5 Ways to Use SharePoint 2013 Out of the Box

Strategic initiatives come in many flavors, and one type is meant to create transformation inside the organization. These types of goals and objectives move the business forward. A strategic initiative is an endeavor intended to achieve three interrelated outcomes:

• A boundary-spanning vision or “strategic intent”

• Realization of important benefits to “strategic” stakeholders

• Transformation of the organization

Unfortunately, it seems like information technology workers get little to no notice when these initiatives are launched. The objectives are in place, and now the business wants results very quickly. When IT is not ready (or in some cases, not willing), or if management is unhappy with the cost structure or the level of service, they will consider bypassing internal resources. When this happens, frequently executive sponsorship or top-level visibility of the initiative is used as the reason to go around IT. Third party services may be considered quicker and cheaper options. SharePoint is one collaboration tool IT departments can use to anticipate and react to major initiative actions.

5 Ways to Use SharePoint 2013 Out of the Box

Sometimes, IT can be in a bind in terms of understanding how to react and how to respond to a new strategic initiative. The business will likely want to pay only for what they need in a temporary and operational way, and will certainly not want to absorb a capital investment.

SharePoint is a widely used platform in many corporations. It’s either already deployed, or it can be quickly deployed using an Infrastructure as a Service model. From this point, the raw capabilities useful to empower strategic initiatives—form and workflow, the ability to set and configure security effectively, business intelligence tools that allow analysis and assessment—are readily available. The technical side of initiatives are made up of these components. Finally, SharePoint is extensible, enabling IT to start from an existing platform and then extend it in order to accomplish and accommodate initiatives that may be gaining speed in an organization. This helps to improve the timeliness and the quality of IT’s response.

1. SharePoint for Strategic Planning

Every single initiative comes with a communication component. SharePoint is a great place for communication planning and for the delivery of communications using standard tools, social tools, and available integrations with common productivity applications like email.

Here are three steps to leverage SharePoint for Strategic Planning and centralize planning efforts.

• Analyze
  Understand how internal communications and planning teams currently undertake strategic planning. It is safe to assume that many of them are using spreadsheets and email, and because of this, there is no central place to view the portfolio of active initiatives across the company, nor review approval matrices.
   
• Configure a List that Captures Planning Inputs
  SharePoint has a standard process to create a list that captures planning inputs. Even for those who are unfamiliar with SharePoint, instructions for creating a custom list [http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/sharepoint-lists-iv-create-a-custom-list-RZ101874360.aspx] are relatively easy to follow. From there, basic customizations to the form using InfoPath will help ensure the correct values are being captured.
   
• Approval Workflow
  Finally, approval workflow can be configured out of the box and help plans move through the lists with the correct amount of oversight, improving the quality and the accountability around the plans.