A Tale from a Growing Organization
Several years ago we received a call from the CTO of a growing mid-size company. The management team was enthusiastic about modernizing their internal communications and employee experience by launching a new intranet on SharePoint Online. This need was based on frustration: the old systems were awful, information was all over the place, and employees felt they were working in silos. Hence, the decision was to employ a reliable provider. After discussion, the management advised the utilization of SharePoint Intranet. SharePoint intranet has the ability to provide a “one-stop shop” for resources, facilitate collaboration and ultimately create connection and engagement.
Besides this challenge, the company was also dealing with many of the common challenges many organizations experience when their first SharePoint project launched:
- They had an IT department that had some exposure to Microsoft 365, but did not have developers on staff.
- There was no formal software development methodology or process.
- There was no dedicated project management experience available internally.
- Only high-level and vague requirements had been identified.
The company was ready to go, and excited to move forward, and then posted a request for proposal (RFP) for a contract position for a full-time developer, expecting that this person would take the company’s idea from concept through implementation in 3 to 6 months.
They found an expert who, without any involvement in project management or business analysis, also took on those roles. For months, things seemed very much slowed down because nothing was moving except through trial and error. No baseline status meetings or repeated processes; even leaders involved themselves at casual check-ins, such as, “How’s intranet coming? Good? Okay, great.”
After around six months, the intranet homepage bore only a vague resemblance to what was originally thought of, but the rate of progress was quite aimless, if not endless. One member of the concerned company self-initiated, found other alternatives, and sought advice externally.
The Project Audit and Its Alarming Findings
An audit by the external body was done. The audit contained the following findings:
- There was hardly anything written down for formalized requirements. The developer depended solely on random sketches on paper and a few emails with bullets.
- Requirements changed all the time. There was no clear process for the management of the scope or the requests for changes.
- In the forms constructed after ten months and invested with $100,000, only 30% of the solution was complete.
- Features were being built from scratch that already existed within SharePoint or other Microsoft tools.
- The delivered product was far from the polished, user-friendly intranet that leaders aimed for.
The Inevitable Decision
After considering these findings, the leadership team came to a very practical but difficult decision: stop the custom development and go with an out-of-the-box SharePoint intranet product. Considering the situation, a reliable SharePoint consultancy company was on board for the best advice. The out-of-the-box solution had the potential to be less expensive, quicker to implement, and designed with best practices in mind.
Is This Scenario Unique? Not at All.
Sadly, the trend is not uncommon. Just a week prior we saw another organization in almost the exact situation with no internal capabilities, vague requirements, and a project that had stalled for months.
Poor project outcomes are often caused by some combination of issues like the following:
- Making selections for solutions or technology that will-fits the business problem.
- Expecting developers to struggle through issues with no business context, and with no decision-making context.
- Poor project management or governance leading to missed milestones and budgetary explosion.
Let’s explore how SharePoint consultants can benefit in such scenarios:
What is a SharePoint Consultant?
A SharePoint consultant is a specialist who assists organizations with the planning, implementation and customization of Microsoft SharePoint to maximize use of the software. Unlike a general IT professional, SharePoint consultants have a depth of knowledge about the software itself and the strategic aspects involved with the software.
SharePoint consultants also know how to implement and use SharePoint tools, such as document libraries, lists, intranet sites and workflows, to address real-world business problems, like collaboration, document management and employee communication.
A SharePoint consultant’s duties may include assessing their current systems and technology, obtaining business requirements, configuring SharePoint structures, certifying integration with third-party applications, offering training opportunities for end-users and administrators, and potentially implementing workflows.
A SharePoint consultant is more than a technical person or a SharePoint expert – they serve as advisers. A SharePoint consultant has parallels with a business consultant, helping organizations and departments make strategic decisions about whether or not a custom solution is the best choice; whether to use an out-of-the box feature or a third-party add-in.
