5 Reasons Why SharePoint is the Best for Government Agencies

Government officials are tasked with finding ways to improve efficiency and cut costs within their agency. Based on these goals, here are five features that could make a move to Microsoft SharePoint fruitful for your organization.

1. SharePoint’s Automated Data Management Tools

Government agencies have access to crazy amounts of data. Whether it’s demographic data taken from social media, traffic data from street cameras and sensors, or weather patterns from forecast systems; government agencies aggregate and analyze massive amounts of data every day.

Microsoft tools can pull all of this data derived from the IoT automatically into SharePoint for your teams to analyze according to the specific business process workflows and reports they create. The automation of data collection and initial analysis through worklflows and reports amounts to considerable time savings, employee reduction and overall decrease in costs.

2. SharePoint’s Site Creation Capabilities

SharePoint’s out of the box features for website creation allow government agencies to quickly create and update webpages without holding an extensive development background. This allows for agencies to employ less developers and it is also significantly reduces the costs of any site updates or additions. The robust library of out of the box features limits the amount of true custom code used throughout your site. This factor reduces the opportunity for coding errors and the need for a large web support team to fix any issues.

3. SharePoint Project Collaboration Tools

The greatest value in SharePoint for most organizations is the fact that it can be leveraged for project collaboration. This is especially useful for the federal government, in which large agencies boast a number of offices spread across the globe where employees at several different locations contribute to projects simultaneously.

Features such as Skype for business allows for video and text based conversations and keeps government employees connected despite their physical location. Versioning features included in Microsoft documents keeps updates organized and well documented. Additionally, tools such as business process workflows automatically move projects along the appropriate paths without too much human intervention. These features reduce time and travel costs for every project.

4. Centralized Microsoft Products

Point #3 mentioned many products that are included in your SharePoint site, but it barely scratches the surface of all the apps and features bundled into your SharePoint environment that you can leverage. The centralization of all of these products make it easier to manage and troubleshoot issues. It also reduces the costs of having to pay for features from multiple vendors and eliminates the confusion and work of your staff in terms of developing processes across solutions. Everything is centralized in terms of costs and management, which makes life easier and simpler for all involved.

5. Training is Included

New products always mean there is a new learning curve that must be overcome. New hires always come with a training cost. By implementing a SharePoint solution for your organization, Microsoft has the training covered for the most part. By purchasing a Microsoft software volume licensing agreement, you will get SATVs (Software Assurance Training Vouchers) bundled in. These vouchers can be applied to a number of on-demand and in-person training sessions that your staff can leverage to learn the product or keep their skills up to date on any changes and the training is all Microsoft approved so you know they are learning things the right way. In this way you are not only saving on your training budget but you are also reducing the time spent between overcoming the learning curve and getting the most you can out of your SharePoint environment.