Where are the SharePoint Users?

Your company implemented a state of the art SharePoint environment or you are using the Office 365 SharePoint solution. You set-up the sites, libraries, metadata, views, security, made it look nice and pretty, provided training to your users and SCA's. Showed them how much better it is at storing documents, communicating, accessing stuff, single point of access, blah blah blah.....

4 to 6 months later...

The number of users or the level of usage is not where you have expected it to be after investing so much time and $$$ into the environment.

WHERE ARE THE USERS?

Welcome to the shiny toy effect! Your users loved the new toy... aka SharePoint. They saw lots of potential in it. They salivated over the promised ease of the solution and consolidated information structure. They rushed to enter all of their information in and move documents from network drives to the newly minted libraries with its large selection of metadata choices and views.

And then the reality set in

What else can I do with SharePoint?

Who is going to maintain the governance that we all agreed to for each site (permissions, views, metadata, purpose, business use areas, access groups, new libraries/lists/sites, look and feel, navigation, etc)?

Can some or additional business processes be applied in SharePoint (can we use this tool for something we are doing in business)?

How are other companies using these tools?

Who do we call when we need help (IT support desk is not much help since they know how to fix specific items like SharePoint environment, but not answer business questions)?

If I have a change in my process, how do I change it (forms, workflows, pages, dashboard, views, etc.)?

Who will train new people that keep rotating in and out of our department?

This tool is no longer as SHINY and as FUN as it seemed 4 to 6 Months ago!!!!

What is the solution for the shiny toy effect?

Simple: On Going Support and On Going Training!

Not So Simple: Support needs to be business specific and not IT specific while Training has to be business driven of how you can use this tool so it keeps its shine and not how to fix this tool when it breaks, again business driven and not IT lingo. Both of these items need to be thought of in terms of PRO-ACTIVE vs RE-ACTIVE.

Support (like a technical business consultant):

• The regular business questions (How to: metadata, views, libraries and 100's of other things)
• Best Practices (Data Storage, Permissions, Views, Displays, BI, Portals, Versioning, Document storage, Video Streaming, Gamification, Search, Portals, etc.)
• Business Process Analysis/Process Automation
• Provide a person who asks the business users questions of why and to what purpose instead of just doing what is asked of them, a SME (Subject Matter Expert)
• Knowledge Management Groups or COE's (Center of Excellence)
• Either provide and enforce site level governance or provide support for stated governance

Training (the inside scoop from across the industries):

• On-going weekly or bi-weekly SharePoint user training classes that last 30 to 60 minutes each
• Best Practices of how to implement specific processes
• How and what other companies are doing with SharePoint
• Specific examples of SharePoint usage from across departments (HR, Logistics, Analysis, Accounting, Support, Marketing, etc.)
• Which and how are specific processes automated with SharePoint
• Different available tools and add-on's
• Business KM training
• Some preliminary technical training
• And always on-going, never stop the training (People retain about 15% from a 1 day class of training...and less from a multi-day training, but they will retain 80% from a 1 hour class on 1 or 2 specific topics)

That is what Pro-Active does, it allows companies to keep the momentum of SharePoint by increasing the power and knowledge of the users for the tool while giving them the support to continuously move forward with the right hand holding and not just a fix when they fall.

This is what Zont Services provides to its clients!