SharePoint is a platform within Office 365 that provides a platform for collaborative and creative capabilities enabling organizations to share, manage and access content from any registered device. Typically deployed on a company’s network as a series of intranet sites, SharePoint lets various departments synergize by controlling their own security, workgroups, documents, and data.
The main intention behind SharePoint usage is a collaboration between different facets of the organization to share content and information; both internally and externally, across the broad mediums of chosen platforms. This removes the hassle of having different versions of the same document and also allows for live editing and collaborations among users. As a solution, SharePoint provides a single platform for storing, viewing, and updating documents. Also SharePoint easily handles any type of document to consolidate and store various types of documentation like project blueprints, videos, schematics, photographs, and workbooks, for example, that are required for large projects where multiple teams must collaborate and share information to achieve set goals.
The SharePoint platform sits within Office 365 and is fully integrated with Office 365 tools. This allows for flexibility as it is packed with features and functionality that will enhance business processes and offer teams the chance to work in an effective and efficient way.
Source: Online
What is SharePoint used for?
In the past two decades, SharePoint has played a key role in increasing work efficiency in Fortune 500 companies as an “Intranet” platform that connects different sectors of a company to one system. The features available in the platform make it easier for people to work together on critical projects and establish business procedures for information sharing, document publishing, and recording data.
Let us have a look into the tools and features that made SharePoint a necessity for collaborative work:
One Drive for Business
Work on files from anywhere
- Create, upload, and edit files accessed from any device or computer
- Sync with your PC or Mac for convenient access
Collaborate in real-time
- Easily share documents and work together using familiar Office applications
- Collaborate on the same file without versioning hassles
Built-in security
- Device access, offline sync, control sharing, and storage
- Advanced-Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities help identify, monitor, and protect sensitive documents and information
Portals and Publishing
Organize and share information
- Organized authoring and publishing
- Structured content management processes
- Intranet enabled communication portals
Team Sites
Hub for content collaboration
- Any assigned teams can work on projects and share information from anywhere through any device
- Store and collaborate on files
- Create and manage lists of information
Team news
- Easy to author a news post – a status update, trip report, highlight a document with some additional content
- News posts are highlighted on the team site home page on both web and mobile
Office 365 Video
- Scalable enterprise video portal solution
- Upload, share and playback video messages throughout the organization
Custom portals
- Design and build custom solutions
- Fully responsive, cross-browser/device support
- Ability to use standard development frameworks
Integrated with Office 365 tools
- Team communications and calendar from Outlook
- Notepad in OneNote
- To-Do Tasks in Planner
- Communicate with Microsoft Teams
Intelligence and Insights
SharePoint home
- Easy to find and access SharePoint sites and portals
- Recent activity information for sites
- Self-service creation of new team sites
People cards
- Shows contact information and more like their organizational standing
Delve
- Create and share own information and expertise
- Access documents and data of other people in the organization
- View relevant content
Business Applications
Integrate SharePoint with your business processes
- Business analysts and power users can easily create apps without writing code
- Data within common SaaS and enterprise services can be accessed
PowerApps
- No code needed to be written for building apps, publish for web and mobile usage
- Create apps directly from a SharePoint list
Microsoft Flow
- Synchronize files between apps and services for automated workflow
- Enter SharePoint list to create or launch portals directly
Office 365 is best when:
- File-based storage is needed for ease-of-use. (Office 365’s OneDrive is a recommended solution)
- Collaborations are seamless and don’t involve a lot of content. (Like by using Office 365 Teams)
- Personal file management across devices. (OneDrive storage is the best option)
- Larger files need to be readily emailed. (Another job that OneDrive can perform)
Source: SILICUS
SharePoint Online is your best option when:
- Complex and need for tight security and maintenance in order to collaborate
- Custom views are needed as is metadata.
- Data types have to be configured.
- Content management requires a custom workflow.
- Certain types of work require complex security protocols .
Industries adopting SharePoint worldwide:
Many organizations are leaving old versions of SharePoint behind in favor of SharePoint’s modern user interface and cloud functionality to keep up with the ever-changing technological solutions. SharePoint Online and SharePoint 2016 usage have gained significant raise over the past couple of years. SharePoint 2016 has seen a 67% increase in deployment, while SharePoint Online deployments rose by 167%.
