Enterprises across all industries have long been turning to intranet portals to serve as a vehicle for everyday internal communications. While there are many portal solutions on the market, Microsoft SharePoint is becoming the platform of choice for a growing number of organizations. With this uptick in SharePoint portal implementations, DocPoint set out to find out why companies are using the platform as their information center, or hub, that houses everything from HR forms and meeting minutes, to project management documents and blogs.
As a result of our research initiative that involved many of our clients, DocPoint concluded that SharePoint provides the optimal blend of flexibilities, capabilities and functionalities for organizations to create and maintain an engaging information center that improves productivity, simplifies collaboration, cuts costs and even boosts company morale.
One of the key reasons that many companies are opting for SharePoint-powered portals is the platform’s ability to provide a positive user experience that engages employees through an inviting, branded design and intuitive navigation pattern. After all, a user-friendly portal leads to greater user adoption. Naturally, with more employees effectively utilizing the intranet portal, companies can rapidly maximize their return on investment by increasing productivity and uncovering time savings.
The companies we spoke with are also attracted to SharePoint’s capability to integrate other line of business (LOB) systems. As companies and technologies evolve, more information is siloed in various locations, making it difficult to aggregate data into a single location for easy access. Organizations are looking to SharePoint to facilitate direct integration with critical LOB systems so that information is readily available from one interface. By seamlessly integrating SharePoint portals with these back-end systems, end users receive a unified view of information across multiple data sources. This level of access allows companies to quickly take action based on certain metrics and analytics and make informed business decisions.
Other reasons cited by our clients for using SharePoint include the platform’s abilities to enable collaboration among departments and employees, simplify search and retrieval, secure data, incorporate enterprise social networking and integrate with third-party tools.
Scott Swidersky, president of DocPoint, said, “For DocPoint, the increased demand for designing, integrating and supporting SharePoint intranet portals creates an area for new business opportunities. By placing a greater focus on this service, we can help enterprise customers face the commonly held challenge of creating an effective, central ‘information center’ that will integrate with critical line of business that foster user adoption.”
To read our full white paper, “A Portal to Collaboration, Efficiency, and User Adoption: Why Enterprises are Turning to Microsoft SharePoint to Power their Intranet Portals,” visit DocPointSolutions.com.