SharePoint Engagements/Client Management Partner Opportunity Brief
Generate revenue for your company by leveraging your existing technologies.
Identify key opportunity indicators.
As a busy corporate leader, you are constantly challenged to come up with new ways to generate revenue. But if you have implemented Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Windows SharePoint Services, and the “Running Your Business On Microsoft Office System” solution, the opportunities you are looking for are closer than you may think. By sharing the usefulness of this portal offering with customers and business associates, you can generate portal sales that will help you sell additional products and services. The following scenario will help you envision the kinds of challenges your customers may be dealing with. From there, you will discover how to benefit by helping them implement a solution.
Recognize a real-world opportunity.
Imagine you work for a mid-sized consulting firm and have just been assigned program manager of a multimillion dollar collection of projects for the company’s largest client. The assignment includes the following parameters:
Multiple projects
Numerous project teams
Team members from multiple geographies
Ability to easily maintain important project files
Ability for team members to efficiently access project announcements
The project realities listed above would best be addressed by a collaborative platform serving as a “one-stop-shop” for consultants working on their assigned project. This platform would aggregate all the information consultants need to perform their job on one dedicated project engagement site. In addition, you would like to be able to add your own customization, such as the ability to integrate a time-keeping application. This seems like a tall order, and the thought of trying to find such a tool is causing you to lose a lot of sleep.
The above scenario does sound like a tall order, but many businesses are demanding these capabilities. They need to address such issues as lack of a central repository for project documents, inability to track the latest version of a document, miscommunications, and budget overruns due to lack of real-time visibility into project financials. Some of the most common collaboration challenges, which are really indicators that an opportunity exists, are outlined below.
Customer Challenges
Inability to collaborate jointly on documents
No way to know which version of a document is the most recent
Inability to alert team members automatically every time a document is edited
No way to search for project documents
Lack of a central repository for maintaining project documents
No logical information architecture for managing project sites and documents
No way to easily list out project tasks
No single location for managing the project
Inability to report against time spent on a project
No way to easily communicate consultant utilization in a format that is visible to consultants
Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, part of the comprehensive portal offering from Microsoft Windows Server System,™ can help you address all of these issues.
Turn their challenges into your possibilities.
Having recently adopted SharePoint Portal Server 2003, you can appreciate the way in which it solves these collaboration issues. You’ll also appreciate the opportunities this can bring you in terms of helping other companies improve their collaboration efforts. Here is an example of a scenario in which you might be able to realize these opportunities.
A small law firm that routinely assigns several attorneys to work on one case is struggling to coordinate case information so it is visible and accessible to every team member involved. After seeing the way SharePoint Portal Server 2003 worked in conjunction with Windows SharePoint Services-based engagement sites to help manage documents and related project information for your company, you are sure this solution could work for the law firm, too.
You prepare a demo of the capabilities of a project management site in the context of a law firm to share with the company. They are impressed with the solution. Taking you up on your suggestion, the law firm adopts SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and the Microsoft Office System and now uses engagement sites based on Windows SharePoint Services to provide a central location for all pertinent case documents that are easily accessible by all team members. Your willingness to share this success with your customer has strengthened your corporate relationships in the community and opened the door for future sales opportunities.
Some of the specific opportunities that you might encounter in a situation such as the one above are outlined below. These numbers are based on what companies such as yours are actually charging customers for these services. The exact number of hours required will of course depend on many factors, such as the number of sites, the amount of customization, and the overall complexity of the client’s business.
Opportunity
Gathering requirements
10-200 hours
Implementing SharePoint
Portal Server
20-200 hours
Creating custom Web
Parts and integrating
20-600 hours
Creating custom skins to give site unique look and feel
10-100 hours
TOTAL POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITY
60-1100 hours
Understand features and functionalities that enable a solution.
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 makes collaboration easy and effective by offering the following features:
Windows SharePoint Services-based project engagement sites with document libraries to sort and store all pertinent project data
A location for one master document that allows version tracking, check in/check out capabilities, and e-mail alerts when a document is ready for additional review
The ability to allow the integration of additional applications, such as a timesheet application, to create an even more robust tool
Integration of customized Web Parts, such as one that allows consultants to view their utilization on the home page
The merger of structured (i.e., employee information from company database) and unstructured (i.e., PowerPoint presentations and Word files) data that allows one site to keep track of key information such as project assignments and associated rates
The ability to customize a “MyApps” section for each consultant to quickly access applications they need to do their job
The ability to make project information accessible by any team member from any location
The integration of Microsoft Offi ce System applications, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, making their use throughout the portal transparent
Call to action:
The table below matches a customer’s desired solution capability with SharePoint Portal Server 2003 functionality, both out-of-box and customized. This is not an all-inclusive list, but rather provides a high-level overview of how different system functionalities can meet a customer’s business needs.
Additional Resource
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