Since its introduction, SharePoint and now Office 365 more broadly have become an industry standard platform delivering collaboration capabilities for companies and enabling communication across teams and storing, sharing, and updating documents and content.

It is a highly secure platform with huge potential for optimizing and simplifying a wide range of company functions, processes, collaboration and ongoing work efforts.

SharePoint, Power Automate and other Office 365 tools reduce manual efforts and associated errors by enabling streamlining and automation of a range of operations.

If you’ve decided it’s time to move to or upgrade SharePoint or improve your current setup, you’ll want expert assistance to smooth the migration and transition. But how can you pick the best SharePoint services firm to assist you in achieving your objectives?

This article will cover SharePoint service providers, what they do, why organizations need them, and a variety of aspects.

What’s Included in SharePoint Services:

Let us now examine several SharePoint services:

• SharePoint consultants assist you with the design, architecture, development, deployment, and maintenance of various SharePoint and Office 365 technologies.
• SharePoint experts are essential in migrating from an outdated version of SharePoint to the Office 365 cloud or from a file share or legacy content management system to SharePoint.
• They help you configure and customize SharePoint to meet your specific company needs.
• A SharePoint Consultant can help you create workflows, and configure metadata, search, structure an intranet and refine and enhance document management and collaboration.
• They may assist with SharePoint training, documentation and planning.
• They also assist in the enhancement of numerous corporate processes and activities.
• SharePoint experts can also assist with automating and completing various activities and business requirements.

Points to Consider While Selecting a SharePoint Services Company:

Here are some characteristics to consider while selecting a SharePoint services company:

1. Deep Technical Expertise:

Although configuring and making Office 365 and SharePoint fully functioning should be a priority, organizations must understand that it is just another component of overall enterprise policy, including security and compliance, and needs to be manageable from the start.

Many people with varying skill levels will be users, so hiring a consultant knowledgeable with “soft” skills like SharePoint governance and user acceptance is critical.

Even if a consultant is extremely knowledgeable about the technology, the user implementation may fail if they cannot assist or advise on leadership and user adoption or fail to configure the Office 365 tenant settings in alignment with corporate policies.

2. Knowledge about Data in your Organization:

SharePoint is a fantastic Enterprise Content Management Solution, but only when configured properly.

Your documents may organically evolve in disparate and disorganized ways and become difficult to navigate, with decreasing performance and growing user dissatisfaction, if you do not first think through the organizational hierarchy and map it to overall Office 365 structures, and leverage the built-in enterprise metadata management and search capabilities.

If the SharePoint consultant does not know how to create a data hierarchy, you may not have found the ideal fit.

True experts will even go so far as to restructure and remap, and classify your data and file/folder structures before migration to remove unnecessary data from the system during migration or to migrate to a refined pre-agreed structure.

The migration partner assists you in ensuring that your migration content is safe and properly organized for the destination Office 365 environment, all planned in advance, with throughput benchmarked and early test migrations surfacing the user experience early in the process to allow for refined timelines and adjusted user experience.

3. Training Services:

Implementing SharePoint is only half the battle. Training is something that is needed on an ongoing basis.

When looking for a SharePoint services firm, inquire about professional training for during and after the project itself ends.

It is best to retain some level of internal proficiency in basic SharePoint administration and have a second-tier partner available for support on an ongoing basis.

To ensure this, core training should always be included in the project hand-off.

When you select a SharePoint services firm, you will have an expert on your team who can provide key training on demand.

SharePoint experts have unique training methods from experience across many clients to ensure that selected team members learn SharePoint quickly.

Their practical experience and guidance will simplify the transition and provide the fastest level of support for common requests and tasks.

Office 365 is designed about usability, and that can be leveraged to provide some level of proficiency for in-house SharePoint support.

4. Post-migration Support:

Any reputable migration partner will offer you post-migration assistance for the long term.

Such a partner with extensive migration experience will ensure that documentation is provided to assist in your post-migration support services.

