Guest Author: Ken Efta
Allyis

According to a recent survey report by the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), implementations of Microsoft SharePoint generally move forward without a formal business plan, and with confusion about where and how it is to be used.  The survey indicates that less than 50 percent of SharePoint implementations were subject to a formal business case, and only half of those required a financial justification. As a result, most implementations did not have a management plan as to which of SharePoint’s many features were to be used, and where. Meanwhile, SharePoint deployment is proceeding rapidly, with 22 percent of respondents reporting it to be in use by 100 percent of staff. This adoption rate is set to double by this time next year.

Half of the smaller businesses implementing SharePoint are addressing the issues of information management for the first time. Even in the largest organizations, a quarter of the businesses have no previous experience with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) or Document Management (DM) systems. As a result, only 22 percent provide any guidance to staff on the use of content types and classification. In addition, just 15 percent have retention policies and legal discovery procedures – risking content chaos within SharePoint as well as outside of it, according to the AIIM report.

Even for organizations that do have existing ECM and DM systems, nearly a third have yet to define how SharePoint fits with their existing ECM and DM systems. The most popular option is to use SharePoint for collaboration and intranet publishing while relying on existing systems for document and records management. In many cases, SharePoint will be used as a portal or front-end to those existing systems. Only 8 percent of survey respondents are planning to phase out their existing ECM suite in favor of SharePoint, while 7 percent plan to invest in a new ECM or records management suite to go with their SharePoint system.

According to Doug Miles, Director of Market Intelligence for AIIM, “We see that organizations are pushing forward with enterprise-wide rollouts of SharePoint for collaboration and intranet, and are using this universal access to provide single-sign on portals into existing document and records repositories, thereby opening them up for better knowledge sharing.”

The AIIM report also shows that among those who are using SharePoint for traditional ECM applications, there is strong growth in the use of add-on packages to strengthen and supplement standard functionality, particularly in BPM, security, records management, search, Enterprise 2.0 and archive.

Based on over 600 responses, the AIIM Industry Watch research report is entitled “SharePoint- strategies and experiences” and is free to download.

About the research

The survey was taken by 624 individual members of the AIIM community between May 6  and June 5, 2010, using a Web-based tool. Invitations to take the survey were sent via e-mail to a selection of the AIIM worldwide community members.

About AIIM

AIIM (www.aiim.org) is the community that provides education, research, and best practices to help organizations find, control, and optimize their information. For over 60 years, AIIM has been the leading non-profit organization focused on helping users to understand the challenges associated with managing documents, content, records, and business processes. The AIIM community includes over 65,000 ECM users and professionals.

Guest Author: Ken Efta
Allyis

Ken Efta is cofounder and principal consultant of Allyis, a Seattle area technology consulting, development and professional staffing firm offering project, talent and managed team solutions in Microsoft SharePoint, content management, collaboration, business intelligence and project management.  Ken has spent over a decade conceptualizing, designing and building enterprise solutions for clients.  His expertise in Web content management, data quality and business intelligence, and social software and collaboration tools is renowned in the technology industry.