For over 17 years, Microsoft SharePoint has been an industry leader in collaboration and document management. As a highly customizable platform, businesses across a multitude of industries are using it to empower employees with easier access to corporate information while keeping sensitive data secured.
SharePoint comes in multiple versions designed to suit the needs of large enterprises and small businesses. For small businesses, it comes as part of the Office 365 Business Premium and Business Essentials packages, while larger organizations can choose from any of the Enterprise packages or from the SharePoint Online plans with prices starting from $5 per month per user.
#1. Seamless Collaboration
At its core, SharePoint is a document management system (DMS) designed to help companies keep their data accessible through a centralized solution. However, this degree of convenience also allows users to share their files from anywhere thanks to complete integration with Microsoft OneDrive.
As a core component of the Office 365 line of products and services, SharePoint lets employees easily find business documents and co-author files to which they have the necessary access rights. All that’s needed on the part of the user is almost any internet-connected device, such as a smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
#2. Centralized Information
Simplified and centralized access to corporate information makes SharePoint a one-stop shop for sharing everything from news updates to the latest project statuses. It’s built to keep employees informed no matter where they are, by providing centralized access to all the everyday apps and data they use for work.
Thanks to its powerful search function, real-time co-authoring and built-in analytics, SharePoint can also serve as a corporate knowledge base. Users can discover, edit, and recommend content, locate other users at the click of a button, and keep in touch through Yammer, a social networking tool designed for business intranets.
#3. Excellent Interoperability
As an industry leader and an integral part of the Office 365 ecosystem, SharePoint provides outstanding interoperability. Rather than being a one-size-fits-all solution, it may be tailored to meet the specific demands of your business while still providing an instantly familiar and consistent user experience.
Although SharePoint is ideally suited to businesses that use Microsoft products as a baseline for their technology infrastructures, its open and scalable APIs ensure it works well with other industry-leading solutions, such as Salesforce and SAP. There are also apps available for iOS and Android.
#4. Better Security
Many business leaders fear migrating to the cloud or implementing any system with a perceived single point of failure. However, SharePoint does a great job of keeping your corporate data safe with powerful and highly configurable access controls, full end-to-end encryption, integrated data loss prevention, and full industry compliance.
SharePoint is all about enabling collaboration and easy access to information while preventing employees from unwittingly (or intentionally) divulging sensitive data. This helps meet regulatory requirements too, and administrators can easily enforce their security settings and auditing policies from a centralized dashboard.
#5. Full Cloud-Enablement
SharePoint comes in two types: on-premises and online. While larger businesses often prefer to have their own in-house data centers complete with a private intranet, smaller organizations will likely be better off using SharePoint Online. Either way, the system works in much the same way from an end-user perspective.
With a fully cloud-enabled SharePoint infrastructure, everything is kept automatically updated by Microsoft at no additional cost to the client. Furthermore, there’s no need to spend on running your own servers or other high-end systems, since the entire network will be cared for by your service provider.
Sabio Information Technologies helps businesses in Miami, West Palm Beach, and Fort Lauderdale digitally transform their mission-critical processes with hosted Office 365 and SharePoint solutions. Contact us today if you’re ready to take the stress out of IT.