By offering accompanying documentation, your users can determine how to utilize the new features and manage them effectively. The ideal SharePoint migration partner will also offer you access to support services that can fix practically any issue encountered.

Ideally, such a support services center can analyze and handle any issues raised that your organization may have, ranging from support, enhancements, security or licensing.

Other post-migration support issues may include synchronization, navigation, search optimization, performance and basic collaboration functionality. Best to line this up in advance for responsive support and user satisfaction.

5. Ensure a Service Level Agreement (SLA):

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a type of standardized service contract that formally defines a service.

The service provider and the user agree on specific service features such as scope, quality, responsiveness and obligations. The contracted delivery time is a common aspect of an SLA (of the service or performance).

Outsourcing SharePoint assistance aims to ensure that any issues are fixed immediately or within the timeframe specified in the SLA.

As a result, it is crucial that your SharePoint services partner agrees to a guaranteed service-level contract that is suited to your business needs.

An SLA will also assist you in measuring your partner’s performance against key performance indicators and ensuring that the service they provide is consistently high.

6. End-to-End Customization Services:

Ideally, SharePoint services consultants recommend and try to leverage the “out-of-the-box” (built-in) capabilities of SharePoint to satisfy the specific demands of your business.

This is generally faster and more reliable, with lower maintenance and lower effort.  However, sometimes, going with out-of-the-box functionality requires some compromise and trade-offs against full-blown customization.

Your SharePoint consultant is your partner for assisting in making such trade-off decisions.

You’ll be disappointed if you want customization, and the SharePoint Services architect can only execute basic configuration, so selecting a knowledgeable service provider with extensive experience and demonstrated success is key.

On the other hand, if a SharePoint consultant only tries to promote customization when you merely need something basic, that can lead to a lengthy, expensive and higher maintenance solution.

7. Cost-Effective Solution:

The cost to the company is one of the most important elements that most organizations consider when looking for a SharePoint services provider or migration partner.

Although this is vital because you must be able to afford their services, going with the cheapest partner is rarely the greatest option.

When selecting a partner, consider how much value their services will provide your firm in the long run, and ensure they have the depth to provide the capabilities and breadth to deliver them.

If SharePoint services would help you become more competitive and technically advanced in your operations, the cost is only one of the factors to consider.

It is frequently a good idea to consider the worth of the service in terms of the productivity you will enjoy once the solution is configured.

Conclusion:

These suggestions help you choose a SharePoint services company to support your deployment.

Due diligence for any technology services and solution is an important step in the journey, and the selection process is generally far smoother if you can work with a partner who not only has the experience to deploy SharePoint in a way that meets your business requirements but who is also open and transparent with its processes, delivery, and team.

Globally, businesses are adopting agile methods for creating and implementing their business and IT strategies, and they are also searching for chances and strategies to improve their data management capabilities. Solutions that offer benefits in terms of usability, dependability, adaptability, portability, speed, efficiency, context, and safety are required for proper data management.

Talking about effective & robust data management, SharePoint is the software that comes to mind. SharePoint is widely used for document storage, keeping files, guidelines, procedures, and other types of documents there. Some people think of SharePoint as an “internal website,” content management software, and a way to communicate within the corporation. It is also beneficial in conducting business intelligence, performing advanced searches, collaborating on material, and much more.

More than 75% of Fortune 500 organizations, notably Viacom and Windex, use Microsoft SharePoint due to its many advantages.

What is SharePoint?

SharePoint is an internet-based collaborative software developed by Microsoft in 2001. In general, this software is used by users for managing their documents and even as an online storage capacity.

It also helps you & your team to collaborate with other individuals, even from different sectors of your firm, to work as a team.

It enables corporations to create an Intranet that is widely used for storing, managing, and sharing business-related information for a specific project. In addition, it also gives the business the authority regarding who can access the information and helps self-regulate the workflow.

What is the Use case of SharePoint?

