Benefits of SharePoint: The Leading Content Services Platform From Microsoft

Back in the Stone Age of the internet, (or the 1990s) Bill Gates said, “content is king.” Like many other things, Gates was right.

No matter what industry you’re in, the content on your website plays a huge role in driving leads and revenue. It’s no wonder that twenty years after Gates was quoted, Microsoft has the leading content services platform in the industry: SharePoint. Here are the top benefits of SharePoint.

What Are Content Services Platforms?

Content services platforms allow you to create, share, store, organize, manage and protect your content in one place. They’re an evolution of enterprise content management systems (ECMs), which only store and organize your content.

Content services platforms increase productivity and decrease the risk of losing important business assets. Stop worrying about whether Dave from finance sent the right version of the quarterly report to Diane in marketing. Content services platforms make it easy to create, collaborate on and keep track of files.

The Benefits of Microsoft SharePoint: The Best Content Services Platform

Microsoft’s SharePoint was recently announced as the leading content services platform of 2017 by Gartner and Forrester Wave. Gartner compared Microsoft’s platform to 19 other companies, including Oracle and IBM. They named Microsoft in the top three and noted that Microsoft was the best at delivering what business owners wanted. The Forrester Wave report evaluates ECM and content service providers each quarter based on 26 criteria. Their Q2 report positioned SharePoint as the top content service platform and IBM as the top enterprise content management system. Microsoft SharePoint deploys as an on-premise, cloud or hybrid service. While it encourages cloud deployment, it also provides numerous options to firms who want to remain on-prem or move to the cloud in phases. Other benefits of SharePoint include:

• Quick and easy set up
• Compatibility with a wide range of file types
• Easy, intelligent, personalized search within the platform
• Scalable to any business size
• Highly secure and compliant to industry standards

SharePoint users also enjoy single sign-on access from any device and location, making it easy and safe to work from anywhere.

A Closer Look at The Benefits of SharePoint

When you dive further into SharePoint, you begin to see why it’s a leader in the industry. SharePoint helps employees create, collaborate, share, stay informed and engaged, transform business processes, and much more.

Benefits of SharePoint For Content Creation, Collaboration and Sharing

When it comes to creating, collaborating on and sharing content, you can:

• Safely and securely share files with people inside or outside your company
• See who accesses files both internally and externally
• Open large files quickly
• Collaborate in real-time with co-workers in a file
• View previews of a file in its thumbnail (no matter the file type)
• Integrate Microsoft Teams to SharePoint
• Set up collaboration groups with an inbox, calendar and planner

These features make it easy for your organization to maintain consistency and integrity of content.  SharePoint doesn’t stop at content creation and collaboration. With the click of a button, SharePoint users can stay informed and engaged.

Benefits of SharePoint For Keeping Employees Informed and Engaged

The content services platform has several features for keeping workers informed and engaged. These include:

• News and updates about internal or external events, policies, campaigns and products
• A platform for developers to create websites and pages quickly and easily on any device
• The ability to embed and display over 270 file types
• A mobile-ready Yammer web part that brings relevant conversations to the forefront on any SharePoint page
• A tool to measure reach and impact of a site or page
• Customized themes, site and page designs

Say goodbye to frantically emailing last-minute content or company updates, or struggling to get creators to make uniform content. SharePoint streamlines communication to keep everyone in the same wave-length. Struggling with streamlining your business processes? SharePoint can help.

Benefits of SharePoint for Streamlining Business Processes

With the platform’s organizational feature, you can:

• Generate lists and libraries that easily organize information and have automatic predictive indexing
• Send files for review and feedback automatically
• Automatically collect user information upon a workflow launch
• Create and launch workflows directly from OneDrive

Wondering what else SharePoint can do for your business? See a complete list of SharePoint content services platform benefits here. Think it’s time to invest in SharePoint? Agile IT can make it work for your small or mid-sized business. We’re recognized as a best-in-class Microsoft partner, with over 75 years of combined experienced. Don’t settle for mediocre content creation, management and protection. Content is crucial to your business. Make it a priority by contacting us today.