Many SharePoint consultancy firms hire SharePoint consultants to ensure that client use of SharePoint is aligned with their business goals, such as streamlining the human resources process, building a company intranet, and improving compliance with document controls. SharePoint consultants are involved in a solution that is appropriate with their business context. By combining their technical knowledge with their understanding of the context and needs of an organization, a SharePoint consultant plays an important role in the successful adoption and long-term sustainability of SharePoint through optimizing strengths of the software.
Why Do You Need SharePoint Consulting Services?
Organizations often do not recognize how complex it is to implement SharePoint successfully. Organizations can easily misuse SharePoint without the help of a SharePoint expert. This can lead to poorly designed sites, capabilities that are not being utilized, or solutions that are not scalable.
SharePoint consultants are there when businesses are unsure of the process involved in the implementation of SharePoint, and help organizations avoid common mistakes such as: inadvertent duplicate structures for content, security mis-configuration, and limited user adoption; to name a few. Even if you are simply migrating to SharePoint Online, redesigning your intranet, or integrating SharePoint with another system like Workday or ServiceNow, SharePoint consultancy offers foresight and the experience necessary to reduce risk, and keep you on track.
SharePoint consultants are most useful when your internal resources are lacking necessary skills or time in making your dreams a reality. If your organization does not employ SharePoint developers or SharePoint administrators; or if your project is beyond the capacity IT can support, the SharePoint consultant can “fill the gap”.
Hire SharePoint consultants who can often provide a different perspective than internal staff can usually observe and are up-to-date on SharePoint best practices, licensing options, governance approaches, and other models of integrations. The Microsoft SharePoint consultant will make the outcome more timely and quality in your delivery of the SharePoint solution, empowering your organization to develop a well-structured SharePoint solution that is ready for the future and that your users will adopt.
Before Hiring a SharePoint Consultant, Read This…
Prior to engaging a SharePoint consultant, take stock of your existing hurdles and goals. Are you unable to collaborate effectively in your internal teams? Are you struggling with managing documents? Are your workflow processes not automated? Are you lacking the in-house capability to successfully configure or maintain SharePoint? Ask yourself whether you can even expect your team’s bandwidth to support the integration, customization and governance requirements of SharePoint.
If your implementation has stalled, if your users just are not adopting the platform, or you have security concerns, then it is likely time for help from external experts. You will know when it is time to reach out to an expert SharePoint consultant. A consultant can be valuable, provide clarity and efficiencies, and long-term strategy. When you can identify existing gaps at the outset, you are more likely to see the hiring of a SharePoint consultant as a strategic investment, rather than solely a reaction to challenges!
What To Look For In A SharePoint Consultant?
Technical Expertise:
- SharePoint consultants must have experience with both SharePoint Online (Microsoft 365) and in an on-premise setup.
- Must be knowledgeable and experienced with custom development, workflows, Power Platform and integrations.
- Knowledge of governance, user permissions, and content lifecycle management is a benefit.
Relevant Project Experience:
- Must have specific project experience related to implementation (intranet builds, migrations, integrations, etc.).
- Consultant SharePoint must have the ability to share real world examples and case studies of project work.
- Specific industry related experience is beneficial.
Certifications & Skills:
- Microsoft certifications (Microsoft 365 Certified: Teamwork Administrator Associate).
- Hands-on experience – also provide hands-on SharePoint consultancy.
- Ability to manage the scope of projects and change as business needs change (a mix of solid consultancy and development skills).
Business Understanding:
- Understand your organizational structure, workflows, and business objectives.
- Provide SharePoint consultancy if SharePoint is the right or best tool for your business problem or other options.
Engagement & Collaboration:
- Must also ask thought-provoking, strategic questions to define requirements and project scope correctly.
- Must be willing to meet with multiple working teams (IT, HR, communications, etc.)
- Must be able to help translate business ethos and needs into functional SharePoint solutions.
Communication & Documentation:
- Must keep you informed proactively and communicate often and clearly throughout the project.
- Microsoft SharePoint consultants value documentation and provide detailed project reports and user guides.
- They set a realistic timeline that both parties agree on and do their best to explain risks upfront.
Supportive Partnership:
- Must be willing to support internal staff for mentoring or support transition of knowledge at the launch of the program.
