Evolving the Role of the Strategic SharePoint Framework

Back in 2003 when I first encountered Microsoft SharePoint (SPS 2003) as a Director of IT, after a decade designing international Novell Directory Services, it was clear to me that no one really knew what SharePoint was and how to make best use of it. Some said it was a document management system, some said it was a content management system for portals, some said it was whatever I wanted it to be as there were so many features available. I wanted someone to tell me what to do with it. Just like a CIO would, I treated it like an application and had it installed as an application by a technology team. Then what? No one knew what to do with it, Microsoft had no business blueprint and the solution integrators were reliant on us telling them what we wanted to do with it – to be honest we had no idea really, although the features were truly revolutionary from what we witnessed. So commenced the long process of learning how to approach the subject of SharePoint, and indeed enterprise collaborative systems in general.

From the beginning it was apparent that with an enterprise platform that was as diverse and powerful as Microsoft SharePoint™ that it was not the responsibility of Microsoft to develop a business blueprint as the platform could do many things in a thousand different ways. It was for the product to evolve across the global corporate landscape and find its niche. In fact it would later transpire that though many treated SharePoint as a development platform, it was indeed being used for exactly the same solutions the world over, time and time again, due to what it was most capable of delivering aligned with what organisations shared as common priorities, goals and ambitions. What would happen if all these common solutions were brought together in a single, uniform and cohesive plan I wondered and if so was there a logical sequence to deliver these aspirational services whilst avoiding all-too-common pitfalls?

It was similarly clear back then that SharePoint was always pitched by technology staff using technology language to technology audiences. Where were all the business users and business engagement? Where was the use of comprehensible business language? Where was the interpretation of technical features as plausible business services? Where were the business-focused presentations? It was down to me as a business-focused director to fulfil that role myself to my own business stakeholders and do the translating. Evidently then no one had thought that there was a requirement for a business driven engagement role, a role for someone to bridge the gap between the business and technology. This is the origin of where the role of the SharePoint business strategist started to evolve in my mind.

By 2005 I had delivered SharePoint in a structured format to 22,000 users and by late 2006 had moved as a Microsoft early adopter (RDP & TAP) to the next version of SharePoint (MOSS 2007) with Microsoft case studies and interviews to match. By now it was clear that without a logical business framework or roadmap to work against SharePoint could be too confusing to any client. I was already advising numerous major organisations by then who wanted to know “how I had got it right’ and I gave them the benefit of my advice in my straight-speaking (I was even presenting for Microsoft on the subject) but there was still no diagrammatic method on the market.

By early 2007 I had taken my early thoughts about common services and designed a uniquely structured modular framework that I named Sequenced and Logical Enterprise Methodology (Salem™). Salem relies on a specific framework diagram, with a unique business service module structure, using original logic, service release inter-relationships, sequencing and business language – the opposite we find from so many ubiquitous, feature-focused technology-focused SharePoint presentations. If you want to engage with a business audience successfully, then you have to be able to explain SharePoint in plain English, quickly and in a visual way that is clear for everyone. Salem was more than that as I had determined that the Salem framework had to contain a range of common business services but also be extremely flexible to meet any unique business requirement. Therefore Salem had to be as flexible and adaptable as possible whilst still retaining the same logical structure. As importantly, the framework also had to meet the needs of software updates, new versions and even the cloud.

This was basis of the Salem™ framework that was later to develop into the Salem Practitioner certification program now made available to you today. Before this was possible I had to apply the business framework methodology in as many different types of enterprise client scenarios as possible, the bigger and more complex the better. I was able to apply the Salem framework to clients that were national and then international, spanning between 28 and 72 countries. At this stage I knew that because the Salem framework was working so well in so many different business scenarios with so many happy clients that I had the answer. Quite simply, it worked.

The next stage was to then take the Salem framework to the international SharePoint partner community and demonstrate that others could do what I had been doing successfully for so many years. Some had stated that it was my presentation style, not the framework itself – they were very wrong. Salem in the hands of others was even more powerful than before. By 2011 and in the hands of trained Practitioners in multiple countries, the results were speaking for themselves. Clients were turning their backs on other technologies and moving to SharePoint and renewing their Enterprise Licence Agreements, with CIOs citing the Salem blueprint as the roadmap they were looking for. Each Practitioner had their own original presentation style but the framework remained exactly the same, with the same modules, services logic and unique terminology.

Microsoft staff asked how we could scale the Salem framework out to the world so that we could assist as many clients as possible and reach as many people as possible and it was at this stage that we decided to develop a new, comprehensive Practitioner framework through Genius! (owned by Morgan & Wolfe) so that as many people as possible could benefit for learning to become a strategist, either independently or within the Microsoft partner ecosystem. We wanted anyone who wanted to progress their career to be able to benefit from our own learning, understanding and intellectual property as Salem is proven, tested and completely original as well as highly successful.

As the author of the Salem™ framework, I found myself at the forefront of developing the term ‘SharePoint business strategist’ in the industry because it was through my early work that I fought hard to get my audiences to understand that SharePoint is a business program far more than being a technology platform. Indeed for most of my life I have placed great emphasis on jargon-free plain-English communication. Gradually, over the last decade I have been successful in getting people to understand that the business path to SharePoint engagement is absolutely critical. For too many years, the successes of SharePoint projects have been reliant on the intermediate role of the business-language-speaking project manager and business analysts who tried to bridge the gap between IT and business stakeholders.

This gap is now filled by the formal certified Salem Practitioner, a true business strategist who is formally trained and certified in the process of both IT and business engagement for SharePoint, bringing logic, structure, sequence, rational, process and controls to any SharePoint engagement. Better still the process of becoming a Salem Practitioner for SharePoint is that it can be quick and easy to achieve through the learning structure that Genius! has put together. Salem isn’t just about Microsoft SharePoint and on-premise technology. The same logical framework can be applied to blended technology environments or even non-SharePoint environments and works as well with the cloud and Office 365 as it does with on-site implementations, a truly flexible framework approach.

Today the Certified Salem™ Practitioner(CSP) is a business strategist who may also be a project manager who has decided to step up their skills; a business analyst opening their horizons to new approaches, a solution architect wanted to hone their skills with business audiences, a developer wishing to progress their career into a more front-of-house role; an academic seeking new ways of teaching their students new business and technology approaches or a home-based self-learner looking to advance their own knowledge. Some Practitioners go on to lead client workshops and define SharePoint programs, others use the Genius! courses, masterclasses and workshops as their inspiration to look at SharePoint in a new way or indeed as a way of understanding SharePoint without ever needing to be technical.

Development companies use the Salem framework as a conceptual structure for developing new apps and original to market. CIOs find the Salem framework workshop the basis on which they can plan their future business-aligned IT strategy program and development companies use the Salem framework whilst assisting in defining future budget requirements. No longer do you need to be an IT technical guru to enter the world of enterprise collaborative systems when the logic of Salem is plain-speaking.

With the future of technology increasingly becoming cloud-driven, the role of the business strategist is becoming ever more important. Cloud services such as Microsoft Office 365 are opening up enterprise level software to companies large and small at a speed never thought possible only a few years ago. We now have Software as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, everything is becoming an on-demand service. Technology is becoming far more commoditized, now bought off-the-shelf, driven by dynamic business requirements, where software simply does the job it is intended to do without months or years of costly development. The entire concept of Apple’s app store has had a dramatic influence on the corporate software market. But with all these services the client can end up being more confused than ever.

