Business Process Automation has become an inevitable requirement of modern-day business in order to stay competitive in the digital corporate world. And, when it comes to process automation, nothing could beat Microsoft SharePoint. MS SharePoint is a highly advanced collaborative business portal meant to provide convenient options to large enterprises. However, like any other software, SharePoint also has its own set of boundaries, challenges, and limitations.
In this blog post, we will be sharing our knowledge and experience about SharePoint Business Process Automation Options, its benefits, and its limitation. We hope that this article will help you find out if SharePoint makes a good option for you or not.
Its High Time for Businesses To Adopt Business Process Automation
When we talk about process automation, it concerns speeding up of business workflows and elimination of unnecessary tasks. The primary objective of business process automation is to avoid extra effort, time and money involved. Business process automation allows employees to use their extra time to perform other important and valuable tasks, which eventually results in increased productivity.
Now, the modern-day business world has reached the stage where business process automation has become a must for every business if they want to stay competitive and use their time and resources efficiently. For example, a company using a manual process is vulnerable to multiple problems, such as data inaccuracy, input mistakes, violation of policies or compliance standards, etc. The physical or manual process often results in mistakes and they lack visibility in terms of security, installation, and scanning. However, this is not the case with automated processes. As businesses are evolving and growing, using inefficient and outdated technology can easily result in declining productivity and profitability. Automation of business processes uses technology to improve productivity and helps companies to maximize their profits through efficient data and resource management.
Manual process and human errors may cause process disruption and downtime. And, that’s why companies are increasingly adopting automated processes to avoid issues like compliance or policy breach, client headaches, information inaccuracy, etc. For enterprises, SharePoint has come to the rescue and it came up as a powerful solution that facilitates businesses in overcoming all these issues.
- Quick Setup & Cost Effectiveness In Long-Run: MS SharePoint is easy and quick to set up, and it has low entry-level costs, which makes it a great platform to start with. Also, there are countless advanced features ranging from inventory tracking to reporting, and from forecasting to content management, that are all involved in a single software, and this results in incredible cost-effectiveness in the long run. All you need to do is to purchase the license that offers those features. You can also cancel the license anytime if you find any features unnecessary or extra to your working needs.
- Ease of Monthly Subscription & Licensing Fee: Licensing fee is usually taken as an expense, but it actually gives you the authority and facility to only pay for what you need and use. Microsoft is a very powerful platform that comes in multiple variants and a wide variety of features. Even smaller firms with limited needs can also afford SharePoint by getting the limited access licenses and paying only for the features that they need. From licensing fees fitting to the constrained budgets, to the full-fledged box of features with higher costs, SharePoint has everything to offer. With SharePoint licensing and a monthly subscription option, you attain scalability. This means that you can add up users or remove them from a certain license as per your project requirements, and hence pay accordingly.
- Quick ROI: MS SharePoint is easy to learn and to work with. So, once your employees are familiar with the software, and they learn to use it, their efficiency increases and the time to complete a task decreases. This means that SharePoint starts returning to your investment in a very short time.
- Easy Integration with Other Microsoft & Third-Party Apps: SharePoint is an online platform that allows its user to create workflows related to documents and then integrate them into the enterprise system. Additionally, SharePoint can be integrated directly with MS Office 365 apps which make the creation of documents much easier. With SharePoint, you don’t need to wait long for downloads and also do not require any additional storage to create, edit or share your content.
- Connectivity with Other Enterprise Tools: SharePoint enables you to connect project management systems with other enterprise-level tools, such as task tracking systems, project management systems, and workflow management systems. The ability of SharePoint to get easily integrated with other applications provides a seamless user experience. Connectivity with other enterprise tools also provides real-time notifications on projects.
Limitations
SharePoint offers a wide variety of automated business workflows that is sufficient to cover fundamental business need. However, if your business has very complex and peculiar requirements, the platform offers great flexibility and customization options that can be used for tailor-made adjustments and modifications. But, unfortunately, these capabilities are not always efficient for automating super complex business operations. So, for that, you might need to get a specialized third-party solution and then get it integrated with SharePoint. And, by the way, successful integration is a question itself.
Next is the high cost of the software. Although the platform is cost-effective for large enterprises, SMEs are usually unable to afford its full-fledged features even if they want to. Development, customization, and maintenance of the platform are too costly. And if you opt for a hybrid or cheaper license, they come with their own limitations.
Also, the business enterprise that is considering a hybrid SharePoint solution needs to pay extra costs for any kind of customization. Because, with the hybrid solution, the software for the cloud and hardware for the server must remain compliant and updated to meet all the security regulations. A hybrid environment does not work well until there is an appropriate setup in place for redundant compliance, backups, and regulatory affairs.
Conclusion
SharePoint is a great platform that makes organizational processes very easy and efficient. From making employees’ collaboration more efficient to using it as an intranet portal, everything is just a matter of a few clicks with SharePoint. However, the platform has its own challenges and limitations that need to be taken care of to make the most out of it.
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