There are a number of factors that make an information management system truly valuable to an organisation, but one that stands out most often is the issue of customisation.
Since its launch in November 2009, SharePoint 2010 has developed a valid reputation as a platform that enables businesses to realise improvements across the board - with over 100 million licenses issued
However it could be that many companies have yet to unleash the full potential of the system, with AIIM estimating that 47 per cent of firms are making use of it primarily as a hub for easily sharing files.
While it certainly is able to excel in this role straight out of the box, SharePoint can deliver so much more to a business with a little forethought, planning and customisation.
The same metadata tags applied at the point of document creation that make this content management system (CMS) so useful as a file sharing centre, can be put to use in a range of different ways.
Some organisations may require regular breakdowns of certain detailed information such as sales - complete with drilldowns into buying frequency by type, market or quantity.
Compiling such a comprehensive or specific list could take a long time depending on the volume of data to be taken into consideration - in some cases it may actually take up the majority of an employee's time.
With an intelligent CMS, the same workers could synthesise these documents in a fraction of the time - they simply need to set the parameters on the user-friendly dashboard and the system would do the rest, trawling internal databases for the relevant information and collating it in the appropriate format for the end user.
The benefits of this sort of arrangement are two-fold - departments can provide information to stakeholders on a reduced turnaround time and the workers are able to spend their time on other, more value adding activities.
It could simply be that managers and unit leaders are unaware of the options available to them - SharePoint is a fairly complex system and the opportunities it can provide can sometimes get lost under more basic functions.
However, savvy IT executives will be aware of these scalable capabilities and the benefits that can be realised with a certain level of customisation - the difficult part remains to convince the decision makers of potential return on investment afforded through an intelligent CMS.