- SharePoint experts are not just the developer but are also offering you a strategic partnership in your success.
- Makes you feel supported, confident, and informed at every stage.
How to Pick the Right Sharepoint Consultant?
Selecting the correct SharePoint consultant requires more than just technical qualifications. First, identify consultants that have experience and success with implementation of SharePoint within your industry. Certified? Yes. But also look for success stories, client testimonials and case studies. Make sure they have some acknowledgement of your business processes, and can describe how technical solutions translate to real value in a tangible way, especially when it comes to overall user adoption.
Ask about their plan for rollout and training, and their measured support in the long run. Communication and collaboration will also come into play when choosing the right consultant for your project. Finally, make sure your consultant is clear on opportunity scope, project timelines and cost as soon as possible. The best possible consultant will understand your need for proactive, informed, and decisive solution implementation with clear expectation setting around cost, timeline, and employee experience!
Why Hire a SharePoint Partner?
Organizations often bring in SharePoint partners when they find themselves in one of these scenarios:
- Current SharePoint Deployment with Expansion Plans
If your organization is already using SharePoint but wants to grow usage and adoption of the platform, improve workflows, or create a company intranet, a consultant SharePoint can provide the knowledge and insight to help formulate and accelerate these actions.
- Skills or Time Constraints
Your organization might even employ some very capable IT professionals but they are too busy or they lack deeper SharePoint dev skills. Bringing in a partner means you get specialized skills without committing to a long-term hire.
- One-Time Projects
Some efforts (e.g. migrating to SharePoint Online, launching a new intranet, or connecting SharePoint with other enterprise systems) take effort but are not necessarily ongoing work. You don’t always want to hire a SharePoint expert to support an effort that is not permanent.
Examples of One-Time SharePoint Projects:
- Move from an on-premises SharePoint to SharePoint Online or Microsoft 365
This is a project to move your existing SharePoint content, sites and data from a local SharePoint environment to SharePoint Online, which is a cloud-based service. Moving from on-premises to online requires SharePoint consultancy to satisfy a few goals, including preserving data integrity, preserving permissions and content types, minimizing downtime and disruption, and to exploit the capabilities of modern collaboration and security features.
- Build a department or company-wide intranet
Build a central digital hub designed for communication, document sharing and collaboration in your organization or department. This includes designing site structures and Navigation, branding, and integrating usage to develop and increase participation, engagement, and productivity.
- Revamp or redesign and modernize an existing SharePoint intranet
Modernize an existing, out-dated intranet that is no longer meeting the needs of the organization or users by using the latest features in SharePoint Online and modern design principles. Modernizing an intranet could include redesigning the look and feel of the user interface, improving search experience, and optimizing user experience on mobile devices.
- SharePoint integration with HR/payroll systems (such as Workday, ServiceNow)
SharePoint can connect to other enterprise systems to integrate processes and facilitate data sharing. An example of this would be pulling employee information from Workday and using it in SharePoint, or creating service request portals in ServiceNow, which reduce manual processes and duplication and enable consistent data capture.
- Creating custom document management / workflow solutions
SharePoint can be utilized to make custom applications which support bespoke processes such as document approval workflows, version control, or compliance tracking. The SharePoint experts ensure that business rules are followed, and minimize user error, as well as providing the appropriate visibility into operational processes of your organization.
What Types of SharePoint Services Exist Today?
Back in the day—about ten years ago—SharePoint consultancy was more of a unicorn existence. Consultations existed in this realm as a hybrid trust to work on business analysis, to talk tech, and do the actual development. Despite being recognized as the same breed of professional, we are now identified as SharePoint Developer / Full Stack Developer / Microsoft SharePoint Consultant / Technical Advisor / Trainer / and many hybrid roles such as a Business Analyst, Solutions Advisor, or Trainer, etc.
- SharePoint Developer/Full Stack Developer
Concentrating primarily on doing general development of custom solutions, workflows, web parts, business components, and custom integrations etc. based on SharePoint’s platform capabilities.