SharePoint has now become one of the most widely used ECM and collaboration solutions with more than 250,000 organizations and over 190 million people using SharePoint/SharePoint Online. One of its main success factors is the ever-increasing rise of digitization and globalization, organizations want their content to be accessible from anywhere and everywhere. Organizations want to be flexible and efficient in their process, enabling workers from different fields and locations to collaborate seamlessly.
Why are industries using SharePoint?
User- Friendly intranet portals
Competitive organizations in any industry need an intranet portal to share information across. SharePoint makes it easy to set up user-friendly portals, departmental sites, and team sites so that everyone can collaborate.
Easy Document Management
Documentation being automated, takes away the hassle of paperwork, filing, storing and protecting documents; especially for companies relying heavily on the process. SharePoint is renowned for saving time wasted and enabling efficiency.
Effortless Collaboration from anywhere
SharePoint is an open platform filled with features that make it easy to create and share business information from any given location. SharePoint and the relative tools including OneDrive and MS Teams can seamlessly connect employees with the documents, information, people, and projects based on given tasks.
Cost-Effectiveness
The initial implementation of SharePoint may seem expensive, but once you factor in the sheer amount of solutions that you can build using SharePoint and compare them with a standalone solution to get the same result then SharePoint will surely be more cost-effective.
Seamless Integration with third-party and LOB systems
SharePoint is very integration-friendly, providing seamless integration with Microsoft products from the get-go and has an extensive set of features to integrate with other systems, especially LOB applications using Business connectivity service (BCS) making SharePoint a one-stop shop for all your information needs.
Process Automation
Business process automation is a key area of investment for any organization looking to improve productivity. SharePoint is the platform for automating all your workflows and quickly managing operations without wasting any amount of time allowing employees to focus on critical work.
Source: Qumu
Brain Station 23‘s SharePoint usage case study by industry
As far as the numbers go, the Software and information technology industry has more than 12000 companies with SharePoint implementation claiming the top spot in and the biggest market segment of SharePoint usage by industry.
Pharmaceutical Industry
The Pharmaceutical industry is reputed as one of the fastest growing and most crucial businesses sectors. Pharmaceutical companies have two crucial need for collaborative documentation: first, the need for a flexible platform that provides a basis for ad hoc collaboration of project teams without the intervention of IT when the circumstances arises; and second, the need to consolidate historical data acquired over decades, which are expensive to maintain.
Case Study: Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd.
Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd is a leading manufacturer and exporter of medicines in Bangladesh. Incorporated in the late 70s, Beximco Pharma began as a distributor, importing products from global MNCs like Bayer, Germany and Upjohn, USA and selling them in the local market, which were later manufactured and distributed under licensing arrangement. Since then, the journey continued, and today, Beximco Pharma is one of the largest exporters of medicines in Bangladesh, winning the National Export Trophy (Gold) a record five times.
We installed the updated 2013 version of SharePoint. Regardless of the location of users, the solution was developed for Intranet Portal for the simplification of people’s collaboration, findings and information sharing for retaining knowledge and for better organizational performance. Being the best CMS tool for managing a business site SharePoint has been preferred by the business organizations big or small. Being one of the key players in Bangladesh’s Pharmaceutical Industry, Beximco maintains a SharePoint Portal for a smoother & faster organizational communication.
Fintech Industry
Financial organizations have always been the one of the leaders in adopting new technology due to their high data-driven work. Their core business depends on making informed decisions like approving a loan based on client credit history and in order to make the right decision, the decision makers need access to the right information at the right time. They are mostly using SharePoint in the form of a document management system and org. wide intranet portals for information sharing. Microsoft’s focus on making its cloud services meet FISC and GDPR data protection requirements also make Office 365 a natural choice for an industry that regularly deals in the transaction of sensitive data.
Case Study: United Commercial Bank Ltd.
United Commercial Bank Ltd. (UCBL) is a leading private sector bank in Bangladesh.The Bank was incorporated on 26 June 1983. The government owns shares in the bank. The bank is listed in both Dhaka Stock exchange and Chittagong stock exchange.They are one of the leading banks in Bangladesh having a large number of customers.