Today there is an increasing trend for far less emphasis (and desire) for bespoke development solutions by companies, and far more emphasis on “what do we do with all this technology – how do we put it all together”? And who is going to bring all of this together? The framework-trained Certified Salem™ Practitioner, the person who is trained and certified in the Salem strategic business consulting framework that provides the answers and standards the client is looking for.

Take a look at some of our testimonials to see how others have found great value in the Salem framework. To train as a Salem strategist you must use the official Genius! website as our training and certification program is currently available by no other route.

Copyright Morgan & Wolfe All Rights Reserved 2013

 

Eleven Ubiquitous Words & Phrases that Hold Back the SharePoint™ Industry

There are lots of words that insidiously creep into our psyche and become fashionable from time to time and when used in context or in isolation do no harm at all and may inform, enlighten and indeed enliven any appropriate conversation. All industries tend to develop their own vocabulary for a variety of reasons, from exclusivity through to a need to narrate and describe. Due to the nature of the tech industry it is no surprise that new words and phrases develop regularly, some take hold and some do not.  However, some words and phrases unwittingly hold back an industry from its own potential growth and care is therefore well advised.

The following words and phrases are ubiquitous in their use not only in the SharePoint industry itself but beyond and all in some way can be said to be hindering rather than advancing the progression of the platform and its services to a wider market. Here is my rationale for some of the more obvious ones:

1. Intranet

What does the word ‘intranet’ say to you? Now what does it really say to you? For many business users ‘intranet’ speaks of a confused, out of date, badly constructed, impossible to navigate, out of touch, irrelevant, arcane, archaic, legacy investment which today cannot be trusted as authoritative. Therefore when you come to introduce a new intranet on SharePoint, for many, you are simply using the latest technology to replace something unpopular and repeat the problems of yesteryear. Intranet is not an obligatory term and neither does it adequately describe the power of SharePoint, so why use it at all?

2. T&M

T&M, more accurately termed Time and Materials describe the all-too-common approach by solution integrators to costing SharePoint solutions. More importantly T&M describes the frequent unwillingness by Partners to commit to a fixed price for a solution based primarily on the one-way argument that the client may change their mind and scope may vary. Worse is the argument that detailed requirements are unknown and therefore a fixed price is not plausible.

If one applied the same rationale to SAP or similar, one would be writing a blank cheque that could end up costing tens of millions of dollars and it comes as no surprise in the current global economic climate that client organisations are increasingly wary and weary of the constant surprise regarding SharePoint costs. After a decade of SharePoint installations and solution development, a large proportion of the more common solutions are well known in terms of cost and T&M is far less appropriate than ten years ago in many cases.

The future of packaged applications and cloud, SaaS services may well see the demise of wholesale use of the T&M model. If we cannot be clear to a global client market what things cost, or that services are expensive and not easy to budget for then be assured that engagements may be limited or difficult to attract.

3. Point solution

Point solutions have supported a global SharePoint industry for years. A point solution is a solution developed in isolation for a specific requirement and not linked to any other relational service. More commonly put, ‘tell us what you want and we will build it’. In part this occurred through a common misconception that SharePoint is best sold as a development platform. In turn single solutions required single disconnected projects and most corporate IT departments are based on a project-centric model.

Single projects largely fail to employ an economy of scale, budget or resource and are packaged as single entities that live for their own selfish reasons. Multiple disconnected projects on the same platform using one or (worse still) multiple vendors on the same platform quickly start to trip each other up and place a budget burden not on a business stakeholder group but on multiple single project sponsors.

It is the failure to take a business program approach to the platform that has meant that SharePoint to date has squandered an intrinsically valuable opportunity to establish itself at the heart of organisations for a wide range of interconnected enterprise services that themselves are mapped out using a business roadmap and blueprint like Salem™.

Ultimately the project centric approach has left SharePoint as being seen as unnecessarily  expensive, slow to develop, release and adopt and cumbersome. Far too many SharePoint implementations have run out of steam due to a lack of long term program budget planning, resource and role planning and business program alignment.

4. Developer

Let’s make it clear, I believe that SharePoint’s versatility is an extremely strong value proposition and the ability to develop an eternal number of business solutions makes SharePoint extremely valuable to every organisation. Consequently I am not against ‘development’ in any way, when warranted. The term ‘developer’ however has increasingly become equated to unmanageable expense, slow delivery, and bespoke services that are difficult to maintain, particularly with version upgrades.

Microsoft has demonstrated the issue clearly with its new SharePoint 2013 model where code does not interfere with the kernel and remains separate thus un-hindering clients from future core SharePoint platform upgrades.

For far too long the recruitment industry, together with portions of the SharePoint industry have been guilty of perpetuating the myth that if you are implementing SharePoint you must begin by employing a team of developers. Therefore from the very outset clients have taken a view that it is impossible to make any headway with SharePoint without developing using skilled developers.

You can imagine their surprise therefore when client organisations have later discovered out-of-the box services they had not been shown previously and therefore realised that there were many less costly opportunities to make early headway. Therefore whilst there is absolutely nothing wrong with the role of the SharePoint developer it has largely been the misuse of the role of the developer in the overall SharePoint strategic program that has upset many clients and made them wary of further development investment. 

5. Extranet

Similar to Intranet but leading to even more confusion, 'extranet' is largely a technology term that has little obvious business meaning behind it as it is not one of common parlance. Essentially people in an organisation wish to collaborate and share with people outside the organisation identified by name, that’s not so hard to explain and is common in terms of requirement. The word extranet is symbolic more than anything else of the major problem still facing organisations. 

In many respects the word 'extranet' represents the larger techno-centric argument that nothing can be explained in plain English when it can instead have a term that no one finds easy to comprehend. It is as if technology is buried deep in the psyche of science fiction where abstraction is a necessity and deliberate through choice to the exclusion of the masses.

6. Social

'Social' is the word du jour and a word that is increasingly being over-used and misinterpreted as well as being incorporated into phraseology such as the even more diverse ‘enterprise social’, ‘social enterprise’ or even ‘social collaboration’. Let’s make a bold statement here, in the context of business there is nothing truly social about social technology in the workplace, but instead and far more importantly what social really means is ‘applied social networking techniques’. This means that rather than using software to announce how much beer you drank last night, you are using the services found in the common social network platforms reassigned for business subjects. Gartner backs up the issue by demonstrating that only 10% of 'social collaboration' scenarios achieve a degree of success.

Be in no doubt that many business directors request that social tools are switched off, that they distract workers from daily tasks and offer difficult governance for overstretched HR departments. This is no different to the slow embrace of instant messaging a decade or more ago. 'Social' for them is something that happens after work, not during work hours. Therefore the tech industry needs to decide and agree what ‘social’ actually means in the context of business and work. Rather than scaring organisations, use appropriate terminology that attracts and enhances an organisation instead of presenting technology that may not be, in many instances, interpreted as business appropriate.

 7. Partner

The word ‘partner’ is extremely common in the Microsoft ecosystem and something that is passed through to the end customer. Partnering is of course a very worthy objective and one that many aspire too.  Partnering with anyone is of course very difficult to achieve well whether with an individual or indeed a large corporation and therefore grand statements such as ‘our mission statement is to partner 110% with all our clients’ is largely meaningless. Most ‘partners’ are in fact effective deliverers of SharePoint solutions for which they get paid specifically for their time and effort and which is indeed exactly what most clients want.

Partnering takes the deliverer to an entirely different level of business relationship which requires sharing, including the sharing of risk, closeness and embrace of distinct corporate cultures which in practice most solution delivery companies find very difficult or costly to achieve. Therefore the word ‘partner’ comes to mean something akin to over-promising in a way that undermines the value proposition of the intrinsic relationship itself.

