Benefits of Microsoft SharePoint

Having a website today for your organization or business is a must. An effective website contains relevant information about products, services, location, and pertinent contact information.

Over the years, we have found that once business owners have a website, they often start to wonder if they can use that website to store, access and share business documents used by senior management or their board of directors.

While the concept of being able to create, store, share and access business files in the cloud is a good one, placing  sensitive files on a web server that hosts a business’s public facing website could be a security disaster. Enter Microsoft SharePoint.

Microsoft SharePoint is a collaboration tool that integrates with Microsoft Office 365 and is used by 78% of Fortune 500 companies in America. SharePoint provides a secure place to store, organize, share, and access information from any device, perfect for the office, home office or on the go.

Additionally, sharing with people inside your organization is just as easy as those you work with outside the organization. This is especially helpful for nonprofits who likely have multiple committees and fundraising groups whose members fluctuate over the years. SharePoint is the consistent location where documents live, regardless of who the committee chairs happen to be. Adding and removing new members to SharePoint sites is as easy as a few clicks.

As an example, let’s say your organization or business has a Marketing Committee. You could create a SharePoint site called “Marketing” and within that Marketing SharePoint site is a Documents folder that becomes your central document library for all things marketing!  All documents, whether they are Word, Excel, Access, etc. can be stored in this central location, accessible to anyone within the group. Group members can easily track document changes, add comments to notify fellow SharePoint users of updates, or work together simultaneously on the same document, spreadsheet, etc.

Another great bonus to creating a SharePoint site for this Marketing Committee is that by doing so , the site automatically creates an email distribution group for marketing@yourdomain.com. Anyone belonging to the Microsoft SharePoint site will receive any email sent to that address. This is particularly helpful for organizations where the group members change frequently. Using the Sync feature adds the SharePoint site folders to your existing Windows file structure, making sure everyone has access to the most recent file versions.

As a cloud solution, SharePoint puts security and compliance requirements first so that you can focus on doing what you do best – running your business.  We also remind customers that one of the most important things you can do to safeguard business data is to require two-factor authentication for any Microsoft 365 product, SharePoint included.

While this article just begins to scratch the surface of all that Microsoft SharePoint can do, one thing is clear – SharePoint increases collaboration abilities while improving workflow across the board. Give us a call to learn more and see how it can help your business today!