The world is now moving towards a completely digitalized era where data management is becoming more important than ever. Businesses and organizations, too, have started to opt for modernized technology so that they can have complete control of everything in their hands and their employees can persistently satisfy customers’ needs.

Moreover, like every other tool and software, SharePoint has its pros and cons. The only difference is, in this case, the pros overcome the cons. Nevertheless, one of the biggest reasons and highlights of Microsoft SharePoint is that it is completely compatible with all the platforms, such as iOS, Windows, macOS, Android, etc. Given below is a list of the usefulness of SharePoint.

• It is widely used for uploading and storing documents in the SharePoint Docs Management Library. All types of files, docs, and information can be saved in that library, and the authority of ‘who can access it’ lies with you, ensuring your data’s privacy and security.
• People given access to a specific document can access it remotely at any time, enabling multiple individuals to work on a single document as a team.
• It also has this amazing feature where you can keep the old document version while making changes to it. In clear words, one can have both the older and the edited version of a document.
• It consists of a search box, which makes the process of navigation very easy and less time-consuming. You can enter the keyword in the search box, and by pressing enter, it’ll directly lead you to the file you’re looking for.

As it is a Microsoft product, it works appropriately with most of its software. It means it’ll easily coordinate with other tools used by you, and the process of documents and file management will become less exhausting for you.

The Top Benefits of Using SharePoint: Have a look!

1. Customization:

One of the key features of SharePoint is its Customization. You can completely customize it according to your requirement, or you can use the default settings too, whichever suits you and the business best.  We start with basic configuration, but it can be customized extensively, as required.

It provides you with the ability to create custom elements and web parts seamlessly. In addition, you have the capability to change the look, feel and overall interface, which helps showcase your brand appropriately. SharePoint also allows you to add multiple sites, libraries, web parts, pages, links, tasks, lists, additional applications, and more, to make the platform your very own.

2. Better Communication:

Communication is pivotal if you and your team wish to manage your business successfully or complete your tasks without distraction.

Without proper communication or because of miscommunication, the quality of your team’s work might deteriorate. With the help of SharePoint, efficient and accurate information can be provided to a group of people at one time, which helps in saving time and effort and reducing email and other clutter. Moreover, this information is completely secured, as the authority to edit or upload the information lies with the admin or can be delegated to trusted team members.

3. Collaboration:

This core capability of SharePoint gives you and your business the ability to work seamlessly with other departments and branches to work on a particular project with easy data sharing, management and communication.  Going a step further, external collaboration with other entities is possible, if desired.

Due to these characteristics, it becomes easy for an individual/corporation to work with other workers and businesses on a project which helps improve the quality, save the team time & effort, and get better ideas & desired results.

4. Central Management:

Central and simplified management are also one of the greatest characteristics of Microsoft SharePoint. The administrator has quick access to all the features and settings, such as operational settings, security control, updates and a wide range of fine-grained central policies to control features and capabilities and restrictions in the SharePoint environment.

All these settings and controls are updated and monitored by a software/application called ‘SharePoint Admin Center in Office 365. It works as an alternative to SharePoint Central Admin available in SharePoint on-premise environments, which helps in administration at a central level and ensures a smooth, consistent and compliant experience.

5. Improved Security:

Privacy and security are also significant reasons why you should opt for SharePoint.

The reliability of your data is directly proportional to the optimization and policies around sharing, which means more optimization of share ability and access to information will result in more dependable data. You can control the settings easily regarding share ability, editing, uploading, viewing and other security restrictions., in SharePoint.

6. Administration of Content:

At Reality Tech, we leverage Content Types to manage content, and configure the Content Types centrally. When first designing Content Types we configure policies and metadata.  These can be updated before or after content is created and associated with the Content Types.  This covers a wide range of all associated metadata fields as well as the overall Information Policy defining the lifecycle of all associated documents.

