Right now, many businesses are feeling pressure to do more with less. Talent shortages are forcing leaders to reimagine operations with fewer people. As Australia faces a potential recession, leaders also must consider ways to reduce or optimise business costs.
As business process optimisation becomes a strong focus for many companies, tools like SharePoint have become central to achieving more with less. SharePoint, on the surface, may appear as a platform merely for cloud-based file storage and sharing, but when leveraged fully, it offers many ways to optimise your business processes. When coupled with a platform like Power Automate, you can use SharePoint to drive greater efficiencies in project workflows and customer service.
With over 200,000 organisations already gaining significant benefits from the platform, how precisely can your business use SharePoint to redefine business process optimisation?
Centralises project management
SharePoint provides one hub for people working on a project to access essential files, templates, and documents. Such consolidation minimises duplicate efforts and ensures everyone works with the most updated files and information. Additionally, you can automate approvals in SharePoint; instead of people manually sending and signing off on documents, you can use Power Automate to route documents to the people involved in the next stage of the workflow.
Good communication is integral to project management and improving business process optimisation. SharePoint integrates with platforms like Microsoft Teams so people can share documents and information in one place. Attaching SharePoint files and folders to the appropriate Teams ensures everyone has access to the same information and remains aligned on the project.
Additionally, SharePoint promotes enhanced accessibility and transparency. Each document stored will have a version history so that your team can track any changes and see the people that worked on the document previously.
Enhances document and data management
One common challenge many teams face is the habit of individuals storing essential files locally on their devices. Not only does this create the issue of multiple versions of the same file circulating, but it also breeds confusion. When multiple people have different document versions, it becomes difficult to know which is the most recent or accurate version. This situation inevitably leads to duplicated efforts, potential errors, and miscommunication that hinders operations.
SharePoint makes document and data management easy and automatic by providing access to the same version every time. So, your team spends less time on manual work when storing or finding documents and data, reducing errors and rework.
Using SharePoint, your business can also set automatic permissions based on roles. This ensures that only the right people can access specific documents or data. These controls prevent unauthorised people from accessing sensitive information and reduce the need for people to share sensitive documents via email.
Optimises business costs
When you automate processes like document management and approval workflows, you lower the amount of time people spend on tasks which also allows you to lower the number of new people you might have hired to address inefficiencies. You can also decrease the time spent on tasks by automating and optimising them. This direct reduction in labour and time leads to tangible cost optimisation for your business.
With SharePoint, you can ensure that operations run efficiently by connecting various processes, which eliminates bottlenecks and removes redundancies. Such integrations speed up processes and eradicate unnecessary steps, leading to improved resource usage and further cost optimisation.
Errors in business processes can be costly in terms of financial implications and time spent resolving issues. SharePoint minimises the risks of errors by ensuring data consistency. By reducing the likelihood of mistakes, SharePoint enables your business to prevent costly rework and maintain data quality.
Scales as the business grows
As your business grows – acquiring more customers and staff – manual tasks become serious bottlenecks that slow your operations. As the number of staff and operational demands increase, so does the complexity of managing resources and ensuring seamless workflows.
Automating processes in a platform like SharePoint ensures consistency and efficiency even as you expand. You can add or remove users as needed; when onboarding new hires, automation ensures that the appropriate permissions, access levels, and role-based assignments are quickly set up for new users. When people leave the organisation, you can use automation again to revoke access.
Storage needs often grow in tandem with a business. With SharePoint, your company can scale storage capacity without drastically changing the existing infrastructure.
Drives an improved customer experience
When you optimise internal processes, it has a knock-on effect on the customer experience as well. When your teams can communicate and collaborate effectively, solving queries, issues, or service requests becomes easier, which means faster response times. This speed enables your team to meet customer expectations and often exceed them, leading to heightened satisfaction levels.
SharePoint ensures that information sharing across teams remains consistent. When every team member accesses and works from the same pool of updated information, discrepancies in customer interactions are minimised. This uniformity ensures that customers receive consistent and accurate information no matter who they interact with, fostering trust and reliability.
Conclusion
SharePoint gives your business the tools to improve project workflows, enhance document management, reduce costs, scale the business and enhance customer experiences. It is not just another application in the Microsoft 365 suite; it’s a cornerstone of the platform that unifies your business in a dynamic workspace. Its integrations with the entire Microsoft 365 suite create a digital ecosystem that fosters business process optimisation, enabling you to strengthen project workflows and document management.
Why choose Wyntec as your business process optimisation partner?
At Wyntec, we believe that business process optimisation starts with strong technology leadership. So, we developed our services to help drive digital transformation, bolster cyber security, and ensure business continuity. Our experienced IT leaders will work closely with you to understand your company’s unique challenges and build a strategy for solving potential issues, minimising downtime and maximising productivity. Visit our Technology Leadership page for more information on what we offer.
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