Due to the fact that many clients have failed to find true partnership from their solution integrators then it may be far more appropriate to make the statement that one is an expert SharePoint solution integrator than an expert SharePoint partner and not define a relationship that will never really materialise.

 8. Governance

Probably the most misused and much-maligned term in the SharePoint industry and one that continues to cause debate to rage to this day. Do you mean technical governance, business governance, administrative governance, product governance, what? Governance simply means the ‘act of governing’ and in which case the act of governing of SharePoint is performed by its stakeholders and business sponsor, beyond this there are many other ‘acts of governing’ required to be performed in various ways and to various degrees by various parties en route to SharePoint success.

However because the SharePoint industry continues to squabble as to what governance means and which software company owns the ‘right’ to the term governance, so the client audience is left cold, detached and disinterested. For many client organisations governance sounds like a complex turn off that in turn ensures that SharePoint itself appears difficult to embrace.

 9. SharePoint

This is probably the most difficult word of them all and one that causes the most issues. We have had SharePoint Portal Services, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Windows SharePoint Services, SharePoint Foundation Services, SharePoint Online and finally SharePoint, phew!  So they finally agreed on the word SharePoint as a brand identity and just when it was safe to come out and face the music in point 11 its not SharePoint anymore, now its the cloud and Office 365. Are you thinking what I am thinking?!

The issue isn’t with the word 'SharePoint' as a brand name, though its  recent agreed naming convention does make things easier to progress its identity in the long term (see point 11 though). No the issue is with how one describes SharePoint, what is it? You can describe Excel as a spreadsheet you can describe PowerPoint as a presentation-maker and you could describe Word as a word processor to keep things simple. If you can’t describe something to your mother in 60 seconds what hope do we really have?

The issue with the word SharePoint is that it does not have a single identity and indeed has so many identities that it suffers from a form of extreme schizophrenia where it can be one thing to one person and something completely different to another. Yet at its core, SharePoint contains a set of common features and services that every organization can and should benefit from.

It is due to the fact that over  decade later, whilst the global SharePoint industry still refuses to agree on a simple way to describe its platform that it struggles to demonstrate real business value with ease and why other platforms and services continue to make ground. There may come a tipping point where, however great SharePoint is, client organisations simply start to move in a different direction.

 10. Requirements Gathering

‘Requirements gathering’ is a phrase that sends the fear of God into the heart of many potential clients and yet one used by the majority of solution integrators, it is a phrase that sets out a process of finding out in detail what the client wants incorporated into a specific solution. The problem is that many organisations simply aren’t sure what they want, or of the detail that must be defined within a solution.

The thought that clients need to undergo weeks of relatively expensive, business-impacting requirements-gathering workshops is off-putting to the extent that many organisations are now actively seeking shrink-wrapped solutions (latterly known as Apps) that take away the arduous process of discussing in fine detail the opinions and requirements that will lead to a final cost proposal. Ask a client if they will forego an exact service match for one that is fast to deliver, requires no requirements-gathering but only meets 70% of understood criteria and many will absolutely say yes please.

The world is quickly moving on and the inference that anything built on SharePoint requires a long-winded requirements-gathering process that can be costly, time-consuming, politically troublesome and difficult to finalise can lead to early disaffection by stakeholders that they then refuse to repeat. Many organisations have stated that their technology partners should provide clear thought-leadership by demonstrating what many other organisations have already achieved thus removing the requirements gathering hurdle.

 11. Office 365 (or 'Cloud')

An odd choice you might think and a topic that is currently flavour of the year, the SharePoint transition to the cloud. The problem is that the brand name Office 365 dilutes SharePoint, hides its presence and appears to suggest SharePoint is something far less than it really is, something slightly inconsequential, light and ad hoc. There is an inference that SharePoint Online requires far less thought, due diligence, structure, strategy and planning to adopt now that it is ready made but indeed the requirement for business aligned strategy for SharePoint does not change whether it be onsite or online. Office 365 does not take away much of the strategic requirements found with on premise SharePoint implementations. 

More worryingly still is the idea that this dilution of SharePoint may be deliberate to move by those who have never grasped what it actually is and have had no strategy for it. There have indeed been suggestions in some articles that Office 365 heralds the end of SharePoint and its parts will become independent services in the cloud.

Could you imagine SAP as being part of an Office suite or any other enterprise product for that matter? No, neither can I. As SharePoint is an extensive and powerful enterprise platform, placing it within a package offering and taking away its primary name thus taking away its independent identity is itself something that may stifle its long term growth. Add Yammer into the mix in Office 365 and one can see how the cloud branding can cause real issues for an increasingly bewildered corporate consumer market.

These are only some of the many words I could have chosen for this article but the tech industry continues to define itself largely by being distant and distinct from the businesses it services through its fashionable and all too often abstract use of vocabulary. In the time we now live in, the ability to be succinct, clear, and drive real business value quickly is a high priority for many organisations and it is for this reason that the words and phrases that the SharePoint industry chooses to engage with and define itself by, may well define whether it remains in the dictionary a decade from now.

Ten Reasons Why Brochureware Websites Continue to Fail to Impress

Brochureware - "websites or web pages produced by converting a company’s printed marketing or advertising material into an Internet format."  - Oxford Dictionary 2013

Do you have an organisation website? I am sure you do because everyone else does. Back in the mid 1990’s any organisation worth their salt decided to build a corporate brochure on the internet because everyone else was doing the same, hence the inevitable rise of the digital design agency. These old websites lacked any focused purpose and all too often were a mix of ubiquitous marketing messages that addressed nothing and no one in particular. Many organisations were stung with huge design costs for what were in truth rather lacklustre web brochures based on old marketing principles that were inordinately difficult for the frustrated organisation to manage alone.

That was the case back in 1997 so where do we find ourselves today? For many organisations unbelievably they find themselves in pretty much the same place as 15 years ago. Rather than commoditizing websites so that they are now highly professional and yet easy to manage and update, you only need to invest an hour of your time to run round the international partner internet ecosystem to see that things are very far from being okay.

This article summarizes ten primary reasons why so many organisational websites fail to impress, achieve their aims or sell the services of their owners. Whilst this article is aimed at the technology partner, many of the elements listed here can easily be applied to any organisational website to help you determine whether you are really on track with your web strategy.

 1. Great Websites Requite Time, Effort & Investment

“You will reap what you sow” says the old adage and this is certainly true of websites. If you put in little effort in terms of design, focus and content you will get little back. There are literally millions of websites that remain devoid of visitors and yet to the innocent eye, look great.  There are no short cuts to a rich and engaging website that fully represents your brand and reflects your full value proposition. Why then is it the case that so many websites are treated as if they are secondary issues with underwhelming budget and lack of business engagement?

Great websites do not need to cost tens of thousands of dollars to create and most of the websites I have created which have generated as much as 1.25 million visitors per month have actually cost very little in $ terms. What websites do require however is time and effort in terms of content creation and tuning, messaging, audience understanding and search engine strategy. These are things that do not happen overnight and are generally iterative.

Looking at a multitude of current technical organisation websites it is simply staggering how bad many of them are and how little investment they have gained considering the task that is being asked of them – to represent an entire organisation and its primary value propositions to a global audience of viewers. Far too many websites rely almost purely on an identity of original logo and brand colour scheme without any further thought or strategy. What is most often missing is up to date, fresh content, original and varied material and original thought. To a degree then this is why they offer little value to the visitor and simply a little investment in time and effort addressing the other points in this article would help enormously..

