May 16. 2012 | Kristin Drozdowski

101 Uses for SharePoint

Okay, I’m not going to list 101 ways to use SharePoint, but I’ll bet I could.

It’s hard to find a company these days that isn’t using SharePoint, but I’ve been surprised by the number of users who seem to view it only as a document repository.  After all, isn’t being a document repository what a network shared drive can do for you?  SharePoint not only allows you to store documents centrally, but also to collaborate with co-workers, maintain version history, add columns of information to be associated with documents, add lists of information that can be quickly and easily transformed into an Excel spreadsheet, and more.  These are just the basics.  With a little creative thinking, the possibilities are endless.

Remember the days of the network shared drive with folder, inside folder, inside folder, and naming conventions mutating with every user?  My personal favorite was using some combination of “v1,” “v2,” or a date after the filename to manage version history, only to find that an earlier version had a more current date stamp.  It’s a miracle we could find anything.  Our Risk Services team has created a SharePoint portal with multiple SharePoint sites to manage almost everything our group needs.  We have areas for blogs and newsletter articles, proposal and seminar development, upcoming training and networking opportunities, policies and procedures, links to frequently used websites, and more.  We’ve even created a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Database for our firm using SharePoint.  If our team is working on it, there’s a site for it.

No matter what your business, SharePoint can help you get organized and share information efficiently and effectively across your team or department.  For example, Accounting Departments can manage account reconciliations, including the use of a simple approval workflow to track preparation and approval.  Internal Audit Departments can manage audit work paper preparation and approval.  Once you envision the layout, creating sites is simple.

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