We developed SharePoint portal for UCBL. Regardless of the location of users, the solution was developed for Intranet Portal for the simplification of people’s collaboration, findings and information sharing for retaining knowledge and for better organizational performance. We helped UCBL to do process automation through our solution.
Manufacturing Industry
Through SharePoint and Office 365 for the manufacturing sector benefit from simple management systems for each phase of production. Not only this is leading to increased productivity but optimizing operations and unlocking new avenues for businesses to grow. SharePoint and Office 365 integrate workflow capabilities and manual information handling for custom manufacturing and automates manufacturing processes. This digitization of industries assists in developing and validating processes that ensure the reliability of products. And manual processes can be set up using the SharePoint or Office 365 platforms for activities which organizations wish to micro-manage. Thus the automation of the supply chain allows businesses to concentrate on their core activities of marketing, sales, and customer satisfaction.
Case Study: Berger
Being the oldest company in the paint industry, Berger Paints is one of the most technologically advanced companies in Bangladesh. Thus they not only serve their customers best also try to maintain the best organizational automation as well.
Berger needed to install the newest SharePoint features for solutions like- TimeJob, WebParts, Process automation, Binding portal with SSL certificate & workflow. These items were needed to make the organizational communication faster and more efficient and we are happy to help them with installing the newest features.
We installed the updated 2013 version of SharePoint. Regardless of the location of users, the solution was developed for Intranet Portal for the simplification of people’s collaboration, findings and information sharing for retaining knowledge and for better organizational performance.
Software
SharePoint is a technology-centric solution which is in majority of the cases implemented by one of the Microsoft trusted partner software firms. This is why the Software industry is one of the biggest users of SharePoint as well. Software development is driven by teams collaborating daily to build the solution which makes team collaboration as one of their primary use cases of using SharePoint. Document management and sharing is also an important aspect which ensures that everyone can easily find the most recent documents and can easily manage them by using versioning and publishing features. Software firms heavily customize the automation features like workflows and digital forms which also enables them to showcase it to their clients.
Case Study: DotPhase
Dot Phase is a USA based software development company specializing in the creation of technology solutions for web, mobile, desktop and server platforms.They are one of the innovative software companies of the USA creating an online solution for other companies that has established them as one of the most creative and successful web development companies available.
Brain Station 23 has developed employee intranet portal for Dotphase on SharePoint. They have been using SharePoint since march 2016.
Telco
Telco industries are the pioneers when it comes to adopting any kind of new technologies. Even though most of the industries income comes from phone calls, the industry now consists of far more than just tele communications. Texts and emails, video streaming, and interactive media are few key aspects of the industry at present. High-speed internet access has become a necessity in today’s environment and any company in the telecom industry needs fast and precise workflow solutions to accommodate huge data and information exchanges happening in short periods of time.
Source: Rishabh Software
Tools most popular for SharePoint development :
- SharePoint Search Query Tool
Working on any sort of projects requiring sorting and finding relevant information and data, especially in an organization with a lot of historical and on-going data. SharePoint is the tool to use to store and access massive amounts of data. It is always challenging and time-consuming for developers to write queries to make the system as efficient as possible. SharePoint Search Query is equipped with a predefined set of Query options. The developers can build the queries and their results in the needed format between JSON and XML, on the go while working on huge SharePoint farms; simplifying search requirements.
- SharePoint Manager 2013
When working on a solution it is imperative to go through Exploring SharePoint Object Model. This gives an overview for the SharePoint farm structure to preview the stored database. The users who are given the server access are only allowed to use this tool, which can be used to see the complete object structure and underline properties and their values.
- CAML Query Builder
All custom development projects in SharePoint are required pulling data from SharePoint list and libraries with the help of CAML queries. Writing and optimizing the CAML Queries requires significant time and effort. An effective CAML query builder tool is a key reason behind time efficiency and project effectiveness.
- ULS Viewer
ULS Viewer helps to identify any log to be debugged, occurred from a faulty input, in a very short time. It gives multiple filters to refine the logs and get the needed lines of statement based on correlation id and levels. If you are configuring, deploying or debugging the SharePoint project, then the ULS Log Viewer helps to search the logs instantly and thus saves times in resolving the errors.