2. Websites Frequently Fail to Understand their Own call to Action

Brochureware websites are all too often built to tell the world that you exist, that you are here and that you have a website! To be blunt: so what? If the website isn’t offering something of specific and immediate value then do not be surprised if people exist after just a few seconds, never to return. Your value proposition should be clearly presented on the front page, immediately obvious and with a clear message or call to action.  

You must first set out exactly what you aim the website to achieve and then design it to underpin this or these objectives. If the website does not have a specific purpose then ask yourself what it is really there to achieve.

Let’s go back to basics, what are you selling and why are you selling it and what makes this thing or these things so different from your competitors and why should anyone really come to you? Maybe the fact that you are based in DC is the main thing or that you have a market differentiator that can’t be found anywhere else or that you have a packaged business solution that really does make a lot of sense to certain organisations.

Have you made the value proposition clear in the opening statement on the opening page. Have you cleared out the cluttered jargon and techno speak and useless logos and mapped out what it is you are offering and why? If you haven’t then your website just may be falling at the first hurdle.

 3. Websites Frequently Do Not Understand Who they are Talking To

Far too many websites try to be all things to all people or worse nothing to anyone in particular whilst no specific audience has been determined. It is perhaps rather harsh to suggest that many organisational websites primarily serve the ego of the executive officers of the company who commission these sites but it is certainly evidently the case that far too many websites read like CEO/Partner Owner resumes and celebrations of historical success.

An effective website should be built with a specific audience in mind to achieve a specific call to action. If a website exists to sell specific services then the site should aim to get people to pick up the phone and call to make a pre-sales appointment. If a website is selling a product then the site needs to offer a free trial or demo or other content that underlines the process of product sale.

If a website offers nothing more than general information with no call to action then why have the website at all? Included in this point is the speech being used to talk, otherwise known as the language of the website: Just cast your eye around the internet at tech firms and take a look at the phraseology in use by the majority of firms: “enterprise social”, “trusted advisor” and the plethora of single statements supposedly designed to inspire “the business of the future is today”. No one talks like that in real life so why put it on your website?!  Instead think about matching the language of your website to the audience of your website.

 4. Websites Are Failing to Scale and Render to Multiple Platforms 

Does your website work seamlessly by expanding on a 36 inch monitor and resolving on a smartphone or tablet? Or does your website simply work on your own laptop? Have you ever tested your website properly on multiple portable devices or are you hoping future potential customers will do that for you?

It comes as no surprise that over 70% of current organisational websites will not render correctly on mobile phones and yet we are seeing the largest drop in PC purchasing ever as they are replaced by portable devices so who is missing the point here?

If your website will not work whilst a potential customer views it on a train, in the airport or in the back of a cab then can you blame them for not coming back?

 5. Websites Frequently Lack any Search Engine Optimization Strategy

 

“Build it and they will come” states another adage rather optimistically; we all know this does not work. You can put a huge amount of effort into building a website but if no one can find it then what is the point of its existence? Whilst back in 1997 SEO may have been viewed as some form of black art, today there really is no excuse at all as all the tricks and tactics for search engine optimization have been extensively documented and are readily available and therefore require your investment and attention.

SEO isn’t a one-off task and neither is it within the normal skill range of your internal marketing team and may require planning like a military exercise. However the basics of SEO are extremely well known and easily followed and yet I would go as far as saying that 85% of websites have little if any search engine strategy in situ from the evidence of the websites visited recently.  

 6. Websites are Frequently Bland, Undistinguished, Lifeless & Dull

Actually many tech partner websites really are  some of the most dull websites you will ever visit which is why, when you look at your web stats you may be surprised to find the majority of your visitors refused to stay. There are fashions in website design and there are fashions in colour palettes (white for example) as well as (fly out) menu design and page structures but being the same as everyone else does not mean your website is original, refreshing and full of inspiration.

When was the last time you considered embedding video and audio, podcasts, blogs and animation or do you think it is better to stick to flat images and some text headlines? Are you using the very best collateral to appeal to the audience you determined in point 3? Variety is the spice of life and you can apply that cliché to your website to good effect.

 7. Websites Frequently Lack Engaging Content

It is a tough one but the reasons why blogs are starting to dominate search engine results is because websites lack engaging and useful content that is regularly refreshed. Of course one of the ways to solve the issue is to add a blog to the website but I would suggest that there is no reason why a website should not have plenty of fresh and rich information and article pages that are regularly updated.

Go one further and build the website using WordPress or similar so that it is in effect a blog at heart which then allows easy addition of new news articles and items of interest. I visit websites annually that fail to change one word year on year and most certainly do not contain informative articles.

With the easy access to YouTube there is also no reason why the website should not contain plenty of video material that adds a layer of engagement and infotainment that is still largely lacking in most sites today.  

Whilst I mention content it is also amazing how core content on website pages is badly written, lacks spell-checking and is grammatically incorrect. It may not matter to you, but it may matter to someone looking to spend tens of thousands of dollars with you.

 8. Websites are Often Guilty of Trying Too Hard

 

You know when you are being sold to and so do I. Therefore it should come as a surprise that many websites continue to be so unsophisticated, so overt if not clichéd in the way they overtly (over)sell their messages with over-the-top statements, outlandish claims and corny one-liners. Put simply, overt selling turns people off and audiences today are far more sophisticated than web marketers give them credit for.

It is not good enough to say we are the leading Office 365 partner, the number 1 Microsoft partner, the partner of the year or the award-winning…these statements are only minor underscore of a much larger value proposition and its sadly the larger value proposition that is rarely stated in plain English and without marketing lingo.

Go and read the jaded comments for YouTube video ads for an hour or two and digest how today’s jaded audiences actually react to cheesy one-liners and audacious statements, you will find plenty of thumbs down. If you allowed a bunch of tech savvy teenagers onto your website would you gain many thumbs up or thumbs down, be serious. Objectivity regarding web collateral is hard but you will do yourself a great favour if you do use an objective focus group to assist you in removing the worst of your web marketing sins.

 9. Websites Follow a Formulaic Structure

Do you know why Contact Us appears to the right hand side of the menu on most websites? Do you believe people work across a website menu from left to right? Have you any evidence of this yourself? Too many websites are designed using a painting-by-numbers template formula whereby everything from the home page structure to the menu wording is via a design that everyone chooses to employ.

What this really means is not that people will find your website easy to access and use but that it looks just like everyone else’s and therefore fails to distinguish and differentiate itself in those first crucial seconds. More time needs to be spent at creating a website structure that underpins your specific call to action rather than whether it contains the same elements as found on other websites.

 

10. Websites Lack Proactive Tuning

That’s it done, the website is built so we will come back and visit it again in a few years. That is all too often the problem with websites. In designing and building a website, it should have metrics that can be measured and monitored and tuning of page design, content, messaging and other elements to drive the call to action by the visitors. If this is employed then there is a far greater chance that the website is a valuable asset that underpins organisational growth rather than being an expensive albatross round your neck. As with point 1 in this article, investment is required and this means continuous investment by those who are skilled in web design and strategy.

If you do not know what the website is specifically there to achieve and there is nothing measurable to check success criteria against then there is no way of knowing whether any investment in a website presence is required or is gaining a return.

Conclusion

Of course, many organisations have become side-tracked by building a social network presence, presence in Facebook (cheap and fast), Linked-in (cheap and fast) together with other social outlets. Whilst these certainly play a part in brand expansion, most user information searches are still performed via the primary internet search engines.Therefore whilst finding your website in search is critical, once found, if your website fails any or many of the points featured above then your web presence may achieve anything from maintaining the status quo to turning potential clients away. The task is to impress your visitors but you really need to check whether you are failing.

