10 Reasons Why Every Startup Needs SharePoint Online

The number of remote jobs has significantly increased throughout the past few years, and startups need to consider that when hiring staff members. Most employees nowadays want the freedom and flexibility of a remote job opportunity, and failing to provide it can cost you an expert.

Thankfully, SaaS platforms such as Microsoft 365 offer various productivity apps that allow seamless workflow outside the office. SharePoint Online is a complex and secure solution with plenty of features and panels that simplify business operations, making it perfect for every startup that needs a website. You can also take advantage of third-party SharePoint management providers to ensure minimal downtime and adapt the software to your business processes. 

What is SharePoint?

Let’s begin by explaining what exactly SharePoint is. SharePoint Online is a web-based content management system offered by Microsoft. Its purpose is to help businesses, and their employees/customers collaborate and share information while simultaneously improving productivity and return on investment. 

Its mainly used for website creation, as well as storing, organizing, sharing and accessing information thanks to special document libraries. Some of SharePoint’s components include workspace, panels and servers.

SharePoint features

SharePoint offers many features across its workspace, panels and servers that are beneficial to startups. However, we’ve selected some more notable features that set it apart from the competitors:

  • It supports large files without limit, but 10 GB is the max. recommended
  • Administrators can install the roles they wish on the server
  • Heat map functionality to see where most time is spent
  • Admins can build and configure compliance policies
  • Integrated social networking platform (Yammer)
  • Document library for seamless filtering, sharing and organization

How can a startup benefit from SharePoint Online?

Startups often lack financial or human resources to perform all business processes at the speed and quality they want. A good content management system such as SharePoint can benefit small companies grow while saving them lots of time and headaches. Below, we will share why it’s worth investing in Microsoft’s software.

Automate workflows and processes

Startups can free up their employee’s time and improve their productivity by automating some workflows and processes. For example, you can set alerts to notify specific users after an action has been taken on an item they’re assigned to. If you’re tech-savvy, you can design and build a workflow tailored to your needs. You can also use built-in workflows that follow a specific set of actions:

  • Approval
  • Feedback
  • Signatures
  • Three-state
  • Publishing approval

Improve employee collaboration

Collaboration can be challenging when working remotely, but SharePoint can solve that issue for startups. By deploying this CMS solution, small enterprises can seamlessly live stream and share files and edit them simultaneously in real-time, regardless of where employees work or what device they’re trying to access.

You can use SharePoint sites to showcase the goals and development of a specific project to all your employees. You can use the web-based CMS for task management, reports, updates, coordination and communication between departments.

Make better decisions

SharePoint allows small businesses to create business intelligence (BI) portals that conveniently store all critical company and project information. You can quickly access everything you need to make the right decisions regarding the development of a project.

A BI portal can display critical project-related data from various sources. Some examples include:

  • Scorecards
  • KPIs
  • Reports
  • Spreadsheets
  • Dashboards
  • Web Parts

BI portals in SharePoint incorporate a set of lists and libraries that people with different roles can use within the organization:

  • Dashboard library – site administrators, dashboard authors and consumers
  • Data connections library – database administrators, reports and dashboard authors
  • Documents library – report authors and consumers
  • Pages library – administrators, report and dashboard authors and consumers.

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