- SharePoint Consultant / Technical Advisor / Trainer
A SharePoint consultant provides consulting to define a strategy, fit, advise organizations in training end-users, and provide best practice advice. No custom development.
- Hybrid Role / Business Analyst/ Solutions Advisor/ Trainer
A practitioner/individual with business analysis experience, combined with an understanding of technical components, to bridge together business needs, with technical implementation.
- SharePoint Consulting Services Company
Single or multi-person SharePoint consulting services offer an overall full spectrum (business analysis, project management, development, training, and support) of services while drawing from a variety of experiences, backgrounds, and implementations.
- SharePoint Product + Consulting Company
A SharePoint Consultancy company that develops out of the box SharePoint products or templates, and combines with consulting services on customizations and implementations.
Individual Expert vs. SharePoint Consulting Company: Which to Choose?
This decision depends on several key factors relevant to your project’s nature and your internal capabilities:
1. Range of Capabilities Needed
- If your organization requires an end-to-end SharePoint consultancy service (from planning and solutions design, through development, training end users, to ongoing service and troubleshooting), you may want to select a partner with a full range of capabilities. This will provide consistency and continuity throughout every stage of the project.
- With that said, if your internal team has the capacity to take on certain aspects of the development or support such as training or ongoing support and you only require technical development or customization, an option might be to hire a developer or consultant who specializes in only building the solution (could save on costs and make the engagement more focused).
2. Understanding of Complexity
- If your SharePoint project affects complex business processes, integrates multiple third-party systems ( e.g. ERP HR), or requires significant organizational change management, you require a partner that understands both the technical and business workflows and approaches user adoption and implementation. Projects of this type will benefit from a consultant with strong business analysis, architecture and project management skills, and technical ability.
- On the other hand, if the project is relatively straightforward, such as deploying a simple team site or intranet with well-defined requirements and minimal integrations, a technically skilled developer who can execute clear tasks efficiently may be sufficient.
3. Level of Supervision You Can Provide
- The level of effort your organization can devote to overseeing the project is a key factor in determining the resource option. If you have experienced project managers or SharePoint experts who can be detail-oriented, track deliverable progress regularly, and facilitate the resolution of blockers, then you could be comfortable engaging the services of an individual consultant or freelancer who will engage and follow directions while you are actively involved in the project.
- Alternatively, if your internal team does not have sufficient bandwidth or experience with SharePoint processes and methodology, it is safer for your organization to engage a SharePoint consulting company or partner who can project manage the project end-to-end, does the coordination of internal and project resources, did the risk mitigation for the project, and could keep the project on the rails with limited accountability from your organization.
4. Risk Tolerance
- Consulting firms often have forms of liability insurance that include errors and omissions insurance and cyber insurance, and they offer service-level agreements (SLAs) to support timeliness of delivery and support. Using an SLA shifts a portion of certain risks from your organization to the vendor, it provides a reasonable form of accountability and remediation formal process for if things go wrong.
- If a project completes late or if there is a data breach/some sort of data loss issues due to miscommunication, errors, or any other mishap or oversight, you will generally have to deal with a smaller individual or small group of individual; with SharePoint consulting firms there is a formal risk management protocol related to their services, so that process and path for accountability is clearer with a consulting firm.
5. Budget Considerations
- An individual expert may charge lower hourly consulting or contractor rates within their area of expertise. An individual expert or freelancer may be an excellent fit for a small project or task where you want to get a very specific task accomplished, such as a report on specific literature. If you use a SharePoint expert, use caution because they may limit their capacity with only one task in their bucket of time. In the worst-case scenario, it could take longer to finish a project because it took longer than expected, and you may need another freelancer to complete the project if needed for another area of expertise.
- SharePoint consulting firms tend to charge at higher rates than individuals, but they have more expertise in multiple areas of capability (e.g., project management, architecture, development, training, support). They also come with learning experiences that can include processes and scaling. For larger or more complex projects the extra cost representative of firms being higher means better quality and reliability; which has saved potential money in the long-run to avoid mistakes or costly delays.