I am sure that some readers will be reading this article feeling pretty pleased that the points raised surely cannot apply to them as they have recently launched a brand new website with lots of fresh new graphics and a glossy new look. I have only today viewed three newly launched websites from technology companies that in fact fail on most of the points above. They look expensive but they fail to impress and I won't be back.

Best Laid Plans: Ten Reasons for the Requirement for a Client-Side SharePoint™ Project Manager

It is fascinating how many SharePoint™ clients adopting SharePoint fail to consider employing a dedicated SharePoint-literate Project Manager in a timely and appropriate manner. Given the fact that the Salem™ series of SharePoint™ strategy articles advocates a professional programmatic approach to a highly-involved platform, it is therefore natural that we turn our attention to the subject of the SharePoint project manager, or more specifically, the lack of one.

I cannot count the number of clients who, in engaging with SharePoint have failed to see the need for a project manager with any skills in the platform which underlines the common problem that client organisations see SharePoint as just another software platform that can be controlled and managed through to service delivery by anyone who can create a timeline, write a risk report and issue log, yet with no appreciation of what they are about to encounter nor embrace.

Let us therefore consider, in a pragmatic way, ten random but poignant reasons why every client without question should consider the requirement for a client-side, appropriately experienced and trained SharePoint Project Manager.

Here we go then:

1. Delivering SharePoint is a full time, skilled job

SharePoint™ requires a portfolio of skills that may not be found with a traditional project manager. I have worked in many environments where the traditional PM sits 8 hours a day staring at a risk log and Gantt chart and communicates with the stakeholders mostly by phone and email. With SharePoint the PM is actually performing a wide range of roles simultaneously, frequently at the coal face, performing everything from presenting the benefits of the platform itself, to presenting and leading stakeholder meetings, to acting as pseudo business liaison officer, to working with the service delivery partner all the way through to training administrators and other personnel.

There are so many strands to successful SharePoint service delivery on the client-side that employing someone who is unable to plan and anticipate what SharePoint will require to occur is a highly risky business prone to failure.

By employing someone who already knows that these tasks will be, how they work best, how to engage both the business and technology and anticipate risk, the better time will be used and the more likely you will be to progress.  For clients, ignore this advice and investment at your peril.

 2. SharePoint requires a central, experienced liaison point

Delivery of SharePoint services requires liaison between a wide range of personnel both within the client and with suppliers, contractors and service delivery partners. Think of it like spinning 50 plates at once and these plates start spinning very quickly with the PM standing at the centre. Keeping everyone inter-connected and communicated with regarding what needs to happen and when only comes with experience in the SharePoint field, therefore platform literacy is needed to ensure that everyone is asked the right questions and provides the right questions at exactly the right time. A generalist PM will probably not know which questions will need to be asked, why, when and what the follow-on actions will be.

Central liaison on a SharePoint project requires immediate understanding of what is happening and why and is something that, if learned as one proceeds, will slow the entire project down and start to increase costs and timeline impact. One cannot underestimate the amount of liaison required with business stakeholders and how it can stretch both available time and resources.

 3. SharePoint is the sum of series of interconnected projects

Inevitably and so frequently wrongly a business service will be deployed using SharePoint without any thought or consideration to any further service that ends up using the same platform. Consequently design and service decisions are sadly made in isolation, driven by stakeholders who have a somewhat understandable myopic view of things and aren’t typically interested in other projects but primarily their own.

Whilst many clients are notorious for avoiding ‘program manager’ roles in favour of the rather more mysterious (i.e. non-existent) and somewhat cheaper ‘Senior SharePoint Manager’ role, many SharePoint Project Managers are indeed fulfilling the vastly more complex role of the SharePoint Program Manager. That is in itself a good reason for selecting a SharePoint-literate project manager.

What the SharePoint Project Manager does is knowledgably anticipate business decisions and advise accordingly to ensure that some decisions do not occur in isolation when they will clearly affect parallel and subsequent projects using the same platform. It is the anticipation of the inter-connectedness of SharePoint services that is critical and something that the SharePoint PM suitably provides.

Whilst you may rightly argue that design decisions should be led by solution architects, the architect sessions are frequently usurped by ad hoc and sporadic decisions by business and IT stakeholders when the partner architect is not present, therefore it is down to the client-side project manager to fill the gap, temporarily.

 4. SharePoint uses a specific vocabulary

Whether it be content types or site collections or content databases or web parts there is an intrinsic language to the scripture of SharePoint that is not learned and understood overnight. Working with a partner organisation any client will be expected to understand the language and therefore the SharePoint Project Manager acts as the skilled translator or interpreter who can translate what may be complex technical queries into suitable business language appropriate to the audience in hand. The SharePoint Project Manager can speed up the entire process by working with the business stakeholders separately and educate and prepare them with the language until everyone is speaking the same language. Failure to address this role will present friction amongst a number of parties caused back failure of communication.

 5. A partner requires a SharePoint literate liaison point

Further to the above, the SharePoint partner, if there is one, will be asking very specific questions of the Project Manager which the PM will be expected to understand and action. The more a partner has to spend time supporting the client project manager the slower things will progress and the more likely there will be friction, issues and mistakes if the client PM is not clear what is being asked of them.

The SharePoint Project Manager will be working in unison with the partner project manager, solution architects and lead developers amongst others and may need to liaise with other related partners for workflow, packaged applications and other services. The sheer weight of current market knowledge and partner experience will ensure that the SharePoint Project Manager is able to drive the project or program forwards whilst keeping control of both the budget and the partner activities like the conductor of an orchestra. Would you employ a conductor that had never heard the piece of music before?

 6. Failure to anticipate will cost time and money

As a SharePoint Project Manager is an extremely knowledgeable resource, so they will be able to advise where and when things should occur and when money will need to be spent and where it can be saved. Here is a simple example. In deploying a SharePoint solution there may be a requirement for cross-training the incumbent second level support team. This may not have been anticipated in terms of cost and budget but by understanding the potential requirement, the SharePoint Project Manager could suggest that the incumbent team is trained to deploy the solution iterations as part of the testing phase which in itself acts as a cross-skilling exercise.

There are a thousand examples just like this. The more the SharePoint Project Manager brings to the table, the safer the client program/project will be.

 7. SharePoint PM skills establish a standard base line for the future

In a SharePoint service implementation the SharePoint Project Manager is able to lead by example, to demonstrate how things should be done, by putting into place the project assets and collateral that can be reused time and time again. Assuming that SharePoint is not being deployed for a single business service and that many others will follow, so the skilled Project Manager will be adapting current processes and existing project templates and documentation to suitably fit the subject of SharePoint for future projects and as such will establish a performance and process base line. This will occur as a natural part of the initial service delivery process. It would be almost impossible to achieve this using someone not already literate and experienced in SharePoint projects.

8. SharePoint Project Managers can see all sides of the service equation 

Whether you wish to call it empathy, pathos, understanding or comprehension the SharePoint Project Manager is able to work with everyone from the infrastructure architects through to senior business management and take on board all aspects of the equation and fit them together to ensure that SharePoint is delivered fit for purpose.

Whilst some of this occurs via the solution architect role, the SharePoint Project Manager is partly fulfilling a role of a SharePoint Business Strategist (hopefully Salem™ certified) and taking no sides but working out how to fit the greater parts of the strategic jigsaw together and then advising accordingly. In other words the SharePoint Project Manager knows how to handle the complexities of the SharePoint project in an objective fashion but to fight the corner of those who are under-represented.