Content can be set to be published and become available based on metadata defined scheduling.  This means you can set a specific day, date, time, and place where you want to make the content visible.

You can share both commercial and official docs, which you can publish & share with anyone through this platform, whether they work in the organization or (if allowed by policies) external to the organization.

7. Seamless Upgrades:

Until a few years ago, most of the users felt anxious using SharePoint, especially when it came to on-premise. Users found it exhausting and complicated to work with because it was slow and outdated visually with a dated user experience. Upgrades could be tedious as well, with a labor-intensive upgrade or migration process.

Some of them do not prefer SharePoint to the date. Nevertheless, times changed. In the past few years, SharePoint has updated tremendously, it has become user-friendly, responsive, adapted to all form factors, with real-time dynamic upgrades; whether in Office 365, or the latest on-premises version with continual updates.

Users do not face issues of ‘slow-loading’ and do not feel that the platform is clunky given the new Modern UI interface. In addition, it easily gets along with other Microsoft software, providing you with a better overall experience.

8. Utmost Intranet Technology:

It’s been 19 years since SharePoint launched in the global market for users. And it is the preferred solution tool for collaborative systems.

SharePoint is used for services such as Intranet, Online communication, collaboration, workflow and document management., by approximately 80% of the leading firms. And it was only possible because the developer, Microsoft, altered the way of taking feedback from customers and extending SharePoint to be at the heart of the Office 365 enterprise product offering.

But as time changed, the company started taking customer feedback seriously, which made SharePoint the leading intranet technology.

9. Flexible Functionality:

According to the viewpoint and reviews of users, flexibility is one of the biggest advantages of SharePoint, it can function as an internal website of a company (an intranet), which is used to share data, information, contacts, schedule tasks, security but also be a Document Management / Enterprise Content Management System, and also function for collaboration and co-authoring.

The flexibility extends to the security.  The admin can authorize and assign different permissions, considering the level and status of the user. Moreover, this collaborative platform is also useful for sharing docs, managing files and data, business information, social networking, and nearly all the tasks necessary to conduct business.

10. Better Productivity:

As of now, we are aware of the fact that SharePoint is a part of the Microsoft family, which means it is as efficient as other applications and software of Microsoft, such as MS Word, Excel, MS Teams, etc.  Going Microsoft means Office 365 which brings SharePoint along for the ride.

And due to this, SharePoint gets adopted, as it is easily integrated with the existing software, apps, websites, and workflow and comes integrated with all the Microsoft applications and services. It integrates of several features such as Business intelligence, SharePoint analytics, Power Automate workflows, and so on.

These features aid companies in utilizing the overall information during the process of self-management of the business. Combined use of these features saves a lot of time and increases productivity.

Conclusion:

To wrap it up, SharePoint allows you to collaborate and share files through any device. And due to ease of access, easy collaboration, and all the benefits mentioned above, it is currently the preferred collaborative platform.

Unfortunately, there remains a lack of deep knowledge and insight within smaller IT departments on the best practices to configure SharePoint optimally and enable features for users, and provide training and customization.  Sometimes it is lack of time to support its myriad features, or evolving capabilities or just adequate knowledge and experience in SharePoint.

It is a necessity in this digital era, as threats and risks have increased due to security challenges to properly set up sophisticated collaborative and enterprise systems optimally. It is advisable to learn and get along with Microsoft SharePoint if you wish to enable business success.

And if you are looking for a leading Microsoft SharePoint services provider, then we can help you out! Reality Tech is your one-stop destination for a variety of SharePoint services.

A robust and well thought through taxonomy is mandatory when you’re trying to search within an ECM’s (Enterprise Content Management) vast content, as it plays a pivotal role in the maintenance of documents. Creating and maintaining a successful information management program without taxonomy is near impossible.

SharePoint Taxonomy provides you with more features and convenience, such as a robust hierarchy, leading to improved decision-making, search satisfaction, rapid business processes, and can be extended to support additional languages and extended to index pages and navigation. In addition your taxonomy allows you to extend your SharePoint environment as your content increases.

