SharePoint is a small world within the Microsoft product ecosystem. Every year new features arrive, and with each new feature, information, compliance requirements, and even best practices to follow increase. Having a friendly and knowledgeable SharePoint consultant to guide us through all the details can make a big difference. In this article, we are going to discover what a consulting service is and what it does and we will see who can help us navigate the complex landscape of the Microsoft collaboration platform.
Microsoft SharePoint, especially in the cloud version of SharePoint Online, offers the definitive platform for providing solutions that optimize business processes and improve employee productivity. They can take your business to the next level.
It won't be a surprise to learn that there's a lot to learn when it comes to streamlining business operations through SharePoint. From content management and beyond, the benefits of using the SharePoint platform effectively are virtually endless.
This, of course, can be very challenging.
But don't worry, you don't have to be alone on this journey.
The web is full of professionals offering various SharePoint consulting solutions designed to help entrepreneurs, IT managers, CFOs, CEOs, and others manage SharePoint the way that works best for them and their companies. All of these services are offered in virtual mode, ensuring a flexible, safe and comfortable learning experience.
In the next sections, we are therefore going to see what a SharePoint consultant worthy of the name is and what it can offer your business.
First, however, let's do a brief review.
Microsoft SharePoint is a web-based collaboration system whose functions are focused on an intranet-based intercompany collaboration experience that allows users to securely share and manage content and offers workflow collaboration capabilities, list databases and other web components to allow business teams to work together.
The platform's many features make it much easier for people to work together on ad hoc projects and establish standard business processes for sharing information, publishing documents and recording data.
For a web-based collaboration platform, SharePoint is easy to maintain and, at a fundamental level, it's easy for business users to understand. It is also infinitely customizable and extremely scalable, and there are many different ways in which companies can use SharePoint to significantly increase their productivity and achieve a great return on investment.
SharePoint allows increased productivity and visibility for workers in all sectors, businesses and companies of all sizes and has been fundamental for the last 23 years in increasing work efficiency in Fortune 500 companies as an intranet platform that crosses all business sectors.
Adopted by more than 200,000 companies globally, Microsoft SharePoint stands out as a leading content management platform that encourages and facilitates teamwork around the world.
There are so many possible SharePoint applications and listing them all would be practically impossible.
We will therefore limit ourselves to giving a general overview of the most common uses of SharePoint within a corporate work environment.
And this, as we have already mentioned, is only the tip of the iceberg.
We created intranet.ai, which now has over 200 installations worldwide. It is the ready-to-use and customizable solution for digitizing the processes and communication of any company. We'll help you:
Contact us if you have a SharePoint Online project in mind.
To get the most out of the SharePoint platform, you need to customize it. And that's where SharePoint consulting services come in.
A SharePoint consultant can be said to be your trusted expert who manages SharePoint for us. After all, you can have a lot of expectations about the performance and implementations of the platform, and consultants can help to fully meet them in a short time.
These are generally experts with years of experience and expertise in managing SharePoint and can help you get everything you need done. When you have a SharePoint consultant at your side, you can really make the most of all the potential of the Microsoft collaboration platform.
As we saw in the previous section, SharePoint is an extremely flexible platform for digitizing the complex set of business activities and this is possible thanks to the wide range of features it offers. In fact, it allows deep customization to adapt to the needs of each individual organization.
Asking consultants for help can be essential to build useful and secure sites for employees for company data, which are exchanged, updated and stored daily on sites such as the company intranet, or if you want customized applications that can further enrich your digital environment.
Investing in SharePoint consulting services can accelerate your company's growth, streamline operations, and improve team collaboration. With the help of competent professionals, it will be possible to do this and much more.
If you are still wondering why you should hire a Microsoft SharePoint consultant well, let's get rid of this curiosity too and let's see some of the many advantages that you can benefit from by hiring a consultant.
When you decide to use SharePoint, you need to have very clear objectives and purposes:
It's important to answer many of these questions to fully exploit the potential of the SharePoint platform. In this context, a Microsoft SharePoint consultant can be of great help.
These professionals are experts at understanding business needs and requirements. They will be responsible for the initial design and planning of the SharePoint platform based on their specific needs and will consider almost every fundamental aspect to ensure that you get the most benefits from SharePoint.
