Do we need to introduce SharePoint for you? We are all aware of how SharePoint has carved a niche for itself since its inception by assisting organizations and enterprises in collaborating among teams and storing, sharing, and editing data. It is a highly secure platform with enormous potential for streamlining and simplifying a wide range of tasks and business operations.
Apart from that, SharePoint reduces manual errors by automating a variety of tasks. With superior permission control, you can control access to data amazingly. Furthermore, teams can access data from their mobile phones, tablets, or laptops from anywhere and at any time. It is a modern platform that simplifies things or businesses. It is a must have platform for anyone who wants to run their operations efficiently and effortlessly.
In this post we will discuss SharePoint consultants, what they do, why organizations need them, and many other details.
What is a SharePoint Consultant?
You can say that a SharePoint consultant is your helping hand that manages SharePoint for you. You have many expectations from the SharePoint platform, and SharePoint consultants help you fulfill these expectations. They are the experts who have years of experience and expertise in handling SharePoint and can help you get all things done. When you have a SharePoint consultant at your side, you will get the most out of SharePoint.
These SharePoint consultants are well-versed with the latest version of SharePoint and will leverage their expertise to offer real-time solutions to your business concerns and issues. They will help improve the efficiency and productivity of the organization by showing you how to use the platform to get the maximum value out of it.
SharePoint Consulting Services
Let us now review some of the SharePoint consulting services. So what are some of the services a SharePoint consultant offers?
- SharePoint consultants help you in the architecture, development, deployment, maintenance, and design of different SharePoint technologies
- They also help you in improving various business processes and operations
- SharePoint consultants play a key role in migration from an old version of SharePoint to a new one
- They can help you in SharePoint documentation, planning, and processes
- SharePoint consultants can also help in automating and accomplishing different tasks and business requirements
- They assist in the customization of SharePoint as per your business requirements
- A SharePoint Consultant can assist in developing communication collaterals with the help of HTML and XML
Undoubtedly, small and medium-sized companies hire SharePoint consulting services to help manage their SharePoint platforms to reap all the benefits it offers them.
About 75% of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft for their business operations, which is why SharePoint consultants are in high demand. Apart from collaboration, communication, and data storage capabilities, it also allows users to build websites.
To get the most out of the SharePoint platform, you need to customize it. That is where SharePoint consulting services come into the picture.
Why do you need SharePoint Consulting Services?
You might ask why I need to hire a Microsoft SharePoint consultant. Well, there are many benefits you can get by hiring a consultant. A few of them are explained in detail below.
They help in defining your SharePoint vision
You need to have clear goals and objectives in mind when you decide to use SharePoint. What are your pain points? What processes do you want to improve? What type of collaboration do you wish to achieve within your organization? You need to answer many such questions to use the SharePoint platform to its full potential.
That is where a Microsoft SharePoint consultant can help you. These professionals are experts at understanding your business needs and requirements. They will ensure the initial design and planning of the SharePoint platform as per your requirements. Microsoft SharePoint consultants will cover almost all the important things to ensure that you get the maximum benefits from SharePoint. They will decide whether you need the basic features of SharePoint or you need to customize the platform to fulfill your needs.
Hiring a Consultant will help with the installation and configuration of extended functionalities
Though SharePoint has some amazing standard features, sometimes, you need more. Complex business processes and challenges might need some third-party tools and technologies that you need to integrate with your SharePoint platform.
Your SharePoint consultant will help you in that case by integrating third party tools and software to add more functionalities and features to SharePoint. There are many such feature-rich third party tools that you can integrate with SharePoint. Such integrations will help improve efficiency and productivity in the organization while serving your business goals.
SharePoint Consulting will ensure superior user adoption
Though SharePoint offers many great features and functionalities, it might intimidate users as it is a vast platform with so much on the plate. When you have not used such platforms in the past, using SharePoint might be a challenge for you and your employees.
That is where SharePoint consultants rescue you. You need someone well-versed with the platform and can help you reap all the benefits it has to offer to you.
Apart from smooth implementation, these consultants also can train employees, perform basic troubleshooting, and take care of the operations in the initial stage.