An effective taxonomy promotes a more flexible, sizable, and extensible framework for the implementation of your SharePoint Information Architecture. An inadequate taxonomy might have dire consequences.

It is also completely compatible with all browsers, all tablets and all form factor devices, and all document management applications.

How to Create SharePoint Taxonomy?

If you wish to create a successful SharePoint Taxonomy, you must first think through, create and test your list of terms, at an enterprise level. Additional capabilities to consider include location based tagging, view and search refinements. You may then want to establish governance processes around metadata tag management. Lastly, improvements are expected from the user, in particular on search refinements. And lastly, it is necessary to plan for organic growth to make appropriate choices for ongoing changes.

Now you might wonder, “what does Taxonomy exactly mean, and why is it crucial for a business?” Well, we’ve got you covered. Keep reading to learn more…

What is a Taxonomy?

A Taxonomy is a combination of Information Architecture, Library Science and Best Practices, which is useful for enterprise data classification. It is a method of classification and organization of things into different groups, supporting multiple levels.

In addition to previously-mentioned uses, it is also vastly used for storing knowledge and information. It is stored in the form of Documents, MP4, articles, tutorials, etc., so that, later, it can be accessed by the users seamlessly and intuitively.

Initially, the term and the process of ‘Taxonomy’ was only used for categorizing organisms or specific species. In Office 365 SharePoint, Taxonomies are implemented within the Managed Metadata Service.

Nevertheless, people started referring to the categorization of information or concepts. Used in SharePoint, taxonomy is a hierarchical classification of terms that are applied to the content when being categorized. Optional automated tagging can execute categorization in real time as content is added upper updated, to add consistency throughout the platform and helps in the management of content.

Keep reading to know why using Taxonomy is crucial for your business.

7 Benefits of using SharePoint Taxonomy – Check it out!

1. Improved Navigation:

It takes enough time & effort to develop an efficient and organized taxonomy, but it is worth it. An efficient SharePoint taxonomy allows users to gather the information they require faster without complicating or alternatively oversimplifying the process.

An established Taxonomy with properly maintained data displays information and concepts in a tidy and easy-to-understand manner, which helps the user to understand it thoroughly, which saves them much time while also improving navigation. Actual navigation in SharePoint can also be tied to a Taxonomy.

It enables the visitors to intuitively understand the method of navigating through documents aligned with their business requirements without wasting unnecessary time and resources. In addition, it improves search relevancy, enhancing the user experience. Further, with use of Metadata Refiners, drill-in on search results is possible.

As there may be a large set of information available for every term in a Taxonomy, the user is challenged to quickly locate the most relevant and reliable data or document quickly, and SharePoint Taxonomy makes it possible.

2. Consistency in Organization:

It is pivotal to create good quality content rather than further wasting time in improving it and messing everything up. A Termset (another word for Taxonomy) allows an enterprise standard way to tag documents consistently and in line with the preferred organizational nomenclature.

SharePoint taxonomy helps you in regaining control and managing your data. Managed MetaData enables the administrator to create a Taxonomy that can be extended to applications and shared across different sites and site collections. Moreover, it consists of a vast variety of capabilities, which enables a user or administrator to enforce a persistent classification to docs. These include multi-select, up to seven levels of hierarchy, languages, and an immutable identifier (known internally as a GUID).

It enables the admin to have complete control of the eligibility and modify the existing taxonomy, which results in a maintained quality of information and security.

When this consistency is maintained throughout the sites, it becomes easy for the user to access and understand concepts. It helps users to find relevant data easily while also building trust.

3. Increased Productivity:

You can more effectively work with your business information when your system for putting documents into SharePoint is streamlined and organized. You can utilize more of SharePoint and make the most of it by using a taxonomy.

It translates into better decision-making, more efficient business operations, for content customers and ends users. Additionally, your taxonomy enables SharePoint to grow along with content as it expands without worrying about where to store new data.