Into this area one can also pull the complex area of SharePoint governance where diplomacy and skill is required to put together the governance structures and groups who will drive the policies that underpin the SharePoint program and projects.

 9. The SharePoint Project Manager is Switzerland (i.e. politically neutral)

There is a great deal of benefit to be said for bringing in an independent SharePoint Project Manager from outside the organisation (but not from the delivery partner) for the establishment of the SharePoint business service program and duration of the first SharePoint project delivery phase. This suggestion is primarily to gain an independent view of the entire status quo, to ensure readiness and preparation on behalf of the client and to allow the PM  to say and do things that are independent, unencumbered, uncomfortable, unpopular or indeed impossible for an incumbent member of staff.

A SharePoint Project Manager role is not an easy one and straddles a number of political camps regarding ownership, business versus technology and others. I have encountered a large SharePoint program where two directors competed continuously with one wishing the other to fail. By being independent there is a greater chance of success because the SharePoint Project Manager can drive through change and (hopefully) remain above the day to day politics inherent in any organisation.

10. The SharePoint Project Manager is really a Program Manager and SME 

The chances of a SharePoint Project Manager hiding behind an MS Project Gantt chart and weekly status report are none existent. From the word go SharePoint is an all-encompassing, all day, full-time activity that requires everything from ingenuity to strategic skills to pull off successfully. For most other ‘players’ on the SharePoint chessboard, they have very specific roles to play but the Project Manager is asked to wear many hats, fill many shoes and sit in many chess squares, all at a moment’s notice and be a friend, confidant and educator to everyone else. It is for this reason alone that those who have successfully delivered a number of major SharePoint projects have developed a skill range that is often exceptional, though all too often underappreciated and undervalued. 

Due to the wide ranging insight and knowledge that SharePoint Project Managers bring to the table, they are often seen as on-site subject matter experts handling far more than an individual project and very often the entire service program. It is no wonder therefore that to seek substantiation in their position, SharePoint Project Managers are now seeking further substantiation of their experience and skills through tracks such as the Certified Salem™ Practitioner. 

Conclusion

I am sure you can add to this list but these are ones that stand out for me. All Project Managers, whether SharePoint literate or not, aim to deliver solutions to time and to budget as well as to client satisfaction. When one project finishes another may commence or a number of projects may run side by side. Most Project Managers are certified in one or more project management methodologies which assist in establishing process and control and can be adapted for any particular organisation's internal processes. These things should be an absolute given.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that there are very specific reasons why SharePoint Project Managers are specialists who have a very particular, beneficial role to play and are very valuable to the success of any client SharePoint™ engagement. There will always be those who believe they know better on the client side and select someone from their own internal team who is requested to learn on the job. This decision often marks the difference between those clients who succeed with SharePoint™ and those who fall by the wayside. For me the SharePoint Project Manager is all too frequently the unsung, heroic lynchpin of the SharePoint client service industry.



Copyright Genius! by Morgan & Wolfe. All Rights Reserved 2013.

Cooking Up a Storm: Ten Reasons Why SharePoint™ Clients are Often Rightly Wrong

"The types of clients we were dealing with weren't taking SharePoint seriously..." Partner CEO 

The issue of clients not seeking or taking professional advice has been on my mind for some years but listening to the increasing vocal agreement by expert consultants in SharePoint™-land, it is time to scope out the simple problem – that the client isn’t always right and more often than not they are wrong, rightly or wrongly.

Having worked with SharePoint over the last decade as both client and strategist I know that at first and without any guidance (hence Salem™) it takes a long time, and I mean a long time to come to grips with what SharePoint really is and what it can do. It is in many senses conceptual and everything from an applied science to an applied art form. Like many people, there is a ‘penny drop’ moment at around the year to eighteen month mark where things start to become clear and the multifarious elements of SharePoint and their interconnectedness start to make real sense.

In client businesses, eighteen months can be a very long time indeed and in that first eighteen months you can be sure it can be the start of serious implementation and adoption problems where SharePoint is concerned. Whilst SharePoint can satisfy the revenue fix of a one-off point-solution seller or a licence seller, it can leave a client in the SharePoint doldrums with a large initial investment and nowhere to turn later. Whilst there are many reasons why this happens, it is increasingly clear that the client themselves must take much of the wrap.

For those of you who have ever enjoyed the TV show Kitchen Nightmares with hard-hitting expert chef Gordon Ramsey you will know that each week he enters a restaurant business which is falling apart and in a wholly independent way reads the owners the riot act to save their bacon. He uses various techniques after initial observations from early and simple rectification tasks all the way on to threatening to walk out if the owner is unwilling to listen or take heed of his overall wisdom. Welcome to the world of SharePoint Nightmares.

The problem for many consultants is that whilst they really are at the top of their game there is a subtle difference between their own position and that of Chef Ramsay. Ramsay is not on their payroll and ultimately it doesn’t matter whether the restaurant owner listens or not. If they don’t their business collapses and he walks way. For the SharePoint consultant however, there aren’t so many (though there are a few yes) who are able to speak so freely and walk out of the door with no recompense for their time. Not being paid by a client and being able to say what you really think is a luxury that is often only afforded in conference presentations, articles and occasionally in pre-sales sessions.

When encountering your own SharePoint Nightmare scenarios it is easy to be viewed as part of the problem where a client is concerned and quickly become embroiled in a burgeoning blame culture pointed squarely at you. Don’t shoot the messenger? You are in the firing line for sure as the harbinger of bad news – they got it stubbornly wrong for not listening.     

Here are ten rogue reasons why clients must take some responsibility for getting things wrong when embracing SharePoint:

1. Sounds like a job for the IT guys

Disenfranchising SharePoint from its natural business ownership is the biggest error any client can make. Clearly every IT department in the current climate is defending its reputation and fighting its corner but all too often SharePoint, without a business roadmap, without a logical plan with all its technical features and functions is placed directly in the hands of IT ownership. The reasons below highlight many of the wrong reasons why this occurs.

Once in the hands of IT, internal personnel frequently take the opportunity of ramping up their own resumes by playing with, practicing and learning SharePoint internally with little or no outside help before latching on to a business pilot that then rapidly runs out of control and demands non-existent IT budget and resources that the CIO had never dreamed of or anticipated. This begins the downward spiral of discontent, change controls and of ‘future projects’ that rarely materialise. 


2. The worst vice is advice 

Have you ever wondered why the client believes they know better than the subject matter expert? It is an increasing trend based primarily on the basis that any independent professional is trying to fleece them and lives only in an ideal world of fantasy SharePoint installations and doesn’t have practical, real-world experience of running a business. The consultant recommendations are based on the perfect idealism of a Microsoft manual somewhere, so they wrongly think.

What this lack of heeding advice actually means is that the client is often scared; scared of hearing and therefore accepting that they may have got things wrong or of hearing the truth that advice has been ignored. It is easier to prove the consultant wrong than to shoulder the responsibility for blame, lack of planning, budget, resources and strategy right? When the doctor says stop smoking or the garage mechanic says that the car is broken from bad driving or the electrician tells you that you need a re-wire or the dentist tells you that you need some work, you argue with them do you?

One of the reasons why we don’t argue with long term, time served, trained professionals is because we acknowledge that they are the experts in their chosen field and we regretfully accept something generally needs to be done to fix the situation. We may request a second opinion however if the repair bill is too expensive. It is very possible that because of the undisciplined nature of the SharePoint profession with its plethora of unqualified and uncertified contractors that IT is not taken seriously as a profession and therefore advice is optional, only accepted in the final eventuality and often only when it is reassuringly expensive.