It will be evaluated if the basic functionality of SharePoint is sufficient or if it is necessary to customize the platform to meet the required requirements.
While SharePoint offers some great standard functionality, sometimes you need something more. Complex business processes and particular challenges may require the integration of third-party tools and technologies with the SharePoint platform.
In these cases, the SharePoint consultant will help integrate third-party tools and software to add additional functionality to SharePoint. There are many feature-rich third-party tools that can be integrated with SharePoint. These integrations help improve efficiency and productivity within the organization, while supporting business objectives.
While SharePoint offers a lot of excellent functionality and features, it can be intimidating for users, as it is a very large platform full of options. When you've never used a platform like this before, using SharePoint can be a challenge for you and your employees.
It is in these cases that SharePoint consultants can come to our aid. We need people who are experts in the platform, able to make the most of all the benefits it offers.
In addition to ensuring a smooth implementation, these consultants can also train employees, perform basic troubleshooting, and manage operations in the early stages. It's very helpful to have someone on your side who can provide support if you have problems or difficulties. This way, employees will feel more secure and comfortable using SharePoint.
The main reason why you choose SharePoint for your organization is to improve efficiency and productivity. What happens if these two important objectives are not achieved?
You can streamline tasks and processes by creating workflows that allow teams to collaborate and communicate efficiently and effortlessly. With these special and optimized workflows, you will notice obvious improvements in various activities and operations.
By offering customized workflows, SharePoint consultants can help improve processes and ensure greater efficiency and productivity, without our team having to worry about the more technical aspects.
When you invest a lot in SharePoint, you also expect a good return on investment, right?
Why not choose someone who can guarantee you a good ROI? By hiring a Microsoft SharePoint consultant, you will end up saving a lot of time and money, while obtaining a customized SharePoint platform, with greater efficiency and productivity.
For example, you can make the most of the SharePoint platform by integrating it with the CRM software already in use. And this is where SharePoint experts come in, who can offer us innovative ideas to reduce implementation costs and help us obtain all the advantages that SharePoint offers in order to give our organization the best return on investment.
It is not possible to ask employees to abandon their important activities to participate in training courses. It's not a viable solution for a variety of reasons, but at the same time, they need to be proficient in using SharePoint. Investing too much in training could put your budget at risk.
When you hire a SharePoint consultant, you have experts who can handle training excellently. SharePoint consultants have proven teaching methods and ensure that everyone learns to use SharePoint quickly.
Their practical experience and guidance make the process easier, allowing employees to quickly and successfully capture all the important aspects of SharePoint.
Now that we are more clear about what a consulting service offers for our SharePoint environments, let's move on to the next question that those looking for a solution to make the most of their collaboration platform will probably have asked themselves: how do I choose the right one?
Certainly, an unobvious question.
If you do a simple search on the internet, you will find many SharePoint consulting firms that call themselves the best on the market.
However, you should not choose one at random, because it could cost a lot and pay very little compared to what you can expect. It is therefore very important to ensure that you select the right SharePoint consulting firm, with appropriate experience and expertise in the sector and a proven track record of results.
To help you understand what to look for, in the list below we will provide what can be defined as the main aspects to consider before choosing a SharePoint consulting firm:
Now that we know what a consulting firm can offer and what are the key signs of a quality service, there is only one question left to answer: who to choose?
The answer could literally be right before your eyes.
Let's talk about Dev4Side.
With more than 20 years of experience in developing business software on Microsoft environments, we have in our long curriculum a catalog of more than 50 vertical applications for SharePoint and we are currently the best supplier that can be found in Italy (but we could say also in the world) for projects dedicated to the creation of the digital workplace, at the center of which is the intranet.
In addition to having collaborated with small and medium-sized businesses across the country, we have also developed SharePoint applications for international organizations such as MSC Cruises, demonstrating incredible versatility in implementing custom solutions suitable for every need and budget.
We use SharePoint Online to digitize every internal need, including the management of approvals, requests, reservations, forms previously based on paper, and we use the platform for document generation, integrations with other platforms and more, offering modern and efficient solutions to improve business processes.
We are able to assist the customer in the implementation of their document system, providing support both for the creation of documentary archives and for the complete management of the document lifecycle. This includes creation from templates, protocollation, management of approval flows, publication and distribution, ensuring an integrated and efficient document process.