How These Factors Typically Rank by Partner Type
| Criteria | Individual Expert | Consulting Company | Product + services Company |
| Range of capabilities | Low-Medium | High | High |
| Understanding of Complexity | Medium | High | High |
| Supervision required | High (you manage) | Medium-High | Low (they manage) |
| Risk tolerance | Low-Medium | High | High |
| Cost | Low-Medium | Medium-High | Medium |
Preparing to Hire a SharePoint Consultant: Your Checklist for Success
Before engaging with consultants and vendors, take the time to prepare:
- Define Your Endstate
What does success look like? Do you have a specific date in mind? Are you measuring the rates of user adoption, completeness of features, or milestones on integration?
- Outline Your High-Level Requirements
While you may not have detailed specs available, it is worth documenting your high-level features and functions. Clarify the difference between what is nice to have and must have.
- Determine Milestones and Phases
Break the project down into appropriate phases or milestones for example:
- Phase 1 – Implement intranet company-wide organizationally with essential pages.
- Phase 2 – Add departmental websites and collaboration sites.
- Phase 3 – Plug in to other business systems.
- Set an Appropriate Budget
Be sure to know how much you can spend, set boundaries especially for the first phase. Also include costs of your internal resources for managing and engaging stakeholders.
- Identify Internal Stakeholders and Resources
Who will be your project sponsor and business owners? Who are your IT lead(s) and champions at the user level? Estimate how much time you might get from them.
- Review Licensing Requirements
You will need to confirm if you need any additional licenses beyond what your organization has for Microsoft 365 or SharePoint.
- Investigate Alternatives and Solutions in the Marketplace
Research if any pre-built intranet products or different tools could meet your needs.
- Connect with Prospective Partners
Explain your high-level requirements and ask for exploratory conversations or proposals.
What to Look For in a SharePoint Consultant or Partner
When evaluating SharePoint experts you might work with you should consider the following,
1. Ability to Align with Your Required Capabilities and Complexity of Your Workspace Project
- It is important the Microsoft SharePoint consultant or firm you consider has a good fit with both the scope of capabilities required by your project and the complexity of the project.
- If your project requires a range of services such as planning, development and architecture, integration, user training and ongoing support your partner should be capable of helping you provide all of these services.
- Similarly, they should have previous experience managing projects that have a similar level of technical and business complexity to your project. If your project requires complex document workflows or integrations with a number of external systems your partner should have previous experience managing similar complexity.
This is important so that your SharePoint consultants can anticipate challenges and navigate around them and also provide recommendations for best practices, along with delivering a solution that actually meets your requirements.
2. Their Ability and Willingness to Ask Thoughtful Questions and Understand Your Business Context
A good SharePoint consultant does not just “take orders.” They spend time developing an understanding about your business context, objectives, and pain points.
- They will ask you thoughtful questions to clarify requirements, dig deeper to uncover hidden requirements, or uncover possible risk or blockers.
- This thoughtfulness of SharePoint consultancy results in a solution that is specific to your context, not simply a one-size-fit-all product.
- A partner who wants to understand your organization’s culture, workflows, and user behaviors may recommend features or designs that could be more successful in increasing adoption and the value over time.
3. A Portfolio or Case Studies Demonstrating Relevant Experience
- Looking at a SharePoint consultant‘s prior work is a very solid way to validate their capability and fit.
- Find appropriate similarities related to your project regarding scale, industry, or complexity. While reviewing case studies, one should be able to figure out how the consultant faces hindrances; what were the steps that he/she took to address the issues, and quite effectively, the outcome of those resolutions.
A good portfolio provides an indication that the consultant SharePoint really does have hands-on experience and some substantial evidence to back up claims of successful SharePoint solutions delivered, rather than simply theoretical knowledge evidenced.
4. Their Approach Towards Team Inclusion: Meetings and Workshops
- SharePoint projects usually necessitate very intimate co-working between your own internal stakeholders and an external consultant.
- Think involving your team now. How does the Microsoft SharePoint consultant plan to engage with them? Will there be periodic meetings, workshops and feedback sessions with your team? Excellent collaborators lay ground for knowledge transfer and expectation alignment so that your team is ready to capitalize on and carry forward the solution.
