SharePoint 2010
At a time when businesses are confronting significant challenges to growth and profits, marketing and communications departments are coming under increasing pressure to deliver results with fewer resources. In response, organisations of all sizes are deploying information technology in new ways to stretch budgets, boost productivity, and exploit new online channel revenue opportunities.
SharePoint 2010 is a new kind of web content management, online marketing and collaboration platform. It offers organisations substantial opportunities for reaping efficiency and productivity benefits when users are involved in creating and updating public facing websites. SharePoint 2010 also provides the ability to add the latest in rich interactive media to keep web visitors interested and engaged.
SharePoint 2010 features for website management
• User-friendly ribbon - fast web page creation
• Microsoft Office integration and management
• Rich media support - video, audio & Silverlight
• Rich theming for fast, easy website skinning
• Create pages with easy one click layout view
• Multiple browser support - IE, Firefox & Safari
• WCA2.0 accessibility & multi language support
• CMIS enables 3rd party WCM interoperability
• Tagging and metadata enables better web page management
SharePoint 2010 versions
There is a new low price standard version and an enterprise edition.
SharePoint 2010 benefits
IT advisory firm Mainstay Partners conducted a study with organisations that had recently implemented SharePoint for their websites, with the report revealing a five critical benefits.
1) Increase revenue with better targeted marketing campaigns
After migrating to SharePoint, one organisation surveyed benefited from a revenue boost from better managed partner promotions, and another had a clear increase in web enquiries through their new SharePoint website, 30 percent of which represented promising sales leads.
2) Speed up website page creation, approval and publishing
One organisation was able to cut web content publication cycles from three days to just one hour, and another organisation was able to launch new marketing promotions on its website in three days compared to 14 days previously.
3) Enhance staff productivity through a user-friendly web content management interface and Office integration
The study showed a 30 percent to 75 percent rise in productivity at these companies, with the automated systems and workflow tools in SharePoint enabling one company to manage its website with 60 percent fewer IT resources.
4) Improve customer relationship management through integration with existing systems
The study found measurable improvements to customer service and communications, with one company channelling 30 percent more calls to a support site based on SharePoint, and another creating an extranet to deliver client reports in a convenient and secure online environment.
5) An integrated web content management (WCM) platform
The deployment of SharePoint also reflects a wider trend, noted in recent industry analyst reports, towards companies adopting a centralised approach to website content management. Many of the organisations studied are using SharePoint to run multiple environments including internet websites, intranets and extranets, integrating them all with other business systems to form a unified, easily searchable enterprise platform.