Our professionals will be at your disposal to facilitate the transition of your intranet to SharePoint, with the aim of optimizing infrastructure and management costs, as well as maximizing the use of the advanced collaborative features offered by the Cloud platform.
We deal not only with the intranet, but also with the transition of file shares and complete tenants, including Teams and Mailbox, ensuring a fluid and efficient management of all corporate digital assets.
Finally, thanks to our solid expertise in SharePoint Framework (SPFx), we can implement agile and high-performance solutions, optimizing the productivity and efficiency of the entire corporate SharePoint tenant.
To make the facts speak for themselves, you can consult the success stories regarding the SharePoint solutions created for our customers, described in detail by the same experts who followed their design and implementation, without ever lacking their support, even after the development was completed.
SharePoint has accompanied the daily work of companies of all types scattered around the world since 2001 and it is normal that over the years this valuable tool has become increasingly rich in options and functionalities that make it one of the best collaboration platforms on the market.
Navigating its complex landscape can be difficult, but with the help of qualified experts, it will be possible to make your visions a reality and finally make the most of the possibilities offered by the Microsoft collaboration platform, with the security of obtaining the best solution for your organization.
So what are you waiting for? If your goal is to take your SharePoint environments to the next level, with the help of a consulting service like Dev4Side your vision will not remain just an idea, but could soon become an extremely concrete reality.
A SharePoint consulting service is a professional support designed to help companies take full advantage of the SharePoint platform. This type of service includes activities such as the analysis of needs, the design of digital solutions, the configuration of the platform and support in the management of content, processes and business collaborations. The consultant supports the organization in the process of adopting and developing SharePoint, proposing tailor-made configurations based on business objectives.
A SharePoint consultant is used to transform SharePoint into a truly useful and functional platform for the company. Its role is to facilitate the adoption of the platform, identify the most effective solutions based on the specific context, implement integrations with other tools already in use, and ensure that the configuration supports daily activities efficiently. The consultant becomes a point of reference for dealing with the complexity of the platform and guiding the company towards a conscious and strategic use.
Relying on a SharePoint consultant means being able to count on an expert capable of correctly interpreting business needs and transforming them into concrete solutions. This leads to a faster implementation, a configuration that is more consistent with the organization's objectives, and greater effectiveness in training users. In addition, consulting makes it possible to reduce training times, improve internal productivity and obtain a higher return on investment thanks to a targeted use of SharePoint functionality.
To choose the most suitable consulting service, it is essential to evaluate the supplier's ability to understand the business context, propose effective solutions and clearly explain the functionality of the platform. It is important that the consultant is well aware of both SharePoint and the complementary tools of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, knows how to manage projects with an Agile approach and provides clear documentation, in addition to demonstrating constant updates on the platform's news. The possibility of receiving practical demonstrations and the support of a multidisciplinary team are also signs of a quality service.
Dev4Side is a partner with more than 15 years of experience in developing SharePoint Online solutions and represents one of the strongest companies in Italy in this field. The company has created more than 50 vertical applications for the platform, working with clients of all sizes, from SMEs to multinationals. The ability to digitize business processes, manage documentation, integrate existing tools and offer complete support for intranets, extranets and Microsoft 365 environments makes Dev4Side an authoritative and reliable reference for those who want to get the most out of SharePoint.
Hiring a SharePoint consultant is especially useful when you want to design or renew an intranet, when you need to migrate files or content from other systems, or when you want to automate complex business processes. It is also recommended in cases where employees are not familiar with SharePoint and need training or when they want to integrate tools already in use with the platform. In all these scenarios, the consultant facilitates the adoption of technology and makes the transition more fluid, efficient and sustainable.
SharePoint isn't designed exclusively for large companies, but it's also perfectly suited to the needs of smaller organizations. Thanks to its modular structure and the possibility of configuring it according to the context, SharePoint proves to be a useful platform for companies of all sizes. It has been adopted by more than 200,000 companies around the world precisely because it can support both small teams and multinational companies, offering advanced document management, collaboration and process automation capabilities.
The Modern Work team specializes in developing and integrating custom solutions across the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem. We design native applications for Microsoft and Azure platforms, and we implement business processes that maximize the return on investment in Microsoft 365.
