A Case Study: Steps to Selling SharePoint to Decision Makers

Rich BlankEmail: getrichieb@gmail.com

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Agenda

Introduction

Executive Overview: Client Case Study

Steps for Selling SharePoint to Decision Makers

Summary

Questions

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Introduction

About the Speaker:

Rich Blank

• 15 years of consulting focused on portals, collaboration, content management strategy and technology consulting.

• Current technology focus on Microsoft SharePoint Strategy, Planning, and Implementation. Prior experience with eRoom, Documentum, Lotus Quickr/Connections, Autonomy Interwoven, SDL Tridion, and other competing portal, collaboration and ECM platforms.

• Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Six Sigma Green Belt.• Previous senior managing & technology consulting positions at IBM, EMC, KPMG, and HP.

phone: 704-243-9153blog: www.pmpinsights.comtwitter: pmpinsightslinkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardblankemail: getrichieb@gmail.com

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Executive Overview: Client Case Study

Audience: Sr. Architects, IT Project Managers, Sr. Managers, Directors, CxOs

Objective: Share a client case study of a successful project focused on obtaining funding for the approval a centralized and global shared IT service for collaboration and information management leveraging the Microsoft SharePoint platform.

Client Challenge: Billion dollar global industrial company with multiple sites on 3 continents, consumer and government lines of businesses. Traditionally decentralized IT organization with multiple silos of information, multiple software platforms from multiple vendors, and strict security requirements for government related groups. A centrally funded SharePoint project was prioritized at the bottom of the “nice to have” list vs. a “must do”.

Solution: Consulting engagement following the following Steps for Selling Microsoft SharePoint to Decision Makers outlined in this presentation.

Results: Approval of several million dollars for a centralized IT Shared Service for Global Collaboration Initiatives leveraging the Microsoft SharePoint Platform.

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Steps to Selling SharePoint to Decision Makers

1. Discover Current State

2. Define Business Drivers

3. Analyze and Align

4. Develop Vision

5. Blueprint Future State

6. Architect Strategy

7. Build Roadmap

End Result = Business Value of SharePoint and Funding

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1. Discover Current State

• Project Charter• Identification of the Stakeholders and Technical Subject Matter

Expects• Current State Assessment • Current High level process flows• Voice of Customer (internal)

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Current State - Questions

Current organization and process:How are people collaborating today? How is work accomplished today? (e.g. email)Who is the audience?

Current content:How do users access the information?High level types, Classifications, LifecyclesWhich information is used in decision making?

Existing collaboration or content management systems: The challenges using them where applicable. Technical architecture diagramsExisting Governance or related documentationHow much are these current systems costing today?Where are these systems used and by whom?

Pain Points?

Any related initiatives currently in-flight?

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Current State – High Level Findings

People are working in larger and broader teams Demand exists for Web 2.0 & collaboration capabilities and solutions Many lines of business have independently invested in siloed solutions

• Current tools for collaboration are not adequate

• Difficult to use, navigate, and find content and information

• User experience is inconsistent and not intuitive

• Lack of capabilities, including document management, reduces adoption of current enterprise portal.

• Securing information is not consistent across solutions and tools

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Current State – High Level Process Flow

Large files are constantly being emailed to large groups to work on, consistently forcing users to manage their email.   A document is emailed to a dozen people and their response is required very quickly.  The document is resent a few times because of edits.The document is resent a few more times because the original email gets lost in the shuffle of the hundreds of emails received daily. Eventually all the responses are received and results compiled. 

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Current State – Voice of Customer (VOC)

“Six Sigma Black Belts need to share best practices on

how they solved problems at other sites.”

“Our intellectual capital is underleveraged.”

“Our biggest inefficiencies are disjointed systems.”

“We need a consistent way to work with customers,

suppliers and subcontractors.”

“Project team sites are an extremely valuable

resource that we don’t know we’re missing.”

“Customers expect collaboration technology.”

“We don’t know what we know (and don’t know), who knows it or who to

call.”

“We need a forum to provide feedback so we

can improve our processes.”

“Because of the abundance of e-mail,

people are ignoring the messages.”

“We’re in the same organization and are strangers… there’s no

way to connect.”

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2. Define Business Drivers

Identified through:• Stakeholder Interviews• Business Strategy

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Business Drivers – Questions for Stakeholders

Examples:In general, does collaboration technology (including project team sites, expertise location, communities of interest, blogs, wikis, content management) relate to any current or future strategic initiatives, objectives or opportunities within your organization?

Briefly describe specific business challenges you face which you believe could be improved with better collaboration.

What barriers, inefficiencies or complexities exist with your current methods of working collaboratively?

What is your definition of success for using a collaboration system to connect, share, team and manage?

What needs to occur from the stakeholder viewpoint to gain their support of a collaboration initiative? What will get their vote?

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Business Drivers - Examples

Opportunities for efficiencies, customer insights, and innovation.

Enhanced knowledge and social learning. Maximize organization’s intellectual capital.

Top-down communication continues to have less impact due to overuse of email and information overload.

More engaged and connected employees and attracting talent who might otherwise go to other organizations with these technology capabilities.

Individual lines of businesses will continue to build silos or independently go outside of the IT organization.

Increased costs from duplication of effort

The organization is a matrix with silos of information and people. Uncoordinated customer efforts across lines of business.

Disconnected people and processes - decreased productivity due to the physical and organizational distance from one another.

Competition is investing in it and will accelerate ahead of us.

Primary tools for collaboration are not adequate, ineffective, or lack appropriate security.

Finding people and sharing information are time consuming and difficult.

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3. Analyze and Align

High Level Requirements and Dependencies

Profile User Community

SharePoint Capabilities / Functionality

Impact to Strategic Objectives

Consolidate Current Costs

ROI

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Analyze and Align – Dependencies and Challenges

Dependencies or challenges include anything that will impact the global deployment of SharePoint.

Examples:• Technical (e.g. network)• Active Directory projects• Security initiatives• Organizational or political constraints• Existing projects• Resource constraints

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Profile the User Community

Users requiring “project” management.

Users focused on improving business “process” management.

Users who require “light” ad-hoc collaboration around documents.

Users who are looking to connect with colleagues and share knowledge.

Users who want to find subject matter experts.

Mobile users who are not online regularly.

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Analyze and Align - SharePoint Capability Mapping

Poor User Experience

Team Inefficiencie

s

Time Finding Experts

Knowledge Retention

Customer Intelligenc

e

Security/ Complianc

e

Pain Points SharePoint Capabilities

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Analyze and Align - to Strategic Business Objectives

Examples of Solutions Leveraging Capabilities of SharePoint

Increase Profitability

Optimize Resources

Efficient Operations

Leadership& Learning

Mergers and Acquisitions: Secure collaboration and sharing of information, ease of connecting with people and assimilation into the culture

Portal for Sales Excellence: Enables growth and profitability through proposal lifecycle management, expertise location, training podcasts, competitive intelligence

Learning Portal: role-based learning matrices, informational content, integration with HCM and LMS, blended and social learning

Project Management: Standardize project management methodology, issue visibility, resource/time/financial management

Policy Management: Defining, maintaining and improving policies, processes and procedures, approval workflows and visibility

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Analyze and Align- Quantify Current Costs (Example)

Related collaboration / ECM Systems (includes hardware, software, support, licensing, database, VM, backups, etc…). Current 1 Year CostsSystem #1 (hosted solution)

$100,000

System #2 (in house collaboration/ECM platform non-SharePoint)

$350,000

System #3 (Current SharePoint investments) $ 65,000

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ROI

ROI of collaboration is difficult to measure because the costs and opportunities are often hidden.

Will a particular business process be improved using SharePoint? Cost savings? Time savings?What’s the cost associated with lost productivity from managing documents and ad-hoc business processes through email?How much time is lost searching for information?What are the costs and where are the measurable opportunities for connecting people to each other and contextual and relevant information? What’s the value of a conversation?What’s the value of an idea?What’s the value of shared knowledge?Can a Six Sigma approach be applied to SharePoint as an information management platform?

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Structured Collaboration = More Measurable

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ROI

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4. Develop Vision

Paint the Vision - Collaboration “big picture”

Success Stories – both internal and external

Create demos

Highlight Benefits of SharePoint Capabilities

Investigate 3rd party add-ons and solutions for SharePoint

Elevator Pitch

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Vision - Define Collaboration “Big Picture”

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Vision – SharePoint

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Vision – Enterprise Information Management Platform

UnifiedEnterprise

Information

Content Management

AccessSearch

CollaborateAnalyze

AuditSecureReport

Structured Data (ERP)

Unstructured Data (documents, email, web 2.0, etc…)

Metadata

Business Process Management

Security and Metadata Management

To a Service Oriented and Shared Capability

Model

From a Siloed, Costly and

Under-Leveraged Model Shared

:• Foundation• Capabilities • Solutions

• Services

• Expensive due to redundancies of

investments• Siloed and vertically integrated “solutions”

• Line of business focused• Isolated audience

• Leverage shared capabilities and solutions

• Complementary design and re-use capability

• Business and customer driven

• Highly disciplined functional execution

IT Business Principles

Vision - Shared IT Service

Vision - Enabling the Collaborative Enterprise

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Collaborative Enterprise

•Matrixed• Information Flow

•United, open and secure borders

•People Driven•Agile•Transparent• Intuitive•On Demand•Shorter time to market

•Bottom Up

•Hierarchical• Information Friction

•Silos and Boundaries

• IT Driven• Inflexible•Need to Know•Overly complex•Scheduled•Long time to market

•Top Down

Traditional Enterprise

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Vision - Highlight Benefits of Capabilities

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Vision - Success Stories (Solution = SharePoint)

Organization Challenge Benefit

Finding, accessing, and sharing job critical information

Reduced intranet costs by 10%,

25% faster and more relevant searches

Team site setup time reduced 90%.

Proposal process had no ability to search or track the lifecycle of proposals.

Reduced time spent looking for proposals

Reduced consolidation & review time

Dashboards enable managers to track workflow

Inability to manage Sarbanes-Oxley documentation and workflow.

Reduced associated costs by 25%

Decreased process inefficiencies

Improved internal finance processes

5 R&D facilities ran independent product development process which were inconsistent & inefficient.

Reduced R&D cycle time by 50%

Increased revenue by $60 million dollars

Reduced R&D costs

Improved customer satisfaction

Engineering collaboration was difficult and inefficient with engineers across different sites

CIO Craig Halterman: "If there's a space engineer in Redmond and we want him for a project in Sacramento, we can cut down on the travel and logistics. We can let people stay where they are, and leverage them, without any kind of adverse affect."

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Vision - Demos

Don’t be afraid to show rich media.

e.g. Video testimonial of a key stakeholder

providing their endorsement of the

technology as a strategic objective.

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Vision - Elevator Pitch

Create an elevator pitch about your intended initiative.

No more than 10 slides.

Introduce your initiative and the need for collaboration based on current state assessment and analysis.

Leverage your Microsoft Account Manager or related partners.

Showcase SharePoint capabilities.

Craft a good story to tell over and over again.

Evangelize, be passionate and be positive.

Can be expanded to more of a concept of operations (as-is, to-be, high level description of environment)

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5. Blueprint Future State

Future state architecture and Security

Service Catalog

High Level Governance

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Future State

Colleagues Customers Partners

Solution Catalog• Business Networking

• Secure Team & Project Workspaces• Document & Policy Management

• Communities of Practice• Enhanced Portals• Enterprise Search

Solution Services• Delivery coordination

• Development• Training and Education

• Governance• Support

Foundation

Built on Microsoft SharePoint

Shared infrastructure, security, auditing & reporting

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Future State - Governance

Strategy

Operational

Policy

Technical

Architecture (information and network)Change ManagementJob Scheduling Backup/Restore Retention/archiving Performance Availability Security and Membership Licensing / MaintenanceDesktop Support

Support Communication Plan Site Creation Site Archiving/Retention External User Account Access Billing / ChargebacksTraining/Best Practices Solution Consulting – Templates, Site Design, Custom Interface/Solution DevelopmentTesting

Risk ManagementApplication/Information Use External Access Security and Compliance eDiscovery / LegalSite Roles and Responsibilities Consistent Branding

Executive Summary High Level Governance Model Team Roles and Responsibilities Alignment of Business Goals Performance Metrics and Value

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6. Architect Strategy

Summarize current state, business drivers, analysis, and vision

Required Infrastructure and Resources

Costing

Risks

Critical Success Factors

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Strategy - Costing Considerations

SharePoint Product Licensing

SQL Server Licensing

Windows Server

Virus Scan and Backups

Hardware & Infrastructure

Resources

Third Party Add-ons

Consulting

Governance

Marketing & Training

Solution Development

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Strategy - Risks

Risk ImpactProject budget for collaboration technology is reduced or eliminated. HighPerformance Testing HighMigration of current collaboration environments to new solution. HighUnanticipated organizational cultural barriers (or country/region specific)

High

Architectural and technical issues not planned for or known at this time. HighLoss of key resources MediumFailing to identify key stakeholder requirements. MediumNot implementing high availability/failover in phase 1 LowFailing to follow the governance plan. LowServices contract delays misdirect the project. Low

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Strategy - Critical Success Factors

User Adoption and Training (ease of use, empower departments and individuals)

Platform Reliability and Performance

Governance

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7. Build Roadmap

Implementation approach and timeline

Usually a phased approach

Include migration of legacy systems and content

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Roadmap - ExampleQ4’1

1Q3’1

1Q2’1

1Q1’1

1Future

Q3’10 Q4’10

Q2’10Q1’10

Q4’09

PILOT

People, Teams and

Communities

Enterprise

Search and Portal

Content Migrations

Search People

and Secure

Team Sites

Portal Redesign

PORTAL

Secure Team Spaces

Platform

InfrastructureDevelopment

and Test Infrastructur

e

Enterprise Search

Pilot

Business Networking (PROFILES)

C1 C2

C3

Production Environmen

t Built

Communities and Web

2.0

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Summary: SharePoint Enables Business Transformation

• SharePoint Strategy and Deployment Plan Document

• Executive Presentation

1. Discover Current State

2. Define the Business

Drivers

3. Analyze and Align

4. Develop the Vision

5. Blueprint Future State

6. Architect Strategy

7. Build Roadmap

Average = 12-16 Week Initiative

PROCESS

• Gap / Benefit Analysis• Future State Blueprint• Opportunity / Impact Matrix• Success Stories• SharePoint Capabilities• Solution Demos• Risk Matrix• Costing Spreadsheet

KEY ELEMENTS DELIVERABLES• Project Charter• Current State Assessment• High Level Process Flows• Cause / Effect Diagrams• Voice of Customer• Stakeholder Analysis• Business Drivers• Critical Success Factors

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Summary

FINAL DELIVERABLES…

Outline:

Objective and Goals of the Project (Why Are We Here)

Proposed Solution (What = SharePoint) – consider including a brief demo / screenshots

Summary of Current State (Addressing What Problems for Whom and Where)

Benefits (More of the Why and What)

Critical Success Factors (More of the What)

Governance and Resources (Who and What is needed)

Project Roadmap (How and How Long)

Risks

Costs (How Much)

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Summary

FINAL THOUGHTS….

Follow the 7 Steps Outlined in this presentation to help build an objective, clear and fact-based, and complete business case for SharePoint and presentation to executives.

Address the “what’s in it for me?” and how does my line of business benefit attitude.

Align and get support from business thought leaders and key business leaders (beyond sponsors) and technology champions who believe and support SharePoint as part of their business strategy.

You are not only marketing to end users, but selling to C-level, technology steering committees, and senior management throughout your organization to obtain funding.

In some cases, downplay Microsoft SharePoint (make it less about the technology). Promote how the capabilities of a shared collaboration and information management platform can improve the current state and enable the transformation the business.

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Questions?

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Contact: Rich Blankphone: 704-243-9153linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardblankemail: getrichieb@gmail.com