Axceler®, a leader in enterprise collaboration governance, administration and migration solutions, recently announced the results from its “SharePoint Governance Maturity Benchmark” survey, which finds that while businesses understand the value of SharePoint, a lack of governance is resulting in poor alignment with business goals, low user adoption and ultimately, reduced return on SharePoint investments.
Of the 1,000 SharePoint administrators and business professionals surveyed over the past year, although 67.2 percent said SharePoint governance is extremely or very important to their business, only 26 percent admitted to having a very well-defined governance strategy, with 51 percent admitting their business has not implemented any form of governance strategy. These results show a significant disconnect — while businesses are embracing collaboration suites such as SharePoint within their organizations, there is confusion over who owns the management, compliance and end-user success of these platforms.
Any SharePoint or enterprise collaboration governance strategy should empower, not prohibit, employees to leverage the platform to their advantage by tapping into the organization’s collective intelligence and be more efficient. Based on these results, this slideshow features governance recommendations for businesses that have deployed or are thinking about implementing SharePoint or another collaboration tool within their organization.
Click through for governance recommendations for businesses that have deployed or are thinking about implementing SharePoint or another collaboration tool within their organization, as identified by Axceler.
Of those surveyed, 55 percent claimed they had primary governance accountability. As SharePoint and other collaboration suites are introduced to the organization, it is important to specifically clarify these roles to ensure clear ownership and responsibility.
With 37.7 respondents stating governance is not very defined within their organization, it’s critical to not ignore project management principals and involve core users in a process they understand to eliminate any confusion over the governance strategy.
42.7 percent said their governance plan lacks specifics on how the plan will deliver value for the organization, demonstrating a lost opportunity to identify specific business goals and underline the value collaboration can provide a business.
Enterprise collaboration suites are enabling technologies and with only 30 percent of all companies aligning their governance plans with end-user adoption, businesses are lowering the value of the collaboration technology, reducing their potential bottom-line returns and limiting employee efficiency.
Only 36 percent stated their governance plans are extremely or very focused on retention and compliance requirements, and another 43.6 percent claimed they do not regularly run audits on usage, security, content or permissions. In addition to meeting compliance requirements, regularly running audits may provide businesses with valuable insight around usage of the platform, allowing the business to better prioritize future initiatives.