Why You Need a Roadmap When Planning for SharePoint 2013

    COLUMBUS, OH, July 11, 2013 /24-7PressRelease/ -- For years, organizations have struggled with aligning their business goals with the technology solutions necessary to produce an exceptional return on investment. To do this, companies often use a technology roadmap to help introduce a new or upgraded technology within an organization, such as migrating to a new email system or introducing a new internal application. The value of a roadmap to an enterprise is to ensure that its business goals and objectives drive its IT solutions. But they are not always perfect. In the specific case of SharePoint rollouts, there are a number of considerations that must go into a technology roadmap in order to better align business outcomes with the technology results SharePoint can provide. SharePoint experts at ICC, a nationally recognized enterprise technology leader that provides business-critical application development, digital and big data analytic solutions to its Fortune 1000 national and global clients, say IT professionals should consider Five Factors that Impact Every SharePoint Enterprise Roadmap. The company lives by what it preaches and benefited from using its own SharePoint Enterprise Roadmap when it completely reimagined its website on SharePoint 2013.

"A well-planned SharePoint Roadmap is vital for success. It should uniquely align an organization's Business Goals and Technical Solutions to a well-developed Governance Plan, User Adoption Plan, Training Plan, and high-level Technical Architecture," says Joe Hartsel, Business Strategy Manager for SharePoint Services at ICC. "And the Roadmap defines ways to measure success and benefit to the organization as SharePoint solutions are implemented."

This was the process ICC used when it recently redeveloped its new website to better reflect the various enterprise technology solutions the company provides its clients.

"We looked for a way we could share our executive thought leadership directly with clients and prospective clients. This includes executive blogs, downloadable white papers on important topics, up to the minute news, videos, and even easier online employment applications," says Theresa Hodgson, Director of Marketing for ICC. "One of the internal benefits to using SharePoint as the framework for our new website is the ease of use for the marketing team when adding, updating or revising content. It also provides a library or repository for content we are developing and helps us to better manage and nurture new leads for our sales team. Looking into the future, the capabilities in SharePoint 2013 will allow us to drive new levels of social interaction with our clients and partners."

Five Factors that Impact Every SharePoint Enterprise Roadmap
When business goals aren't met, business leaders often ask why IT investments were unable to help achieve those goals or why IT is spending money on technology that really doesn't help the business.

Often, it's not the technology selection, but the implementation that is at fault. A good roadmap can help. In the case of SharePoint, a roadmap provides a dynamic set of artifacts that an organization can benefit from over the lifetime of its SharePoint environment. The roadmap changes over time due to five key factors:

1. Familiarity. As the organization's SharePoint expertise matures, and as the organization learns more about how SharePoint can help it solve various business problems, the need for new solutions become apparent.
2. Priorities. As organizational business goals and priorities change, solutions in the roadmap may need to move from one phase to another.
3. Technology. Other third-party technologies may become part of the overall solution, thus changing the original planned phases.
4. Support. Support may be provided to other organizations, or more SharePoint solutions may be necessary to support the various organizations, that were not in the original plan.
5. Resources. The amount of resources devoted to SharePoint may change over time, thus affecting the rate at which solutions can be implemented.

"Our ICC SharePoint Roadmap offering is a planning and implementation process solution that allows our customers to map their business goals to a phased technical implementation plan," says Hartsel. "This process ensures prioritized business goals are the primary drivers in developing an implementation plan of technical solutions across the lifetime of the SharePoint environment."

Want to Learn More?
ICC's Michael McNett, National Business Strategist for SharePoint Services, has developed a new white paper that explores the ways companies can ensure their business goals are aligned with their SharePoint deployments. Download a complimentary copy of "Roadmap: The Journey to Business and IT Alignment" from the ICC Insights page at http://bit.ly/12WItGD.

About ICC
ICC (Information Control Company), based in Columbus, Ohio, is a leading provider of enterprise technology solutions. With a staff over 500 highly trained consultants, we are experts in Strategy, User Experience, Visual Design, Engineering, Project Management, Business Analytics and Quality Assurance. Using these skills, we develop and deploy innovative, business-critical solutions that enable Fortune 500 and mid-market organizations to improve operational efficiencies. Our Business, Digital and Technology solutions give our clients a competitive advantage that helps them drive revenues and increase margin.

Clutch is a world-class digital ad agency inside the walls of ICC. Together, they're a collection of seasoned strategists, user experience specialists, writers, art directors and developers who specialize in the art and science of Interactive Conversations.

ICC is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and an IBM Premier Business Partner. Clients include Nationwide, Cardinal Health, McGraw Hill, the State of Ohio, and Honda.

ICC is committed to serving its clients, community and country by developing U.S.-based leaders who work hard to strengthen the American economy. More information is available at http://www.icctechnology.com.

Media Contacts:
Theresa Hodgson
ICC
[email protected]
614-523-3070 x106
http://www.icctechnology.com/

Rich Mullikin
Communication Strategy Group for ICC
[email protected]
866-997-2424
www.communicationstrategygroup.com

# # #