Microsoft SharePoint is the fastest growing product in Microsoft's history, and is rapidly being adopted by organisations large and small across the globe. The size and scalability of the product allows it to address a number of business needs, and organisations typically use it as a core part of many of their IT applications. The design and flexibility of the product is such that it can often become a core part of an organisation's working practises.

At its core, SharePoint allows users to store and manage content, in the form of documents, forms, tasks and more. This content is stored in libraries across the site that can be organised in whatever manner best suits the structure and layout of your organisation. SharePoint offers a wide range of functionality including documents and records management, information publishing, news services, reporting services, subscriptions & alerts, chat rooms, collaboration services and blogs. It also includes features for business data analysis as well as integration with Microsoft Office applications, such as project management capabilities or exposing Microsoft Office InfoPath forms via a browser. It can also host specific libraries, such as PowerPoint template libraries.

Some SharePoint facts

• SharePoint is the fastest-growing product in the history of Microsoft
• Over 100 million licenses of SharePoint have been sold worldwide
• SharePoint has been adopted by over 17,000 companies worldwide
• SharePoint is listed, by Forrester, as the number 1 portal product
• SharePoint is positioned as a leader within the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals products

SharePoint as a CMS

SharePoint is built around a suite of Microsoft technologies, meaning the product integrates seamlessly with a wide range of software. But it also means that it automatically inherits the extensive design, layout and theming capabilites that the Microsoft .NET platform makes available. As such, the product can be branded and themed easily, and with a great degree of flexibility.

Windows Workflow Foundation enables complex workflows to be developed, allowing SharePoint to mirror real-world business practise. Using this technology, it is easy to setup publishing workflows whereby users can edit and author content for publishing to your website, which will then trigger approval routines for managers and other staff to review all content before go-live. These workflows can be multi-tier, requiring multiple levels of review and approval before go-live if necessary.

SharePoint has full auditing and tracking capabilities, meaning the system can keep track of any and all changes that occur, and allow users to quickly revert any changes that have been made in error. This level of security and redundancy means that you'll never have to worry about losing content by accident.

These are just a few of the features SharePoint has to offer, see here for full information.

Perfect Image saw the potential of the SharePoint platform at an early stage, and has been working with clients to develop and deploy the product for many years. We will work with you to identify how SharePoint could be applied to your organisation, and outline the benefits it can bring to your company and employees.