Microsoft SharePoint has been a widely-used intranet, collaboration and document management platform for many years, and for good reason. It is a powerful tool that enables companies to create a comprehensive intranet portal that can serve as a central hub for all of their business processes. With the advancement of MS 365 in the recent years, the SharePoint Online has become an excellent tool for creating and managing a truly engaging company intranet portal with personalized, interactive and attractive content formats. Company communication content is more than ever essential for the corporate culture development. Since not everyone would consume such a content at the same time, a one-stop-portal successfully hosts diverse content formats making them available 24/7 to all employees.
Here are some of the reasons Microsoft SharePoint is a perfect solution for a company intranet portal:
Customizable and Flexible
One of the most significant advantages of Microsoft SharePoint Online is its flexibility and customizability. Companies can use SharePoint to create a custom intranet portal that meets their specific business needs, from company-wide communication of activities, results, recognitions, interesting stuff, feedbacks and quizes, to document management, task tracking, and collaboration. SharePoint Online can be tailored to suit the unique requirements of any organization and can be used to build a portal that aligns with their business goals and attracts employees to want to use it.
Easy to Administer
Gone are the days when companies had to depend on the vendor that developed their intranet portal for every small change in layout or functionalities. SharePoint Online allows dedicated administrators from the company employees to not only change content, but manage sections, views, and web part functionalities. In other words, SharePoint Online has been developed as a portal builder with parts which every administrator can use, edit, and modify in order to build the desired page layout and functionalities.
Media and Personalized Content
SharePoint Online makes it easy to embed and view video, audio and text content, broadcasted live coverages, interviews, podcasts, articles, guidelines and more in a convenient, engaging, and interactive format. Metadata allows content to be displayed based on category, date, department, or other conditions. In addition, personalized feed with the employee specific content of interest and work could be easily displayed on the company intranet home page, making the intranet portal a single point-of-entry tool leading to all other systems, which in addition is both interesting and useful to employees.
Document Management
Document management is an integral part of any intranet portal, and SharePoint excels in this area. SharePoint provides a powerful document management system that makes it easy for employees to share, collaborate, and manage documents. SharePoint's document management features include version control, document approval workflows, and metadata tagging, making it easy for users to quickly find the documents they need.
Collaboration
Collaboration is essential for any successful intranet portal, and SharePoint provides a range of tools to support collaboration. SharePoint allows employees to work together on specific files, projects, share information, and communicate in real-time. SharePoint's collaboration tools include team sites, documents, discussion boards, and articles, enabling users to work together efficiently and effectively.
Security
Security is a top concern for any organization, and SharePoint provides robust security features to protect your company's data. SharePoint includes role-based access control, which allows administrators to assign different levels of access to different users. SharePoint also includes data loss prevention features, which can help prevent sensitive information from being shared outside the organization.
Integration with Microsoft Office Suite
SharePoint Online integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products, making it easy for employees to work with familiar tools. SharePoint supports the creation and editing of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents directly from the portal, allowing users to collaborate on documents in real-time.
Business Processes Automation
In addition to the integration benefits, SharePoint Online integrates easily with MS Power Automate to automate simple or complex business processes with pre-built low-code, drag-and-drop functionalities. There are hundreds of ready to use connectors, templates, and AI assistance, to build any business process or automate a repetitive task - from data management, through leave requests and complex approval workflows.
Business ApplicationsSharePoint Online also integrates seamlessly with MS Power Apps - a suite of services, applications and connectors to build custom business apps, again with low-code, drag-and-drop functionalities, designing an app in a similar way to designing a PowerPoint slide. If no custom design is needed, there is an option to automatically generate a model-driven app from your business data and processes.
Mobile-Friendly
By default any portal or website today should be mobile-friendly. SharePoint Online is designed to work on mobile devices, providing a responsive design that adapts to the user's screen size. This makes it easy for the content administrators not to worry about how a page will be shown on mobile devices, and for the employees - to access the portal from any device and stay connected with their team no matter whether they are in the office or not.
In conclusion, Microsoft SharePoint Online is a solution companies should seriously consider when planning their intranet portals as it offers a lot of benefits that make it efficient, low-code and flexible platform that can help businesses improve their internal communications, enhance collaboration, and increase productivity.
