Getting more from SharePoint Part 1
Using “intranet in a box” preconfigured offerings
to get more from SharePoint, Office 365, Delve, Planner, OneDrive, Video and Power BI

A good beginning does not ensure adoption

Socialization and engagement can be faster and more effective with a well-constructed starting point that has been user tested and vetted, but that does not mean that user acceptance and adoption will be automatic. It is important to include lunch and learns, training sessions and mechanisms for capturing ongoing feedback for adjustments and improvements. Those initiatives need to be governed through a structured decision-making process with representation from the correct stakeholders. Resources are available from Microsoft in its FastTrack Center (fasttrack.microsoft.com), as well as onboarding services from the FastTrack Team.

There are many ways to jumpstart an Office 365 or SharePoint deployment, including using applications developed by IIB vendors. Many of those applications save significant time over a custom software approach. The challenge is that selecting the correct starting point is not a trivial matter and, if done correctly, entails a thorough investigation and selection project, including development of a vendor scorecard, development of use cases and, most importantly, alignment with corporate and departmental strategic objectives. It is also very important to evaluate the vendor’s core information architecture (preconfigured taxonomies, metadata schemas and content types) and information management constructs (leveraging SharePoint for governance and compliance).

Those fundamental approaches make or break both custom and preconfigured solutions. Organizations have been through the pain of out-of-the-box SharePoint deployments that only exploit a tiny fraction of the potential value of knowledge management and collaboration. Intranet in a box solutions are a viable way to quickly take advantage of some very exciting new capabilities available in this space.