Some vague consultant engagement will not cut it as it has to mesh with the culture of your company and align with your business practices otherwise it creates misunderstanding and impacts project efficiency benefits.
5. Strong Client References and Positive Reviews
- These former clients provide valuable information that third parties may use to comment on the consultant’s professionalism, responsiveness, and quality of work.
- Always ask for references’ contact details and their impressions of the consultant’s communication, problem-solving and timeline delivery.
- Simultaneously, positive references are available via independent review sites or industry forums to strengthen further the reputation of your consultant.
Indeed, good references make you more comfortable about the partner having to be accountable and adding value.
6. Clear Contract Terms Covering Scope, Timelines, SLAs, Confidentiality, and Risk Mitigation (Insurance)
A contract should be drafted in a way that protects your interests and makes sure you are both on the same page. The terms of a contract of SharePoint consultancy would contain some main items, including: Scope of Work: Your agreement has to really define what you expect the consultant to provide and what the expected deliverables should be so that there is no “scope creep” and misunderstandings.
- Timelines: All milestones, deliverables and deadlines should be clearly figured out into each project you do like this for later reference if you need to track what is going on and which part of progress- timelines are self-evident
- Service Level Agreement-(SLA): These would also include the expected response and resolution times in your contracts for support or issues while in project services and post project service.
- Confidentiality Clauses: To protect your data and sensitive information as well as privacy laws and obligations and ensure your partner adheres to the related clauses about privacy issues.
- Risk Mitigation: Elements to clarify would include liability and insurance. Hire a SharePoint consultant who has all the exposure risk and the liability for exposure to your data, but they must carry insurance coverage for liability risks for client side which would be Errors & Omissions insurance or Cyber Liability insurance.
Introducing Terms and Conditions in writing helps mitigate risk, clarify the mutual expectations of both parties and provides a where to go for recourse, if needed.
Case Study: Choosing the Right Consultant SharePoint for a Company-Wide SharePoint Intranet
Step 1: The Starting Point – A Company with a Vision, But No Roadmap
In early 2024, a medium-sized professional service firm with 700+ employees in multiple regions discovered internally, they were a mess with their communications and document management systems.
All with emails: Documents all over the place. HR policies or company announcements nowhere in one place. Departments repetitively did work and new employees had no clear way to find onboarding materials in one location.
The leadership team stated, “Let’s just build a company intranet.”
They decided that they wanted to use SharePoint Online as the backbone of their intranet (and because they had licenses for Microsoft 365, it was free!).
However, they had a challenge.
Challenge: They did not have any in-house SharePoint expertise. Their IT team was experienced with running Office 365, but had no experience building or running SharePoint intranets.
They were aware of what they wanted (news, HR policies, department pages, document libraries), but had no idea how to get this to a working platform that would then need launching for 700+ employees.
Step 2: Analyzing the Project Needs
This leadership group conducted a short elective task force to define the project. After many internal conversations, they determined the following:
Range of Capabilities Required: Medium
They wanted someone with their assistance for planning, design, implementation, and training but had the internal capacity to write the content and provide some basic user support after go-live.
None of their internal capacity could provide the technical design or technical build; it would be recommended to come from outside the organization.
Understanding of Complexity: Medium
They were starting an intranet page for the first time, but it was not only a homepage. They would need:
- An HR portal.
- Departmental sites.
- Integrating with Workday for employee information and a helpdesk system.
These were not overly complex integration, but they were complex enough that made the project bigger than a page build.
- Failure or delays would damage internal trust in IT’s ability to deliver change.
Budget: Low to Medium
- This project did not have a dedicated project manager for the intranet. The internal IT Director could provide check-ins along the way but ultimately could not supervise work done by a freelance resource daily.
Risk Tolerance/Level: High
- This is a high profile project. All staff employees (From the Manager to the backstage employee) had to use this platform.
