Introduction

I had been engaged to work with a Welsh government inspectorate on their vision for the Microsoft SharePoint platform and how it can transform their business processes and internal\external stakeholder engagements.

The organisation had seen a demonstration of a records management solution implemented at a central government department that my organisation had been involved in and felt that it met their needs for an intuitive, pragmatic approach to records management.

I was asked to lead an initial workshop to facilitate the organisation in articulating their vision, business requirements and how technology could support the delivery of their business strategy, around records management.

Client Problem

Fundamentally, the organisation “did not know what they did not know”. They knew they had a records management issue, but what surrounded and impacted that issue was a significant unknown, they were really in the dark…

Their immediate focus was on how they could formalise the records management processes and derive business value from formal “records” throughout the organisation, rather than having records “locked away”.

Having seen Microsoft SharePoint in action at a central government department they could see the potential around records management and enabling the delivery of other business outcomes through ensuring the right information (records) were available to the right audience, at the right time in an appropriate manner. This meant exposing information securely to their clients, internally on their intranet and to the wider citizen audience, something their current IT platforms wouldn’t support in a simple, cost effective manner.

Workshop

The initial workshop was well attended by the key client stakeholders with attendees from IT, Marketing and the business in terms of front-line inspectors. The primary purpose of this session was to facilitate an exploration into how records management could be implemented and integrated into the clients existing business and IT roadmap using the Microsoft SharePoint platform.

Some of the key initial conversations were focussed on how the value of records would be extend through re-purposing and increased exposure across the organisation. This stemmed a client realisation that their web site was not delivering the value it could, especially to its external stakeholders and that actually SharePoint could deliver what they required and facilitate the interoperability between records management and the public facing web site.

This created a conversation around security and business processes which developed into a requirement for an extranet solution to facilitate a more proactive engagement with their primary clients.

Further exploration of this revealed the suitability of Microsoft SharePoint in maximising the value of their existing business processes (paper and electronic based) through Microsoft SharePoint in the delivery of business scenarios such as data capture, processing, workflow and publication. Naturally this led to the role of the intranet in the facilitation of internal knowledge capture, access to records, social networking, organisation communications and internal business process, again leading to the realisation that SharePoint could indeed play a significant enabling role in this scenario.

So a conversation initially focussed on records management brought about the realisation to this client that their knowledge, information, records and business processes transcend individual functional areas and traditional delivery channels and therefore needs to be supported in a holistic manner by an extensible platform in order for them to fully meet their organisational vision.

By the end of the workshop it was clear to the client that records management was just one facet of their overall business challenge and that SharePoint could facilitate the delivery of their end to end information management requirements. The room was bright; the light bulbs were all switched on!   

 

Guest Author: Ant Clay

www.Twitter.com/Soulsailor
www.AntClay.com

Antony Clay is Deputy Head of the Strategic Consultancy Group at Trinity Expert Systems. He has been with Trinity for over two years, prior to this he headed up the Microsoft Consulting practice at Serco Solutions and the eBusiness Consulting Practice at ITNET.
Antony’s technical passions are:

• Applications Strategy
• Re-telling Business Stories
• How cultural changes and Web2.0 influence the Enterprise
• Delivering business value through the Microsoft applications platform.