Effectiveness of SharePoint as an ECM solution

Enterprise Content Management has emerged through the consolidation of diverse technologies. Enterprises create content every day; intentionally and unintentionally within the context of business processes. A strategic approach is required for the effective management of content, but more important is the focus upon the connections between people and content, and must also address behavioral barriers in the workplace.

A Forrester research report stated that about 22% of the respondents preferred SharePoint services for its ECM capabilities and about 52% of them said that it will replace their existing ECM system. Microsoft Office SharePoint Services is also viewed as flexible software that is adaptable to a range of tasks and helps many businesses.

MOSS 2010 services deliver a level of ease and functionality (specifically with regard to adding custom workflows and automating business processes) that are not approached by other solutions. Supplement these functionalities with the potential business value of utilizing an external security model to your SharePoint 2007 implementation - to open the platform to partners, customers, vendors, or employees from other business units – and organizations start seeing some real ROI. SharePoint 2010 provides one software platform, one support skill set, a physical hardware model, backup and disaster recovery solution, and governed “look and feel” that can replace so many costly and disparate solutions that it quickly makes real business sense and can actually add to your organization’s bottom line.

Analysts have maintained that SharePoint’s best-of-breed and fully-integrated components deliver the scalability one demands while your users realize Microsoft’s unmatched familiarity and ease-of-use. SharePoint even provides the full breadth of Content Management capabilities at a fraction of the cost of legacy ECM vendors. This Microsoft product provides one software platform, one support skill set, a physical hardware model, backup and disaster recovery solution, and governed “look and feel” which is unlike other costly and disparate solutions. According to ECM experts, Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) quickly makes real business sense and can actually add to one’s organization’s bottom line.

Microsoft has remarkably found a solution to create connections between SharePoint and its previous products like Office and Exchange. Companies can now edit and make changes to Office documents through Microsoft Office SharePoint Services and also ascertain whether a particular employee is online or not through the Exchange features incorporated into it. Microsoft is thus pushing its old-line software in a more Internet-focused software line rather than ignoring them.