When designing a content management system (CMS) or upgrading a document management framework, managers tend to refer to the people who will be working with the finished product as 'end users'.
However this way of thinking can be detrimental to the design process - it encourages a certain style of thinking that groups them together into a pool of mixed needs and outcomes.
The issue here is that the people who will be using a particular SharePoint solution are the main reason it is being deployed - and that their views on potential features should be the main priority for any developer.
While in some cases these individuals may not understand how an advanced CMS will be of use to them in their daily concerns, a consultative approach can be combined with detailed demonstrations to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how their productivity levels can be improved.
In this way, the needs of knowledge workers, content administrators and publicly-facing customer service users can all be incorporated in to the end result.
For many organisations, these roles have a lot of interplay - and the use of a collaborative framework can benefit the entire workforce in a number of ways.
Customer service roles can require regular access to information databases and correspondence documents.
The knowledge workers are the ones who process these requests and produce the resolutions provided to clients - as such they need to be able to make use of a wide range of data on short notice.
These two areas are facilitated by the content administrators who ensure that the relevant databases are running smoothly - with relevant tags to make information searchable and active protocols to enforce accountability.
When considering the interplay between these so-called 'end users', it easy to see how the collaborative nature of many modern organisations can be enhanced by an intelligent CMS deployment - and how a stilted approach can cause problems.
If the focus of a system is too heavily weighted toward one particular area, the other departments will suffer losses in terms of efficiency.
In turn these will feed back into the framework, causing bottlenecks that can impact on other areas - and ultimately will reduce the ability of a company to deliver solutions to its clients.
By asking the right questions from the start, savvy IT executives will be able to deliver teams with a highly adaptable framework that can be made to suit any department.