SharePoint 2013 Intranet

SharePoint is complex and simple, expensive and cheap, and robust and limited. It's many things to many organizations, and still unfulfilling to others. While it is a complex technology platform, it is first and foremost a web development platform. In other words, it is what you make of it, but it can require a lot of time and money, and it does require a lot of planning.

SharePoint is present in 80% of the Fortune 100; and plays a prominent intranet role in about 70% of knowledge worker intranets (either powering the main intranet portal, or delivering associated collaboration sites and/or document repositories). Prescient has extensive experience working with and deploying SharePoint 2013, including for our own enterprise intranet.

Although not as robust and advanced as SharePoint 2016, and SharePoint Online within Office 365, there are some obvious pros and cons to working with SharePoint 2013:

PROS:

Cloud – feature parity cloud version (of course this was supposed to be the case, in large part, for 2010).
Social – enhanced social networking (nearly completely lacking in prior versions) using My Sites.
Editing interface – enhanced publishing and management interface (employing the 'ribbon' from Office).

CONS:

Branding – although it's apparently easier to implement new custom designs on SP13, MS has openly cautioned against customizing the home page.
Search – search is still not best-of-breed, requires considerable configuration work, and underwhelms most users (though offline, consistent content management policies are mandatory).
Social networking – My Sites and Newsfeeds are still isolated and separated from the main intranet.
Web content management - not best of breed for publishing news - communications oriented intranets

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Compare SP 2013 with alternative solutions (e.g. CMS and portal solutions)
Employ a strong SP 2013 developer on staff or ensure a healthy budget for outsourcing development work
Manage expectations accordingly – SP 2013 requires a lot of work and is not a silver bullet
Keep it simple – the further you move SP 2013 from “out-of-the-box” the more complicated and expensive it becomes
Develop according to detailed plans based on a rigorous business assessment including:

Strategic plan
Governance model & policies
Functional plan
Information architecture
Content management plan
Clean, simple design (avoid images & multimedia wherever possible)
Stay updated with service packs

SharePoint Consulting Services

Not only do we use SharePoint for our own intranet, most of our clients use SharePoint as well. Based on years of experience with dozens of corporate intranets, our technology-neutral approach defines business and functional requirements with a proven methodology for aligning SharePoint and employee collaboration needs with organizational goals and strategy.

While the specific scope of the project will vary based on the client’s unique requirements and budget, common deliverables of our SharePoint Consulting Services include:

Business Requirements Analysis – we will interview, gather and analyze feedback from key leaders and stakeholders the current needs and opportunities for improving employee communications, productivity, and information sharing.
Plan – Prescient will develop a detailed plan that documents the organization’s need, the intended benefits, the specific strategic directives, objectives, and measurable goals for the ongoing management of SharePoint as an intranet platform. The plan also includes recommendations for a high-level information architecture to structure significant user content.
Governance & Policies – we will define the roles and responsibilities of the intranet’s owners, key stakeholders and content owners, site developers and managers. A comprehensive governance model will include a detailed Intranet Policy detailing rules and guidelines for creating and managing team and project sites, and content pages.
Additional Options Available – user research, industry and competitive intranet benchmarking, business case development and ROI, functional plan, detailed information architecture and wireframes, content management planning, design, technology audit and planning, employee communications and marketing.

Choosing Prescient

Prescient’s team of consultants has extensive intranet and website experience with more than 200 clients; we were early adopters of technology platforms such as content management systems and social media, and are frequent users of SharePoint.

We have wide & deep experience working with SP2013 and multiple technology intranet and website environments.
Prescient boasts a full roster of satisfied, world class, Fortune 500 clients.
We are the only web consulting firm that promises to build success measures (critical success indicators) into each and every project.
We have the largest roster of expert speaking engagements of any firm in its class with dozens of webinar events and a bi-annual Intranet Global Forum held in New York and Los Angeles.
Prescient has the most published team of experts of any firm in its class with hundreds of published articles to date.
We have won more than a dozen awards including a prestigious Webby Award.

Additional Material

See our complete client list.

Read some of our case studies.