It is a great thing when you have someone at your side who can help you when you are facing some issues or troubles. Your employees will feel more comfortable and confident while using SharePoint.
Microsoft SharePoint Consultants can help design custom workflows
The main reason you choose SharePoint for your organization is to improve efficiency and productivity. What if you cannot achieve these two important parameters?
You can streamline tasks and processes by creating workflows that allow your teams to collaborate and communicate efficiently and effortlessly. With such special, streamlined workflows, you will see noticeable improvements in various tasks and operations. By offering custom workflows, SharePoint consultants can help improve processes and ensure superior efficiency and productivity.
Improved ROI
When you are spending a lot on SharePoint, you also expect good ROI, right? How about choosing someone who can guarantee you good ROI? By hiring a Microsoft SharePoint consultant, you will end up saving a lot of time and money while having a tailor-made SharePoint platform for you with enhanced efficiency and productivity.
For example, you can get the most out of your SharePoint platform by integrating it with your existing CRM software. This is where a SharePoint expert comes into the picture. He will come up with innovative ideas to reduce deployment costs and help reap all the benefits SharePoint offers to your organization.
Reduced Training Time
You cannot ask your employees to abandon their important tasks to attend training. It is not a feasible thing to do. On the other hand, you need them to be fluent when working in SharePoint. Spending too much on training might jeopardize your budget.
When you hire a SharePoint consultant, you will have an expert who can handle the training part excellently. SharePoint consultants have their ways of teaching and will ensure that everyone learns SharePoint in just no time. Their hands-on experience and guidance will make things easy for you. Your employees will be able to grasp all important aspects of SharePoint quickly and brilliantly.
What to Look for in a SharePoint Consultant?
If you search on the internet, you will come across many SharePoint consulting companies self-claiming themselves as the best ones in the market.
However, you should not choose one randomly. It might cost you a lot. You need to ensure that you choose the right SharePoint consultancy with adequate experience and expertise in the domain and a proven track record.
Here is a list of things you need to consider before you end up choosing a SharePoint consulting firm.
Hire a company that is familiar with soft SharePoint features
Although anyone can configure SharePoint for you as per your business needs and requirements, you need someone who has an in-depth understanding of delicate SharePoint features such as SharePoint governance and SharePoint user adoption.
Some SharePoint consulting firms are great with technology and implementation but might not serve the organization with proper user adoption. In such cases, you will end up wasting your time and money. Have someone on board who is well-versed with soft skills to utilize all the capabilities of SharePoint.
Hiring curious people is an added advantage
When you hire SharePoint consulting services, find someone who takes time and effort to understand your business requirements and processes. You need to hire someone who will be curious about your business processes and develop innovative ideas and solutions to make them more simple, efficient, and productive.
As they are good with SharePoint, they will develop deeper insights about your processes and help streamline them to improve efficiency.
Learn about their implementation methodology
SharePoint implementation is not everyone’s cup of tea. It is a challenging task and requires more time. Before you end up finalizing a SharePoint consultancy, ask them about their SharePoint implementation methodology. Some companies use agile methodology, and some go for Waterfall. Ensure that the company you hire agrees to implement SharePoint in multiple phases.
Make sure that they listen to your inputs
The “We know everything” attitude is not something that you should appreciate. While choosing SharePoint companies, look for someone open to your suggestions and inputs. Ensure that the company comes up with different ideas and solutions to improve productivity and efficiency.
Go for a consulting firm rather than an individual
You cannot expect someone to be great at each area of SharePoint as it is a broad application, and it is quite impossible to master everything. This is the reason you should hire a SharePoint consultancy rather than hiring a freelancer.
The main issue with hiring a freelancer is that some are good at branding, and some are good at implementation or architecture. When you hire a SharePoint consulting firm, you will get plenty of professionals who are well-versed in the different features of SharePoint.
Conclusion
SharePoint consultants can help your organization in many ways. They can improve your processes, operations, team collaborations and enhance productivity. All you need to do is hire a Microsoft SharePoint consultant service provider with years of experience and expertise.
KWizCom has partnered with some of the world’s leading SharePoint Consulting companies. If you ever require SharePoint consultancy, make sure to contact our team so that we can put you in touch with some of the best SharePoint consulting companies in your area.
