If Your Feet aren’t on the Ground, Your Head Should be in the Cloud

If Your Feet aren't on the Ground, Your Head Should be in the Cloud


If you’re in senior management and considering the question of implementing your SharePoint intranet in the Cloud versus using your own servers (or dedicated hosted servers), I’ve got good news.  It’s easy to make the right choice if you briefly consider the following factors.

Will You Show Me Yours If I Show You Mine?

Will You Show Me Yours If I Show You Mine?


Sure, we’re all involved in the world of SharePoint… We love it…  But what if a few of us decided on a change of career?  Let’s say a few of us got together and decided to start a coffee shop…

SharePoint Santa: 5 Branding Improvements I’d Like To See Under My Tree

SharePoint Santa: 5 Branding Improvements I'd Like To See Under My Tree

 Dear SharePoint Santa,

Many people agree that the appearance and user interface of SharePoint need to be augmented and customized in order to meet their marketing and operational requirements.  While this is especially true for Public Facing sites, it’s equally important for many corporate Intranets.   Unfortunately, the common method for Branding SharePoint, (lots of custom CSS) is expensive to implement and typically lost upon migration to the next version.

What Your Training Department Doesn’t Want You To Know

What Your Training Department Doesn't Want You To Know

Still using “Instructor Led” Training? Don’t let your Board find out!

Sure, instructor led training was the standard way to train in corporate environments for the last 100 years.  Before PowerPoint, it was dry erase markers on whiteboards and before that, chalk on slate.

The issue isn’t that this model is so expensive (lost time, travel, etc, etc.) or that it’s so ineffective (90% forgotten in 30 days) but that for the best run organizations it’s been replaced by a much better system.

Over the last 5 years there has been a huge shift to a dramatically more effective and efficient model; delivering training to each desktop via video streaming through your corporate intranet.

Can Great Branding Eliminate the Need for Training?

Can Great Branding Eliminate the Need for Training?

We live in a fast-paced world today.  In fact, that’s a tremendous understatement.  Anyone involved with the SharePoint platform, or for that matter, the world of IT in general, realizes that we work in an industry that breaks a second into 1000 parts.

If Talk is Cheap, Why is Training So Expensive?

If Talk is Cheap, Why is Training So Expensive?

 Low Value Boot Camps

At this moment in time, SharePoint training typically takes the form of a 2 day off-site “boot camp” style cram session.  The effectiveness of these boot camps is disputed.  Recent surveys attempting to identify the root cause for SharePoint’s abysmal adoption rate (22%), often target poor training as being the main culprit.

Want Real Adoption? Implement SharePoint Upside Down

Want Real Adoption? Implement SharePoint Upside Down

The Routine

Most organizations implement SharePoint in the same step-by-step manner:

1. IT department buys the product and the licenses
2. Install the platform
3. Deploy a site for each department manager
4. Migrate the content of shared drives into these new sites
5. Move into “maintenance” mode.
6. Training

Also, each department manager most likely got a SharePoint ‘team site’.  They may have also received a memo about their new site, providing them with their username, password and a link to the site that they now ‘own’. Unfortunately, Managers tend have no idea what to do with their new site and it’s not their fault.