SharePoint Intranet Templates: Why More Businesses Are Using Them And So Should Yours
Templates are time savers.
However, if your team needs a specific feature or a certain look on SharePoint, you will need to customize your SharePoint. There is one of three ways you can accomplish this:
- Get a team with SharePoint experience and build a custom solution
- Hire the services of a company that has expertise with SharePoint customizations
- Sign up for a monthly subscription for a SharePoint template / intranet-in-a-box and start improving productivity and collaboration right out of the gate
Why do I need a SharePoint template or intranet-in-a-box solution?
1. You have limited resources
Most SMBs are in the same boat when it comes to managing their limited resources and at the same time trying to maximize their output. In such a situation, it wouldn’t be prudent to involve your or contract outside developers in maintaining, enhancing, or developing a customized SharePoint intranet solution. Organizations with small teams usually do not have the bandwidth to develop and support a custom SharePoint solution, which involves gathering requirements, talking to users, fixing bugs, and making enhancements.
2. You are concerned about cost
Building a custom SharePoint intranet is costly. You may start with best intentions keeping the budget, requirements, and the team small, but soon they will grow. After many design iterations, development, testing, and documentation you will have a product, but at the expense of time and money that could have been put to better use.
3. You want easy upgrades
After bearing the cost of creating a custom SharePoint solution, chances are that the stakeholders will not be very enthusiastic about upgrading it soon. This means you have to tolerate not having the automatic upgrades and updates that accompany a product that is maintained and serviced by the hosting/SaaS company.
4. You want to be part of the latest trends
Intranets and needs age, and as a result, you have to continuously maintain and enhance it if you don’t want to be left with using old or useless technology. When you use a SharePoint template or SharePoint intranet-in-a-box solution, you will be up-to-date with the latest features, depending on the product.
5. You want quick implementation
Most Sharepoint intranet-in-a-box solutions require very little time to install and setup, which means your users can be up and running within a few weeks. This results in lower service costs and a faster ROI.
What are the benefits of using a ready-to-go, intranet-in-a-box SharePoint solution?
1. Customizable
Although these solutions are based on templates or pre-built modules and are not always 100% customizable, they do offer quite a bit of flexibility with regards to look, feel, and functionality to fit your branding, organization of departments, and sites, and overall business needs.
2. Secure
Most SharePoint solutions are on the cloud and fulfill more than your basic security needs. To reap the benefits of storing everything in one secure place and having your teams communicate and collaborate on one common platform while leaving the preservation of security, data backups, and worries of downtime to the service provider.
3. More than your ordinary intranet
Many of these ready-to-go intranets offer a lot more than just document sharing and collaboration. You can find intranets that offer templates and pre-built modules for project management, employee management, forms processing, document approvals, etc., which save time, boost productivity, and maximize your SharePoint investment. Moreover, they require no SharePoint or IT knowledge and no coding so you can focus on your core competence.