Don't collect paper

A company would certainly be married to Sharepoint if they were to develop any .NET business intelligence Dashboards or integrate their workflow into Sharepoint. Microsoft has not developed any standards based workflow or portlet tools. Other vendors rely on JSR 168 portlets, which means that a portlet could be taken from one server to another. Sharepoint doesn't do that. Surprise! Microsoft doesn't play well with others. Also, I have run into huge problems growning Sharepoint installations. Sure, a single server or a server farm that is all built under the same tree works well, but try to take two separate Sharepoint installations and bring them together under a single management instance. You end up with duplicate and orphaned objects which can't be managed.

Sure, Sharepoint does some things very well. It is a fine document management system. Add Groove folder synchronization and it's a very good solution for document management. Powerpoint libraries are a great feature. All of that is great. I won't deny that. But try to do something a little out of the ordinary, like build a workflow, and now you have a solution that is Sharepoint specific and you are locked in if you want to maintain your investment. Being locked in to a knowledge management product sounds like bad news. The example of a network operating system isn't really applicable here. I'm talking about functionality that is added by coding for a system. So in that respect - yes there are hundreds if not thousands of companies married to technologies. How many companies are still running mainframes because they won't scrap the code they wrote 30 years ago?

Mike, I've enjoyed this discussion. I wish more readers were as engaging as you. Thank you for your comments.

And I also agree with you that many companies will probably never go paperless. But there are more and more that are trying and hopefully they can lead by example.

I am really surprised by your comments about how you would consult a client away from a "complete solution" like a SharePoint solution or something similar. In addition, I am surprised to see you would think that a company would be married to SharePoint and Microsoft if implemented.

Just because Microsoft has actually made a useful tool such as sharepoint that improves business performance, doesn't mean that it is "from the dark side" and thus "evil". Yes, my company is a proud Microsoft Partner, but that doesn't mean that we always recommend a Microsoft solution to a client. Also, I must say that we are not a consulting firm that works on SharePoint installations - so I am not looking for a consulting engagement by posting about the tool.

In regards to the free version of SharePoint not having all of the tools that the SharePoint Portal Version would have, is true. However, for a small business, the free version is more than adequate for them to start with, and as they grown as a business to in turn grow into the full version. I complete disagree with the lack of ease to use. The product uses a very simple web-based gui interface that even a beginner can figure out quickly.

I do find concern with your comment of becoming "married" because they chose to implement the product. Let me ask you a simple question, when does any company truly "marry" a software vendor? Look at the history of software - in the begining there was a big push to deploy thin clients, as well as in the 80's networks were not run by the big bad Microsoft. They were run by products from Novell, email communications was Groupware, Lotus Notes, etc. Over the years, I have seen top 50 law firms move from Hummingbird to I-manage to Worlddox and back to Hummingbird - as an FYI - both all three are very high end document management system typicaly found in the legal markets. These conversions & licensing can run into high 5 and 6 digits. Look at the migration away from Novell to Microsoft Server, or from Lotus to Exchange over the years. So, I don't see where any company is tied to one product.

Although, I do agree that companies do need to look towards moving away from paper towards a total electronic system. I don't believe we will see a true paperless system in the next 10 years, but I do believe that we are a business community are becoming more "Green" ...

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Hi Mike,
You make a good point - if everything were electronic to begin with it would be a lot more efficient as a whole process. I'm not a big fan of Sharepoint, especially the free functionality which I think falls short (and I think it falls short purposely to force businesses to buy the full version). It's tough to manage and it is proprietary. I wouldn't put any of my corporate info in a proprietary solution. Once a company puts all of their documents and knowledge into Sharepoint, how could they ever leave Microsoft? They may not want to leave Microsoft anyway.

You point still stands though. It is much better to start electronic and stay electronic than to get paper and scan it in again. I may not like Sharepoint, but it would be a step forward from a paper based process.

Hi Denise,
I do everything I can to push my own business and others towards going paperless. I don't think we can blame the baby boomers - I know plenty of baby boomers who scan everything in and store it on a hard drive rather than storing paper (my father used to do business almost entirely on paper and now it is almost entirely electronic and he's a baby boomer). I think that maybe it is our society. How many times has someone said, "This is important. Print it out and save it." This is probably a little like digital photos - 15 years ago I printed them all out and now I never print them out. I hate to admit it, but these things take time.

I think that the technology is definitely there for us to go paperless but the business processes haven't kept up with the tech in this case. Many times I put a digital signature on a contract and email to a client, and then they answer and ask me to print it out, sign it and fax it back because those are their business requirements. What we really need is an overall understanding by everyone that paper is wasteful.

To be more realistic though, it isn't that we're saving the planet. Few businesses will act on that. More businesses will act on we are saving you money. Even if you don't care about the planet, you should care about the cost of paper, toner, printer servicing, file cabinets, the rent you're paying on the extra space you need to store the file cabinets, and even the recurring expense of archiving offsite. Compared to those expenses, hard drive space is very cheap. I think that once that argument becomes common place we'll rapidly advance on the paperless office.

Brad - I like your idea about using a service like File123.com. Going paperless helps with cutting down costs for storage, in addition to taking a step towards environmental friendliness.

However, I am surprised that you didn't introduce small businesses towards a "SharePoint" service. Whether it is internal or external to the corporate network. Introducing SharePoint into a work environment is fairly easy, plus there are some great advantages for SharePoint - Such as:

- Advanced Security / Administrative Control - Like File/Folder security on a Windows File Server on a Windows Domain/Network - SharePoint will allow advance security to the file based on user rights. Whole workspaces can be visable for users or parts removed based on user id.
- Easy to use Collaborative Tools - Team Workspaces, coordinate calendars, announcements and alerts, etc.
- Scalability and Ease to Taylor to Needs - Customization is extremely easy with 2.0 and 3.0 of SharePoint.
- Web-based Snap Ins - The web parts that you can add to a site can be invaluable for a company.

SharePoint is not only a Document Management System - Onlne storage, but also a corporate portal that can allow so much more for small companies.

Plus if the company has a standard Windows 2003 Server - SharePoint Team services is free for the company to deploy.

Regards
Mike Holland
Managing Director

Net-Flow Solutions
www.Net-FlowSolutions.com ...

Matt -

I remember 20 (or so) years ago...showing my age now...when the techies declared we were on the verge of the paperless office. Are we almost there? Or is the Baby Boom generation keeping us stuck in the paper world?