At SMBNation Fall 2011, I presented a session on Sharepoint. The premise of the whole session is that there’s money to be made in Sharepoint. Sharepoint is one of Microsoft’s fastest growing products and a source of great opportunity for IT Professionals. So if everyone else is making money from Sharepoint why aren’t you? If other businesses are using Sharepoint, why aren’t your customers? Do you think that Sharepoint is a website? If you aren’t making money from Sharepoint, your clients aren’t interested in it and you think it’s a website then my presentation was for you. In this blog series I will recreate that session.

“People have wanted Office in the cloud. Office 2010 is now in the cloud. People have wanted the ability to have online communications, OCS, and Exchange online in the cloud, Live Meeting in the cloud. SharePoint Online, the fastest-growing product in the history of Microsoft to $1 billion. SharePoint will be the fastest-growing product to $2 billion in the history of Microsoft this next year and in the next 18 months.” – Kevin Turner COO, Microsoft at WPC 2010

So why should your clients use Sharepoint?

• Available from anywhere on any device
• Yes, that’s right. Sharepoint is a mobile app
• Recycle Bins
• Users and Administrators get recycling bins. Try that with any other network share
• Workflows
• You can automate paperwork processes and make it less painful for everyone
• Version History
• Sort of like “previous versions” in Windows only better because you can preserve every change in real time.
• Check-Out
• Prevent two people from editing a document at the same time
• Form Standardization
• Where is the latest expense form? Did everyone get a copy? Eliminate that hassle.

What objections do your customers have to using Sharepoint?

• My customers like Files and Folders
• They are used to Files and Folders but they don’t really like them
• We tried it, no one used it
• Did you make them go to the website? Then you lost them there.
• They already have access to everything they need
• If they can find it and if they are in the office to gain access to it. With ever increasing mobility they need access to everything from any device they have at hand.
• They won’t go to the website
• Good, they don’t need to
• My files are stored in a SQL database?
• This is your fear not your customers. You need to know very little about SQL to be a Sharepoint admin.
• It’s too difficult to use
• I will show you how to make it simple
• My clients are too small
• No they aren’t. Even two people will find value in Sharepoint.

Repeat after me. Sharepoint is not just a website

In the rest of this series I will demonstrate how to access the data in Sharepoint without ever visiting the website.

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We’re Third Tier. We provide advanced Third Tier support for IT Professionals.
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