- Fiddler
Solving bugs from the client side interface for all the requests and responses is a tedious task for developers. Finding out the various web sessions, their responses traffic etc are are not easy jobs by any means. With Fiddler, you can easily analyze the statistics of the request and downloaded data which helps in improving the performance of the website. The request traffic can also be recorded for further testing.
- CKS Dev
This is a plugin for Visual Studio which has been built by the community as an extension to Visual Studio and now it has support for 2013 as well. It allows you to manage your development routines more efficiently while coding. It also adds a bunch of new project items for your SharePoint projects and it contributes to an overall satisfactory SharePoint development experience.
Bangladeshi industries insights regarding the usage of SharePoint (SOSM, COSM, JOSM, SP Framework {SPFx}) :
At present, SharePoint is used by 78% of Fortune 500 companies and is a key system for 70% of knowledge workers. According to research from the Radicati Group, SharePoint will continue to see strong market adoption across all industry verticals and is projected to grow at an annual growth rate of 20% between 2015 and 2019. Additional stats show that in the last five years, 50% of all intranets implemented were built on SharePoint. Amongst this group was a significant pick up of mid-sized organizations who historically did not purchase intranets for cost vs. benefit reasons. With robust communication, collaboration and document management functionality, SharePoint intranets are being used by increasingly more mid-sized organizations as workplaces become digital-centric.
In Bangladesh, industry leaders in banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, and telecom have already implemented the use of SharePoint. Even for firms who specialize in SharePoint deployment, there is an expansive scope locally and globally as more companies are integrating SharePoint in their organizations.
Source: HELIOS
Brain Station 23’s SharePoint work experience:
Brain Station 23’s experience with SharePoint based projects are diverse, as we catered this solution to different industries. Brain Station 23 worked with Berger Paints, one of the leading MNCs in the paint industry of Bangladesh. We were tasked with creating a SharePoint portal which can manage content, schedule, information, and work management. Beximco Pharmaceuticals, an industry leader in the pharmaceutical industry of Bangladesh, is also a client of our SharePoint solutions. This project focused on the SharePoint implementation and workflow management of Beximco. Then from the telecom industry, Robi Axiata reached out for our SharePoint expertise. The internet portal we provided for Robi consisted of custom web part development and site branding. Our SharePoint solutions were also taken up by an international tobacco company, where we provided web development and process automation. Brain Station 23 has been providing SharePoint services to the financial organizations as well. Brain Station 23 have helped big financial institutions like AB Bank, IFIC Bank. Global consultancy companies like Metier OEC have trusted Brain Station 23 for their SharePoint development. And from North America, we have worked with DotPhase to develop their SharePoint portal for employee usage.
As mentioned before, SharePoint comes as a package within Office 365. Thus users and developers alike are attuned to the workings of the whole system. SharePoint services have allowed us to integrate more solutions from the Microsoft umbrella like Office 365 and Azure cloud services.
Businesses today are far outreached and connected globally than they ever were. So for companies who have to share and organize data and information from their global workforce. A robust system is necessary to handle the workload. And that robust system is SharePoint. For businesses that rely heavily on documentation, a wrong document or information will lead to unanticipated losses and predicaments. SharePoint is the system that keeps track of the documents and streamlines workload and information. The portal set up using the intranet enables cross-collaboration among the workers. As seen above, SharePoint really excels with its features of secure sharing, content management, and collaboration features. Fundamentally, SharePoint is an easy to use system, can be accessed through any device from within or outside the organization; being highly scalable and customizable. The return on investment is apparent as SharePoint makes the organization efficient and time effective. The system is easy to implement, and the best part is that it can be used for numerous different utilizations. SharePoint Online is the most popular among SharePoint technology in the modern era.This delivers the powerful features of SharePoint without the associated overhead of managing the infrastructure on your own. It can solve important business challenges quickly, securely, and up-to-date. With SharePoint Online, you can easily create team sites and portals to discover, share, and collaborate on content with colleagues inside and outside your organization from any device, regardless of where they are. Through single sign-on, the users move transparently in the online and on-premises world. Intelligent recommendations help you find what you are looking for in no time.
Brain Station 23 has been providing SharePoint development services to the industry giants of Bangladesh and all over the world. Do reach us for any kind of SharePoint development of consultancy services.
Really, it’s a very nice blog on Sharepoint with most valuable content.