Once you reduce project implementation time and redundancy, consistency will be improved, and improved consistency will directly result in inclined productivity.

4. Self-regulate your Business Operations:

Once you have the metadata structure defined as a well thought through hierarchy, you can have the surfaced in sites, libraries, document tagging, search refiners, and begin to utilize it for business uses. It means creating self-regulated business processes, workflows, managing end users’ productivity, etc.

An efficient SharePoint Taxonomy should be the initial step if you wish to proactively manage of your documents and overall SharePoint environment in a coherent and business-consistent and extensible manner.

Now you might be thinking, “how does this exactly automate any part of document management?”

Well, here’s the answer: it makes the process of tagging the metadata automatic. Location based metadata tagging is something we at Reality Tech recommend and configure. It is one of the most significant features as users do not prefer to tag documents manually with metadata, or sometimes manually tagged documents might be tagged incorrectly. Taxonomy is helpful to guide a system regarding concepts that are crucial for business.

5. Improved Adaptability:

It becomes simpler for the admin to sustain and adapt your metadata centrally when your business demands change, and it consists of managed metadata. When it comes to changing a set of terms, it is more simplified when done with SharePoint Taxonomy, as this can be done centrally and in a controlled fashion, so the updates propagate throughout the SharePoint environment.

In addition to that, when a column of managed MetaData is linked with a set of terms, new and updated terms set are available automatically.

For instance, when you combine several terms into a singular term, the whole linked set of documents is updated by itself, showcasing the combination of new terms.

In case it’s a plural term, then it can represent several synonyms for one specific term; if your website is a multi-lingual one, it is also possible to showcase labels in multiple languages for a particular term.

6. Simplified Replacement of Folders:

We are aware of the fact that Metadata is simply a standard and central way to use tags to navigate documents. The way it works is analogous and works in harmony with the folders created.

Nevertheless, the ability to create more than one Metadata field is the highlight here. It is advisable to use Metadata because of issues like difficulty in storing all the files related to a project in one place, or to use a single dimensional tag or taxonomy for all document needs.

So multi-dimensionality is where we extend the Information Architecture beyond a single hierarchy. Let’s understand How?

Well, here’s how: you must create a column for both the project & the department in SharePoint. Which, furthermore, can be used to classify and categorize files. You might feel like it’s not your cup of tea at first, but it will become as easy as a piece of cake once you get used to it. When necessary, needed files, concepts & information can be located easily using MetaData.

7. Security & Privacy:

SharePoint is a Microsoft service that is central to the Office 365 offering, which means that there will be enterprise-class robust and feature rich capabilities regarding the security of data and privacy.

It plays a pivotal role in restricting unauthorized users from accessing your confidential data. It provides you with the authority to control permissions for applications, websites, docs, etc. SharePoint taxonomy lets you keep a record of what kind of information is being accessed by the End Users.

It provides a perfect combination of amenities and control. You can restrict and control the activities of both the users and the team. And you can also decide what kind of information should be accessed by the user and to whom to give eligibility to update the information.

In addition to regulation of work among employees, it also ensures proper security and privacy of your data, which is uploaded to the server by you.

Conclusion:

To sum it up, all sorts and sizes of industries and sectors can have the advantages of Managed Metadata. Microsoft SharePoint is a top-notch platform that keeps your data and documents organized. Not to mention, doing so indirectly also helps you skyrocket your productivity.

In addition to those above major 7 reasons, it also provides you with additional benefits such as Improved User Experience and Simplified Business Processes, Extensibility, Configurability, Customization, Collaboration of Team Members, and so on. All these added benefits make it even more significant for document management.

Now that you know the significance and advantages you’ll get when you opt for SharePoint Taxonomy, it is advisable to use it for document management and other business purposes if you’re willing to devote some thought and planning for keeping the environment categorized and organized and future-proofed.