Uses For SharePoint
SharePoint collaboration Websites can benefit your business by
enabling you to communicate and collaborate with customers, vendors, and
business partners. Collaborating through SharePoint helps you provide more
attentive services, and alleviates the financial burdens of frequent travel
and shipping costs. Note to SharePoint newbies this is not your
grandmother's SharePoint! The following sites really are SharePoint sites.
Using SharePoint 3.0, following are examples of how three
of dataBridge’s clients are doing just that.
Karastan, a carpet and rug manufacturer,
needed a secure way to efficiently communicate with the reps across the
country who service their dealer network. 
Karastan’s
SharePoint site enables them to post price lists, merchandising information,
marketing & promotions calendars, and general announcements. Each dealer
"Rep Group" has its own site and dashboard. Just like a car dashboard
delivers critical information to the driver, each dealer dashboard delivers
current and important company information at a glance—newest documents,
announcements, calendars, links, and so on. As new documents, events, and
announcements get added to the site, the information is automatically posted
to the dashboard, making it easy for dealers to stay informed and access
files. SharePoint provides Karastan with a secure online environment that is
easy to navigate, can be accessed from any computer 24/7, and is nearly
effortless to maintain and manage.
Similarly, The Biltmore Estate needed an
effective way to communicate photo shoots, partner networking, marketing and
event 
calendars,
and Biltmore collateral and images to their licensees across the country.
Each licensee needed a way to get approved photos and logos as well as an
easy way to get updated dealer information to Biltmore. SharePoint provides
the perfect solution. As new documents, events, and announcements get added
to the site, an email alert is automatically sent out to all site
subscribers—making it easy for the licensees to stay informed and connected.
At the same time, as licensees are uploading information to the Biltmore
SharePoint site, it is routed to the correct person using workflows,
ensuring a quick response.
Both Karastan and The Biltmore have significantly reduced
the number of incoming calls and emails requesting information—all of which
is now available on their SharePoint sites.
Twist, a St. Louis firm specializing in
integrated marketing programs, uses SharePoint in three ways. First, they
use it as a company intranet to help employees communicate, 
collaborate,
and manage documents. Second, they use it as an extranet; each of Twist’s
clients has their own private, secure site where they store and collaborate
on documents related to each company. This has helped Twist eliminate the
“email + attachment” nightmare most companies face these days. Third, Twist
wanted to be in control of their public Website, not at the mercy of a
vendor who would update their content. To avoid that, they use SharePoint as
a Content Management System. This enables Twist to update and edit their
Website at will. They use SharePoint to accomplish everything—without any
additional software—providing savings of time and money.
Saving money in the current economy is extremely important and
there are so many possibilities with SharePoint—intranets, extranets,
project management solutions, knowledge bases, websites, and on and on. What
can SharePoint do for you?