The Limitations Of SharePoint
Welcome to the 14th edition of the MangoScoop LinkedIn Newsletter!
MangoScoop?is the fastest-growing newsletter focused on improving employee experience in the digital workplace.
In this newsletter, we're pulling the curtains back on the limitations of SharePoint!
Let's dive into this week's agenda:
The Limitations Of SharePoint
#1 – Poor Personalization of the Employee Experience?
SharePoint lacks the ability to provide a personalized employee experience. Typically, the platform operates as a ‘catch-all data dump’ where employees have to sift through irrelevant information to find what they actually need.?
If you can’t personalize your employees’ content experience based on criteria like job function or location, then you’re essentially forcing your employees to take time out of their day to cut through the noise.?
A personalized employee experience is a key value proposition of a modern intranet compared to email or other platforms. SharePoint does not provide the tools to create a curated information experience and is thus not well-equipped to capture and hold the user’s attention.?
Think about how your employees are currently consuming information. Is everything they see relevant to their office, job, or department? Or is there information being sent out that only affects one part of your organization’s workforce? These are things you need to consider to provide a personalized employee experience.?
#2 – Limited Mobile Experience?
Another limitation of SharePoint is that it offers a poor mobile experience. Many organizations that implement SharePoint typically don’t have a frontline workforce. The ones that do are completely neglecting a large portion of their workforce, contributing to feelings of disengagement and confusion.?
Frictionless intranet access on a mobile device is essential for frontline employees. The mobile experience should include self-service access to key information, real-time messaging, pulse surveys, and targeted news feeds with relevant and actionable information.?
#3 – Poor Multi-Channel Communication
SharePoint treats all employees as if they have the same communication needs, resulting in noise and low engagement.?
A modern intranet should give you the power to reach employees via channels like SMS messages, email, mobile push notifications, and in-office displays, with flexible notification settings. This way, employees can be reached in the manner that suits each individual best.?
With SharePoint, there is no way to individualize these settings, making it difficult or impossible to implement a sophisticated communication strategy. The reality is that each of your employees prefers to consume information in different ways. Your organization needs to make sure that the information is accessible through whichever avenue they need, whether it’s mobile, email, push notifications, etc.?
#4 – Poor Content Governance Capabilities
Another problem with SharePoint is that it lacks sufficient content governance capabilities. Initially built as a Content Management System, SharePoint primarily thrives on being a data dump for all of your organization’s information.?
Unfortunately, with SharePoint, there is very little in the way of content governance capabilities. It is almost guaranteed that your intranet will turn into a dumping ground of outdated content eventually. The only way to avoid this is to manually monitor the content and take action to keep it updated. This is no easy undertaking and requires consistent effort over a long period of time with no lapses.?
#5 – Inadequate Automation Capabilities
It is crucial to be able to engage with your employees the same way that your marketing team engages with your customers. This requires some automation capabilities, like being able to plan, schedule, and automate messaging campaigns that go out to your employees when they hit key milestones in the employee journey.?
SharePoint does not make it easy to do this without custom development. The accrued cost from building out these automations can be quite high, and you’re also going to have to dedicate a large portion of your IT team’s time to maintaining and administering it.?
With a modern provider, you can have this functionality built seamlessly into the communication deployment workflow.?
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3 Reasons To Avoid SharePoint
1) High Initial Costs & Ongoing Expenses
SharePoint requires a high initial investment and has significant ongoing costs (such as tech support, licenses, setup costs, and more); this can be a non-starter for organizations that don’t have the capital or the resources to maintain such a cumbersome solution.?
2) Poor User Experience & Low User Adoption
SharePoint’s complex user interface is often a major obstacle for users. It can be difficult for employees to understand how to navigate to the information they are looking for, making it harder for employees to do their jobs.?
It’s simply not a useful experience for most employees, and as a result, businesses often end up with poor user adoption and low productivity levels.
The investment that they made to get SharePoint up and running doesn’t provide any return and usually leads to more accrued expenses.?
3) Limited Feature Offering?
Employees will have to log in to different apps and experiences to fill in the lack of features that SharePoint offers. This can lead to context switching and diminished productivity. With SharePoint, your company will be unable to maximize the potential of your internal communications and collaboration initiatives and will perpetually struggle with engagement rates and retention.
An Overview of SharePoint and Its Hidden Costs
Customization and Development Expenses - SharePoint requires a significant amount of customization to meet specific organizational requirements. This often involves hiring SharePoint developers which can significantly increase costs.
Maintenance and Updates - SharePoint requires ongoing maintenance and updates, which demands a dedicated IT staff. Not only will your IT department be spending the majority of their time maintaining the platform, but this will effectively take them away from working on more meaningful projects for your organization.
User Training and Adoption - Training sessions for employees to learn how to use SharePoint are costly. With the lack of a viable mobile option, employees that are working on the frontline are typically isolated and unable to access the SharePoint intranet unless they visit a shared computer.
Licensing Costs - SharePoint’s license fees can be significant, especially for larger organizations.
Data Storage Costs & Migration Expenses - As data grows, so does the need for storage. The cost of expanding SharePoint storage capacity can be substantial and can decimate your bandwidth for other tools. In addition, moving data from an old system to SharePoint can be a costly and time-consuming process.
Third-party Tools - Due to the lack of a complete feature offering, organizations that implement SharePoint typically require additional third-party tools to supplement the platform, adding to the cost of your organization’s tech stack.
Compliance and Security Costs - Ensuring SharePoint meets industry-specific compliance and security standards can also add to the overall expenditure. With SharePoint 2013 & other outdated platforms, support is no longer included, meaning your IT department will have to manually configure the platform to keep it in compliance with industry standards.
Thank you for reading this edition of the MangoScoop newsletter!
If you haven't seen it, check out our latest?whitepaper?on the topic:?MangoApps - A Perfect SharePoint Alternative