It is the responsibility of client to select and heed the professional advice of the experts they choose to work with and live with the consequences if they do not listen.

3. SharePoint is just more software (or a service) isn't it?  

Due to the history of Microsoft software bridging the gap between business and the home (think Office and Outlook) and therefore its relatively easy installation and engagement, it is easy to see why a client may take the view that SharePoint is simply more software to be installed and used, just like Excel or Word. That excuse would have been very plausible back in 2003 but doesn’t work so well in 2013 where there is a colossal history and learning of the SharePoint product and platform. With hundreds of conferences and masses of internet information, fifteen minutes of any client time online would educate anyone enough to  realise that SharePoint is very far from simply a piece of software to install and be up and running in minutes with.

Consequently the continued excuse by clients that they didn’t realise so much was involved really doesn't wash and points firmly back to the first two points in terms of internal playing with software and the absolute refusal to work with subject matter experts who are deemed unnecessary and expensive. As Red Adair, the oil fire rescue genius said, “if you think working with an expert is expensive, wait until you work with an amateur”.

The continued failure of clients to approach SharePoint with the respect, seriousness and budget required to ensure it brings the value and benefits required is at the heart of the problem. It has a Microsoft badge on it so it must be easy.  Office 365 will not make the situation go away, it may simply exacerbate the problem further because there is even less for the client to plan to get them going - only to find that once they have the service, they have absolutely no idea how to engage with SharePoint Online but have already started playing with it with live business data.

It is the responsibility of every SharePoint client to spend time understanding the product, understanding how to engage with it, defining a business strategy, roadmap and service blueprint as well as ensuring both business and IT governance are aligned. It isn’t hard, just choose an expert to help.

4. I'm far too busy to do my homework 

 

Anyone who has ever tried to manage a SharePoint project from either the IT side or the partner side will know the problem here. Client stakeholders are rarely available because they are far too busy doing more important things like day to day work, having lunch and meetings and answering their phone and emails. Expand this issue exponentially across the entire stakeholder team and you will be lucky to get a meeting of all stakeholder members more than every 4 or 6 weeks, if at all.

Just like a pet at Christmas, with SharePoint comes responsibility, serious responsibility. I was once asked at a keynote I gave at Microsoft how I succeeded as a business owner in delivering SharePoint successfully to over 20,000 people and I said matter-of-factly, that I hung myself out to dry, I lived and breathed SharePoint, its commitment and responsibilities to my business and owned it as if it was my very own baby.

From the outset the client must appoint a business sponsor and committed stakeholders who can themselves make budget decisions and own the SharePoint program on behalf of the entire organisation. If they are unwilling to do their homework, they will undoubtedly fail the exam and will only have themselves to blame.

 5. That's far too big to consider, let's just do this

For many organisations, SharePoint is a business program rather than an IT project. This program-centric view occurs naturally due to the interconnectedness of related business services that must be delivered in unison or in parallel. Due to the overlap in feature services it makes a great deal of budget and resource sense to take a program approach to SharePoint and something that lays at the foundation of the Salem™ value proposition for SharePoint.

Taking the program approach is not something that always comes naturally with SharePoint because it has largely not been sold as a program to date. Instead SharePoint has been largely sold as a development platform or some kind of flexible and agile development tool. It reminds me of a Microsoft author who once told me that he had been requested to remove the word ‘program’ from his chapters and replace it with ‘project’ by the editor as it was viewed as a less expensive proposition and would be ‘less scary’.

As the client has rarely planned for a program, does not have a program manager or program budget and the best they may go to is a (cheaper) ‘senior project manager’ in IT so it is far too tempting to jump straight into a short-term IT-centric project and get things going. What this all too often means is that the client believes that if they put something in short term the business will like it and then someone else can go and ask for more money later from an ever-angry Finance Director or CFO.

It is called introducing SharePoint organically, by stealth and as many can testify, this tactic rarely works or convinces anyone and such short termism has been demonstrated time and time again to fail. A CIO being scared of the CFO really is no excuse when approaching the subject of the  SharePoint budget but fear occurs because as in step 1, the client placed the responsibility for SharePoint and its relative budget wholly and wrongly in the hands of the CIO. Once again it is the client responsibility to define the business strategy for SharePoint in advance or work with a strategic partner to define a roadmap that can then be assigned the required budget and resources. Turning a project into a program is not an easy thing to achieve later in the day if the initial project itself undermines the intrinsic program.

6. We are a huge company and we know our business
 

Being brow-beaten by companies with large internal teams with their own agendas and vested interests is commonplace and you are often simply left feeling overwhelmed. What this means is that many organisations don’t want to be told what to do with SharePoint or how to approach it and will do it themselves in the same way they have approached everything else. It is caused by a detachment to the services that underpin their business. The large client will take the view that they have hundreds of incumbent IT staff and generalist managed service providers. Once again we come back to the issue that the client is taking the view that SharePoint is just software that has pre-defined services that just get picked up as they go along. One thing that SharePoint is definitely not is Exchange.

The end result is that the client all too often passes responsibility to those who do not know SharePoint, have no history of it and will not be told differently. To provide an example, I have encountered a number of organisations that have requested complete farm designs from highly qualified Gold Partners only then to witness the potential implementation stall due to internal IT architects re-architecting the farm design believing that they know better, not trusting the expert partner and frequently breaking many best practice design rules. On more than one occasion I have heard it said that best practices are for ideal worlds and not for the real world! The client must shoulder the responsibility for this scenario.

7. We are far too busy implementing SAP

Relative to other points made earlier in this article, why is it that implementing SAP or PeopleSoft, Dynamics or other enterprise platforms is taken seriously and thus planned for, resourced and budgeted for with over-zealous programmatic seriousness whilst SharePoint is treated as the poor, project second-cousin? There are many reasons why this occurs but it is largely due to perception, marketing and associated costs as well as internal divisional stakeholder sponsorship. SharePoint typically lacks any form of direct sponsorship at the outset because no one is sure what they are going to use it for, or that it is viewed as a general development platform for everything apart from the big services.

SAP and similar platforms are accepted as big, heavy duty, Finance and HR-related platforms sponsored by Directors with political weight with the relative investment requirements. From the very start these platforms are understood for what they are and what they are likely to cost. How an SAP platform could ever produce an ROI to cover a $half billion investment is personally beyond me but I am sure there are examples. However SharePoint doesn’t have a fundamental business raison d’etre because it has never come under direct attack from a business-orientated competitor, therefore it has never needed to develop a specific business value proposition according to some and subsequently lacks natural business sponsorship. Its natural flexibility may also simply be its problem.

The result of this is that SharePoint has not set out its stall in the international market as a heavyweight enterprise platform that requires X, Y and Z in terms of typical investment, resourcing and approach to be viewed by clients in the same way as SAP or PeopleSoft. Consequently it lacks a degree of business seriousness which in turn means that the client does not treat SharePoint with the gravitas it deserves. Don't misunderstand the point, I am not suggesting that SharePoint is SAP, what I am pointing out is that where large enterprise platforms have clarity, raison d'etre and an applied benefits model attached so they are approached by the client in a far more serious way. 

According to Salem™, SharePoint is modular at a business service level in a parallel way to that which we find in other major enterprise platforms like SAP. However until Salem™ becomes all pervasive in setting out the SharePoint stall the client will fail to interpret the SharePoint platform as anything more than a lesser cousin of larger enterprise platforms which in turn means the client will misjudge the SharePoint platform, its weight and continue to treat it with a lack of due diligence. There is a danger that this may be exacerbated further via the vagaries and flippancy of ‘social’ and the (perhaps wrongly termed ‘light-weight’) consumer proposition of Office 365.