Step 3: Early Options Considered
Initially, the company considered a few online freelancers. The rates looked good — many were available for $75-$100/hour — however, as the team began to have discovery calls with the freelancers cracks started to show:
- Freelancers asked them for detailed required items that no longer existed for the company.
- Freelancers were offering limited project management (which meant the company would have to step up to guide and QA the work).
- No freelancers offered post-launch support guarantees or insurance — making the IT group feel uncomfortable.
The company also considered hiring a full-time SharePoint expert on a 6-month term contract, but HR was resistant. There were no long-term work opportunities for that developer after the launch, and the company was worried about onboarding for just 6 months of risk.
Step 4: Choosing the Right Path – Product + Consulting Partner
The team spoke with several firms before they found one that was a product + consulting services firm, that specialized in SharePoint intranets.
This partner was different from all the others from the start, with the other firms wanting detailed requirements. This partner wanted to learn:
- What were the top three pain points the staff used
- How was communication currently working
- What applications and systems had the organization currently (like Workday setup already)?
- What would success look like for the organization three months after the launch?
They offered a sharepoint intranet framework that was pre-built and could be customized – which would alleviate time needed to deploy significantly.
They also managed:
- Planning & business analysis: Running workshops to articulate structure, pages, and goals.
- Visual design: Delivering a fresh modern branded experience.
- Technical build: Setting up templates, metadata, search, and security.
- Integration: Light integrations with Workday and the helpdesk system with Power Automate.
- User training: Live training and help videos.
- Support: 60 days of post-launch warranty and annual support option.
“They made me feel like they had just done this 100 times before – because they really had.”
Step 5: Risk Mitigation and Contracts
The SharePoint expert presented a formal contract that featured:
- Clearly defined scope: What was included (e.g. homepage, department sites, HR portal) and what was not included (e.g. long-term governance).
- Time guarantees: Key milestones and penalties for significant overruns.
- SLAs: Guaranteed response times for support during and after the project.
- Insurance: Proof of Errors & Omissions and Cybersecurity liability.
- Confidentiality and data protection: Clauses aligned to meet internal compliance needs.
This gave the company confidence to move forward.
Step 6: Execution and Results
The project began with a 2-week planning sprint that included stakeholder interviews and content planning. By Week 4, the homepage and HR site were ready to go in staging. By week 8, all department sites were up in a testing environment. During Week 10, the company executed pilot training sessions with a few teams. The full rollout happened on time and under budget during week 12.
Results:
- A user adoption rate of 90%+ within the first month.
- HR significantly decreased email inquiries from employees by over 40%.
- Managers benefited from having a single spot for forms, policies, and department announcements.
- “The best part? We didn’t have to figure it all out on our own. They provided us the process, guidelines, and structure- and made it feel like OUR intranet.”
Final Thoughts
A lot of SharePoint intranet endeavors fall short because they choose a vendor with a gut feel for the relationship without fully understanding the size of the undertaking or underestimate the level of work. When organizations choose a SharePoint consultant with certainty or low price and do not make sure capabilities are aligned to project needs, they often exceed timelines, budgets, or go below expectations.
It is important to start with a defined picture of success—be it better communications, improved employee-engagement, or easier access to documents—and let that image help to form your approach. This includes breaking the project into achievable stages, seeking measurable goals, and having a clear understanding of expectations related to timelines and budgets.
Organizations should get to know the variety of Microsoft SharePoint Consultants and then reflect honestly on their internal ability to plan, build, and support SharePoint. Say it again: not everyone offering “partnership” access to SharePoint offers the same value. Building software or implementing SharePoint is not the same as developing business strategies, human capital development or training, change management, project and program support, risk management, and support.
The right partners ask great questions, want to understand your broader business objectives, and can provide case studies and references to show their value. Importantly, do not hesitate to engage experts early in a project. Hire SharePoint consultants from Awesome Technologies Inc as they are experienced and will assist your organization to achieve the desired goals!
Optimize your SharePoint experience with expert SharePoint consulting services from Awesome Technologies Inc. Whether it’s migration, customization, or integration, we help you drive efficiency and collaboration. Get in touch to transform the way your team works.
