…SharePoint in fact provides a toolset that CAN be used to solve your business problems.
I often get asked by clients “What is SharePoint?” or “What can SharePoint do for us”. This is a much more difficult question to answer than one might think.
I can provide the Microsoft spiel “SharePoint is a collaborative platform blah blah blah”, but really…SharePoint can pretty much do anything you want it to do within most business scenarios. It can be your intrAnet (or heck, mulitple intrAnet) site/s, it can be your external Internet site/s, it can be your timesheeting system, your meeting/conference room booking system, it can be your KPI dashboard for personnel performance, it can be your end to end business process for starters through to leavers. It can be your whole HR and Payroll process if you want it that way, basically your imagination (well not really, more like your budget) is your limit.
With the flexibility of a database at the backend, a website at the front end and a whole host of technologies in the middle you can do a LOT with SharePoint. Here’s my SharePoint technology diagram (feel free to steal it, i’m sure you want to!).
So, that bit in between is the important bit. That’s where you can make a difference and create what you want. Depending on your budget and what you want to do, you can create something as simple as an online calendar to track your teams holiday leave to a fully formed Frakensteins Monster to take over southern Spain!
Reach for the Sky. Enjoy SharePoint. Love SharePoint.