7 Ways to Get More from SharePoint #3 – Designate a “Go To” Person for SharePoint
This is the fourth post in the series I’m doing here on the OfflineSharePoint blog. The last post was on Embracing the “Seamless Teamwork” Approach.
With the SharePoint software installed, business value can start to flow as soon as you align the use of SharePoint with the technical capabilities that are available. This requires consultation with different business groups about how they get their work done today, and follow-on analysis of how and where work process can be improved. This type of analysis is not generally what IT is good at, so you need to find and designate someone (or multiple someones) to form the bridge between the SharePoint group in IT and the business groups wanting to use SharePoint. Let’s call them a “business process improvement analyst”, or for short, the “go to” person for SharePoint. And for your firm, there may already be such a group in existence—it’s time to co-opt their help with understanding what SharePoint can do to help improve business performance.
The goal with having a go to person for SharePoint is that it puts a face on the technical capabilities of SharePoint. The individual concerned is able to explain to business groups in business terms how business processes and work practices can be improved with SharePoint, and then translate the business requirements into technical requirements for the IT group.
What’s the next action? Look at the staff currently working in IT, and see if you have a natural boundary spanner on the payroll. If you do, refocus them on being the bridge between the capabilities of SharePoint and the possibilities and opportunities for applying SharePoint in the business groups. They will need training and mentoring to grow into this new role, as well as introductions to others inside the business.
I agree with your post with one caveat — don’t assume that one go to person is enough. Dependignon the complexity and scale of your SharePoint implementation, you may need a number of go to people to cover the many aspects of the solution overall.
Plus, it may not make good financial sense in every case to have certain forms of expertise on staff. To get really transformative value that provides a high ROI, you may need to enlist a consultant to advise your team on how to implement that next application(s) in SharePoint.
You’ll also need to look at whether it makes sense to go with a fully out of the box application that you configure, or maybe acquire the right 3rd party web part. In some cases, custom development may even be necessary. It’s not likely a single individual is going to be able to cover all of those bases.
One good option for smallish organizations is to work with a consultant to map out your strategic plan for SharePoint, and then carry out the implementation yourself, or with limited assistance.
Identifying your go-tos inside the organization is definitely going to help you name your evangelists and governance team members.
Check out this LinkedIn Group for more discussion: “Strategic Planning for SharePoint”
Entirely agree with your points Jeff … thanks for stating them so well! Re working with outside expertise, I talk about this in my SharePoint for Business white paper, step 2.
My best … and I’ll check out the LinkedIn group!
M.