Leveraging SharePoint efficiently enables businesses to exercise a collaborative ecosystem that increases the productivity of employees, reduces risks, and increases business efficiency. Collaboration is crucial for businesses involved in software development and testing. Many companies in the software testing Dubai industry, including startups rely on SharePoint to develop a productive environment which makes it easier for the QA & testing team to collaborate and get the job done far more effectively than without such an environment. 

But is it really that easy to get started with SharePoint? 

Small businesses find it easy to start using Office 365 or SharePoint Online; that is until it is time to migrate necessary files to a central location so the entire team can access it and collaborate. Things suddenly start seeming more challenging by that time and the business may start wondering how they can turn the puzzle in front of them into the capable collaborative environment it’s supposed to be. 

They can either try to go ahead and implement SharePoint themselves or hire an expert to do it properly for them. 

There are even more reasons why they should hire a SharePoint expert or have a bespoke solution built by a reputed company providing SharePoint development services. Here are a few.

SharePoint is a simple file-sharing system

SharePoint is often seen as a corporate-friendly alternative to DropBox. That is one big misconception however as SharePoint is fundamentally different from DropBox. DropBox was designed as a simple, cloud-based file sharing platform that can be used by various devices including laptops and mobile devices. 

SharePoint is a different kind of tool designed to be an independent ecosystem of various components that solve a number of business needs while facilitating or sometimes improving collaboration at the enterprise level. It isn’t a centralized storage system. 

SharePoint wasn’t meant to be used by small businesses

SharePoint was originally designed for and sold to medium and large-size enterprises. Back in those days, using SharePoint demanded a robust, well-implemented infrastructure. But in 2011, Microsoft decided to offer SharePoint as part of their Office 365 bundle making it much more affordable. 

Bigger enterprises have the right in-house talent to handle everything SharePoint within the organization. There is some degree of configuration and standardization involved before SharePoint becomes usable for the employees. Smaller firms won’t be able to achieve this easily like they can with an out-of-the-box solution.

SharePoint requires planning and a long-term strategy

To effectively use SharePoint and reap the benefits it promised, the organization should do some serious thinking to devise a great long-term strategy. They will have to consider aspects like information architecture, site navigation, permissions and security setups, configurations, governance policies etc. Without an appropriate strategy in place, SharePoint would simply be a file-sharing system and nothing more. 

Conclusion

For a business to get ROI from SharePoint, they should start things on the right foot rather than attempting to make it work on their own without a good strategy. An Application Management Services Company with expertise in SharePoint can help devise a good utilization strategy for SharePoint. A SharePoint development company can help craft a SharePoint solution that meets the business’ needs and fits their requirements perfectly. To conclude, small businesses should not attempt to use SharePoint without back up from an expert.