Microsoft SharePoint 2010- Building Collaboration Solutions with SharePoint Communities

Friday, May 7, 2010 by Jenny Lowry

Microsoft’s white paper, “Microsoft SharePoint 2010- People Working Together Drive Business Results”, examines the value organizations can gain from enhancing their collaborative environment with corporate social networks or business communities by using Microsoft SharePoint 2010. This paper also offers a few key considerations and strategies for planning and implementing a corporate social network or community in a way that supports your business objectives. The ultimate goal is to build a work environment that is more valuable to your organization. The following is a brief summary of the paper.

Why Corporate Social Networks Matter

According to a joint study conducted by MIT’s Sloan School of Management & Center for E-business and NYU’s Stern School of Business, employees who are connected to a wide range of colleagues generate $83,000 more in revenue per year than employees with an average number of colleague connections.

The Changing Face of Collaboration: Business at the Speed of Thought

In today’s corporate environment, information is fragmented among many people. Solving a problem usually means finding the person who knows the answer, and simply identifying the right person can be a challenge. What if finding the right person was as easy as an Internet search?

Where Do You Store Your Knowledge Assets?

Most of the information needed to operate a business from day to day is in the heads of that organization’s employees. When people move to another team or leave the organization, they take their knowledge with them. When someone new joins a team, the team slows down as it helps the new person get up to speed and compensates for that new person’s low initial productivity.

Working Across Boundaries

A corporate social network builds business communities that cut across departments and geographies.

• Quickly find and tap into the right skill sets, talent, and knowledge regardless of where in the world it is located.
• By always having access to the latest project and individual information, co-workers use real-time meetings more effectively.
• Team and project sites serve as standing virtual meetings in which asynchronous work is ongoing.
• People share ideas more readily, and organizations capture more knowledge through community interactions.
• People widely separated by geographical boundaries—or even organizational boundaries in the case of customer or partner virtual teams—feel engaged in an endeavor where their efforts make a difference.

Attracting and Retaining Top Talent

Business communities and corporate social networks that allow effective collaboration across the enterprise provide a stimulating environment in which people can learn from others and share ideas in a natural, informal way. These kinds of learning opportunities and dynamic channels of engagement attract top talent. And by providing a means for enhanced participation and stronger engagement within the organization, employees are more likely to stay at the company longer.

Calculating the Real Value of Effective Collaboration

Factors that strengthen employee engagement not only reduce costly turnover but increase the value of employees an organization retains. So, on the revenue-enhancement and cost-savings side of the equation, effective collaboration tools:

• Increase revenue per employee by keeping employees more engaged and productive, building stronger customer relationships, and delivering better service.
• Lower costs related to lost productivity during employee transition and learning, lower costs related to filling vacant positions by improving employee retention rates, and lower costs associated with wasted searches.
• Strengthen and sustain the long-term viability and success of a company by fostering an environment that supports ongoing innovation, teamwork, and continuing employee growth.

How SharePoint 2010 Builds Communities for Maximum Business Value

To get the most out of a SharePoint community or corporate social network, you need to plan and manage the workspace like any physical facility by addressing security and access, proper use of the facilities, and capacity issues.

Here are four key ingredients to successfully implementing a collaboration solution that will further your business objectives:

• Start with a business objective, and make the business case.
• When it comes to the scope of your business community, think big but start small.
• Reach a critical mass of users.
• Expand scope based on user demand.

Learn how EA (Electronic Arts) used Microsoft SharePoint 2010 to create an internal social network that had thousands of EA employees willingly using within months as a de-facto collaboration space.

Taking the Right Next Steps

Better collaboration accelerates business, produces more valuable employees, and strengthens customer relationships. That is where SharePoint Communities —if designed, implemented, and managed successfully—will take your organization. The business value of this kind of collaboration platform is clear.

Contact Socius to find out how you can build more effective collaboration solutions with Microsoft SharePoint to propel your business into the 21st century.

Download the “Microsoft SharePoint 2010- People Working Together Drive Business Results” White Paper

Download the SharePoint 2010 Communities Brochure