1. Extend SharePoint to Overcome Key Challenges
Third-party products for administration, content management, mobile, and social address common use-case challenges.

2. Introduction
Third-party SharePoint extensions improve the SharePoint experience for users and administrators. Determine if naked SharePoint is the best strategy.
This Research Is Designed For:
This Research Will Help You:
Organizations of all sizes that have deployed SharePoint and want to make it easier to use or administer.
Organizations that are attempting to extend SharePoint’s function beyond a Collaboration or fileshare application and into a organizational platform.
IT managers who need to understand common SharePoint challenges.
Business managers that want to understand SharePoint and how it can be used to overcome business challenges.
Anticipate the key challenges that administrators often experience with SharePoint.
Define a strategy and plan for extending SharePoint’s function to maximize its business value.
Identify strategies for overcoming key SharePoint challenges using both native functionality and third- party extensions.

3. Anticipate the key SharePoint challenges: sprawl and end-user engagement
The path to SharePoint success often requires third-party intervention.
Scylla and Charybdis
The ancient Greeks had their own version of the expression “between a rock and a hard place.” Scylla and Charybdis were two sea monsters. Odysseus was forced to choose which hazard to face.
SharePoint implementations have their own version of Scylla and Charybdis. Administrators must strike a balance between the shoals of ungovernable SharePoint sprawl and the whirlpool of user avoidance. The flexible and adaptable nature of SharePoint makes this situation particularly acute.
Finding a compromise is never easy.
Consider the problem of the SharePoint held desk ticket. Is it a sign that the implementation is insufficient to meet the needs of the business? Or does it portray user engagement and a willingness to work with the development team?

4. Overcome key SharePoint challenges
Plot a course to SharePoint success that avoids the common challenges.
SharePoint success is an ongoing process. It continues to evolve as the business changes and new opportunities and threats emerge. This adaptability is its great strength, but it presents a key challenge to both users and IT.
Administrators need to create a plan for SharePoint success. Like ancient seafarers they must know where the potential dragons lie and take a direction that avoids them.
The SharePoint dragons:
Info-Tech research indicates that the key challenges include: findability, content management, administration, workflow, mobile, and social. Each must be managed to avoid SharePoint sprawl and to ensure user adoption.
This set primarily addresses the technical problems that emerge during SharePoint implementation, extension, and operation. It should be read in parallel with Info-Tech’s Develop a SharePoint Governance Model.

5. Ask: Am I reading the right material?
Info-Tech has many resources that address SharePoint use cases. Governance, ECM, and Collaboration are addressed in other solution sets.
Develop an Enterprise Content Management Strategy
Evaluate SharePoint for Enterprise Content Management
Develop a SharePoint Governance Strategy
Build an Enterprise Social Collaboration Strategy A
Implement a Collaboration Platform
SharePoint
You are here:
Extend SharePoint to overcome Key Challenges
Collaboration
ECM

6. Navigate a course through SharePoint challenges
SharePoint continues to grow in all enterprises.
Choose to invest or lose control.
Define the challenges through the third-party vendors.
Create a plan to deal with future issues.
Navigate a course through SharePoint challenges
Problem: Content Management
Problem: Workflow
Problem: Administration
Problem: Mobile
Problem: Social

7. SharePoint will become a resource vampire without a plan
Remember Scylla and Charybdis: SharePoint fails to meet expectations yet continues to grow.
Over 65% of them are expanding their use of SharePoint!
Over 50% of Info-Tech respondents reported that SharePoint did not meet their expectations but….
It starts small and then continues to grow.
Info-Tech commonly hears “we started out with a test deployment for ten users and before we knew it we had two hundred.”
The business case to use SharePoint is often out of the box cost, and ease of implementation as a file share.
As with all generalist tools, SharePoint will require additional investment for most enterprises to meet their business goals.
Source: Info-Tech Research Group Q1 2012
N=88
SharePoint is not a product like unleaded gasoline, it is crude oil - a platform from which ‘products’ (i.e. applications) are refined.
Seb Matthews
Director, AdeoServe

8. Invest in SharePoint to control costs and maximize investment
SharePoint can manage documents, but administrators realize that it needs supplementation.
The situation isn’t unique to the Info-Tech Community
AIIM – a trade organization – recently published a report about SharePoint. Its numbers are similar to ours. The majority of users feel that SharePoint simply can’t do everything.
A discussion on the AIIM LinkedIn group yielded similar results:
41 out of 74 people note that “SharePoint is great for specific uses with some customization.”
20 out of 74 people indicate that SharePoint “is not a full Enterprise Content Management system – use something else.”
29 out of 74 people would review their governance policies prior to any kind of SharePoint change.
Is SharePoint alone equipped to cope with all document management?
Source LinkedIn AIIM group
N=331 +
Bottom Line: SharePoint isn’t going to address all of your concerns out of the box. Add commercial components to get the user and administrative experience you need.

9. Prioritize the functions that affect day-to-day operations
Address SharePoint problems from the top down.
SharePoint administrators experience a variety of different challenges depending on use case.
Info-Tech Recommends:
Invest effort in governance. It is indispensible for ongoing SharePoint success. Another important consideration is effectively training users. User behavior is crucial for resolving findability issues.
Certain challenges become manifest at the level of the business unit. Administrators must ensure that all units have access to the content they require – from SharePoint or other enterprise systems – and that the user experience is adequate.
Other problems are IT’s responsibilities. Ultimately, IT decides which features are deployed and must administer both the system and users.
Whole Enterprise
Business unit
IT Domain
Info-Tech provides explicit guidance on resolving these issues in the last sections of this storyboard.
Source: Info-Tech Q survey of 22 potential
SharePoint challenges; N=87

10. Describe your enterprise Define your specific concerns
Use Info-Tech’s Extend SharePoint Prioritization Tool to generate a prioritization list
General guidance on SharePoint problems is interesting. However, it is far more important to develop an understanding of the problems and challenges that you are likely to experience with SharePoint.
Use Info-Tech’s Extend SharePoint Prioritization Tool to identify potential challenges. 2 1
Describe your enterprise
Define your specific concerns
SharePoint challenges are divided by area affected and the system level. 3
Get Results
Green boxes represent the first three areas that should be addressed to mitigate your specific challenges.

11. Refine your SharePoint priority list based on user response
Refine the results from the Extend SharePoint Prioritization Tool with user feedback.
All applications require continual maintenance.
Administrators may end up focusing on addressing technical issues too much. Remember that one of the key SharePoint risks is user engagement. Validate your action plan with user feedback:
Monitor help desk for system issues.
Analyze usage statistics to understand UI issues.
Survey end users on the specific issues seen in the help desk and usage. 1
Start with the SharePoint functions list
Confirm with end users via: 2 3 4
Help desk
tickets
Usage
statistics
See Info-Tech’s Improve IT-End User Relations and Integrate Consumer Applications into IT solution sets for details on improving user experience.
End-User
Satisfaction Surveys

12. Info-Tech Research Group Helps IT Professionals To:
Quickly get up to speed with new technologies
Make the right technology purchasing decisions – fast
Deliver critical IT projects, on time and within budget
Manage business expectations
Justify IT spending and prove the value of IT
Train IT staff and effectively manage an IT department
Sign up for free trial membership to get practical
solutions for your IT challenges
“Info-Tech helps me to be proactive instead of reactive – a cardinal rule in a stable and leading edge IT environment.
- ARCS Commercial Mortgage Co., LP
Toll Free: