This is a translation/cross-posting from my chronicle at zipper.se
SharePoint is, as you might know, the fastest growing server product in the history of Microsoft, but still, I very often get the question from customers: What shall we use SharePoint for? The question is as justified as correct put. Why should we use SharePoint? What’s the business use?

Let’s skip the tech-talk for a while, after all the technique is not the tricky part here (or am I just getting spoiled from all great tech-guys that solves all the tricky things for me?)

One of SharePoint’s strengths tends often to be its weakness. What I mean is that SharePoint as a platform offers so many different possibilities that the business (or IT for that matter) doesn’t know where to start. By experience, I’m fully convinced that in more or less every department within a company, no matter what kind of business or size, can improve processes, routines or their way of working with help from a solution built on SharePoint and by that increase the productivity. Because that’s what it’s all about. Increased productivity.

When the IT department decides to change from Windows XP to Windows Vista or to upgrade the Office suite t 2007, the business case is often built on, more secured and stable environment, standardizing or the maintenance agreement from Microsoft or third-party vendors is about to end. But it’s very unusually built on better productivity for the Information Workers, people like you and me.

So, how can SharePoint contribute to increased productivity?
That’s a question with many answers. The first thing we need to do is to listen to the business and understand what causes frustration in their daily work and after that we can look at how best use SharePoint to support their needs.
Is it simpler sharing and access to information or the document management that needs to be better, is it a place to collaborate in projects and work with task lists, calendars and issue tracking? Is it an intranet or extranet solution with possibilities to approve the information with an automated workflow process before it’s released? Maybe the search needs to be improved?

There are surveys that indicates that Information Workers spend as much as 9 hours a week to search for the right information and that 75% of the information is semi or completely unstructured. This is where the productivity can be improved, but the business needs help. They need help to shape their SharePoint environment so that it supports their needs and this is where it so often fails.

What happens is that it creates a gap between IT and the Information Workers. SharePoint is a relatively easy to learn as end user but what’s needed is a common way of working, an overall structure and guideline for how to work with and use the SharePoint environment.

The gap has to be closed and the solution is spelled Governance. A governance function needs to be involved from day on if not your implementation should end up in the same information and structure chaos that you came from.
Another common mistake when implementing a collaboration platform like SharePoint is that the implementation project is compared with how you implement a new application or roll out a new standard client. It does not necessarily have to be more difficult but it is a couple of different questions that needs to be handled. But whenever that is done there is no end to the possibilities, the productivity and the quality will increase.

Hopefully we will see a first beta of the next SharePoint during the end of the first quarter next year. What happens then is left to find out but SharePoint is for sure here to stay.