsoft stack, keeping your team in one ecosystem, sharing information access different platforms. Whether you're looking to automate the creation of a new form, streamline the review process for a new hire, or make sure that all your team members are on the same page with their deadlines, SharePoint’s integrations have you covered.

The future of work

As many industries shift towards a hybrid work model, this means more remote work and flexible schedules are on the rise. With these changes, SharePoint has emerged as one of the tools businesses are using more than ever to facilitate these new way of working –connecting employees with a powerful collaboration platform.

By using the correct technologies, a hybrid work model can really work. SharePoint can help you build a framework for the hybrid work environment that will make your employees more productive and cohesive, so that your business can reach a new level of efficiency when it comes to communicating, organising, and working together.

‍Want to make collaboration easier for business? Let’s chat  

Here at Sope, we’re always looking for ways to help our clients be more productive with SharePoint. Contact us today to learn how you can implement solutions that will impress senior management, support business innovation, and minimise your manual processes slowing down your employee collaboration.

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