One may argue that SharePoint is not SAP or PeopleSoft or anything similar and its strength lays in its alternate ways of being adopted. The point here is that clients frequently pay far more attention and make a far greater investment in the platforms that they apply a major business value proposition to. It would be fantastic if this was the case of SharePoint as it really deserves it. Whilst the client fails to grasp the enormity of SharePoint, and they have been told, they will continue in the main to treat it as far ‘lighter’ than we know it is and that impacts a great many other things.

8. Don't be ridiculous, how much?! 

 

Ah yes, this little chestnut – cost. How many times does the SharePoint professional face the unrealistic budget expectations of an ever hopeful and budget challenged client IT manager. “So you would like to deliver 10 separate business enterprise services by the summer? Yes please. How much will it cost? Well it depends what specifically you want? Well I have $10,000 but we already have the software and licences, we will need to get the servers in that…How much?!! We will do it ourselves then…”

You know how it goes – completely unrealistic expectations or wanting everything for not very much. An interesting game to play is to ask a client audience to place a value proposition against each service to be delivered. In other words, how much do you think an intranet costs? Don’t bother determining what it contains just get a figure to be stated out loud. You will frequently be surprised how little client audiences think things cost.

There are a number of issues with budget and they often stem from point one in this list which is that IT has been tasked with delivering a business solution using SharePoint but without any associated business budget. This is due to lack of business ownership, sponsorship, involvement and because the client didn’t take the time to understand what SharePoint is, what the aligned business strategy is and what it requires in terms of budget and resources.

Whilst it is very much the tasks of the professional partner consultant to educate the client in terms of detailed costs, it is the direct responsibility of the client to apply adequate budget to commence a SharePoint engagement and to have an in situ method of raising further capital in a timely manner and at a realistic level to engage with the platform effectively. Having unrealistic budget expectations for a full enterprise platform does nothing except create more issues and leads to insistent corner cutting, which starts to contribute to SharePoint program and project failure.

Looking at the cloud and Office 365, some budget issues are alleviated such as per month, per seat costs which can far more easily be anticipated. Whilst the client may be thinking that there is no infrastructure requirements think again. A well connected cloud service will need associated connectivity from Active Directory and other things that will require infrastructure onsite as well as the ubiquitous issue regarding corporate bandwidth. Let’s make this simple, a 4mb link for your 10,000 users to the cloud will simply not cut it for an enterprise collaborative platform irrespective of any WAN accelerator solutions you may be convinced to invest in by the infrastructure team.

I am on record for asking Steve Ballmer the corporate bandwidth question in front of 1000 people so this isn’t the first time this issue has been raised and it certainly won’t be the last. Like many things in life, you get what you pay for and for clients their ultimate SharePoint service is to a degree aligned with the level of investment in the correct areas. It is the responsibility of both the client and the partner to ensure that this is money well spent and spent in the right way.

 

9. I can get a contractor for $200

Picking up from the previous point, with little budget in place and no plan or business strategy the next step for the client to get things wholly wrong is to go for the cheapest route in terms of service delivery and that usually means resourcing.

Prior to the implementation of SharePoint there will be little if any SharePoint experience within an incumbent IT team, though these days there could be some. There is no way of knowing at the outset whether any incumbent SharePoint experience is actually good, solid, educated experience. Again the client may be tempted to see SharePoint as nothing more than software or some service that can be picked up and learned in an hour or two and which anyone in the team can master by Friday.

Once this has been demonstrated to be a mistaken belief the next step is to hire a skilled resource that can sort things out and gain rapid progression for the least possible cost. I have yet to meet many organisations that hire a CEO, CIO or CFO on the cheap. Similarly you know what happens when you go to the cheapest garage, the cheapest kitchen fitter or buy the cheapest clothes, they tend not to do the job or last as well as their more expensive cousins. They say you often get what you pay for.

So why then does a client believe that expert SharePoint skills can be gained for so little? Expertise is not gained overnight and can take years to obtain, mature and refine and therefore there is an associated cost of hire. Professional skills cost money but professionalism saves both time and money in the long run. Fees are not defined by recruiters, recruitment agencies with high margins or the misleading ‘market rate’ statement, fees are aligned to the professional skills and services that are readily available.

Hiring a cheap plumber may fix a problem for an hour but a professional plumbing firm is likely to fix the issue permanently. Anyone who has ever seen Holmes on Homes knows that. Similarly hiring a professional SharePoint partner brings the variety of professionally honed skills from an experienced team that live and breathe SharePoint for a huge range of clients, day in and day out. It is also likely that the professional partner team has been fully trained with professional certifications to prove it. This is rare if not impossible to find in a single person for $200 a day so frequently, inevitably and wrongly described as a ‘SharePoint expert’.

Inevitably it is the client responsibility to understand the cost of skilled partner resources, the range of resource requirements for on premise or cloud and their availability when embracing SharePoint and thus budget accordingly. If the client chooses to ‘go cheap’ then that is their responsibility for what may happen next and the subsequent cost of remedial action.

10. They told me it is easy 

Why would SharePoint be easy? Why is defining and delivering any enterprise business program easy? Why would the delivery of any enterprise business platform be easy for that matter? There is no evidence for this in the last 30 years. Unless something is almost completely pre-built, pre-deployed and pre-designed and performs exactly per your established requirements, it is very likely not to be easy and requires involvement, thinking and sustained commitment.

Any organisation contains three ages of workers, the young, the middle-aged and the old and therefore there are three completely different audiences to engage with for a start. This means than any single service delivered may have a range of educational and adoption challenges. An extensive, feature rich, comprehensive platform such as SharePoint is naturally going to contain complexities and these complexities take time to learn, embrace and work with. Therefore misjudging what is required to embrace a product like SharePoint must be the fault of the client and not because Microsoft should have told them. When SharePoint proved more complex than first thought (Microsoft doesn’t state what SharePoint should be used for or how it should be adopted) surely most can work out that a product that contains everything from enterprise content management to business intelligence is going to take some serious work to adapt and adopt. I have a feeling that, historically, the free versions of WSS/Foundation etc. set the scene for problems here by making clients believe things were easier to adopt than was really the truth.

Denouement

So where do these ten points leave us. A difficult one, this, the client is always right, they are paying the bills, your bills but if you don’t stand up and be counted and say what you know is right with all your professional experience and knowledge then who is really the wrong one in the equation?

Clients cannot be expected to know everything about a product they have yet to embrace which is why there is a parallel, global SharePoint industry of qualified professionals. However when a client starts to argue with SharePoint professionals, believes they know best whilst having no evidential experience and chooses to ignore professional advice then eventually and inevitably things will start to fail, you will be proven right, they will be proven wrong, they will distance themselves from you or worse still they will blame you. It may be far too late to rectify things by that stage, the business adoption then starts to fail and we have yet another long term dissatisfied SharePoint customer who moves on to playing with their tablets and seeking more gratifying alternatives.

The entire long term future of the SharePoint industry, whether in the cloud or not depends on its inherent professionalism, the client seeking out and then heeding advice professional advice, qualified advice, advice that is respected and valued,  advice that is accurate and valuable. Failure to speak out now may mean that in the years to come you have nothing to speak out about at all. 

The question is whether you are strong enough and prepared enough to be the chef?

 

Copyright Genius! by Morgan & Wolfe. All Rights Reserved 2013.