Most companies would benefit from being able to share information globally whether you’re in the office or out and about doing your job away from the HQ including a Residential/Dementia EMI business.
Most techs understand what SharePoint is, but as great geeks do not necessarily understand the business value it would bring to a care providers operation. Looking at the care sector in particular, this relatively cheap product bolts simply onto the majority of existing windows server platforms – I travel around hundreds of care providers and in my experience I have yet to come across a Residential/Dementia EMI business that does not use Microsoft’s server technology in some form.
If you have had no experience of SharePoint 2010 then watch this video for a basic overview to discover how SharePoint works.
I’d like to show you what are in my opinion the top 20 ways that SharePoint can help solve some common business needs within Residential/Dementia EMI setting, I want to emphasize that these are only a few of the many ways to utilise the power of SharePoint. Once you start using it, you will begin to realise it works well with Microsoft Office and you will find you can do many other things that can easily be accomplished by the everyday user.
Shall we get started? Let’s see if you can find a few productivity solutions here that you’ve been trying to find for your care facility be it residential or domiciliary. Bear in mind you can do all of these tasks from an iPad, smartphone or laptop outside of the office or on the road as simply as if you were in the office – it’s a global solution accessible from anywhere.
With SharePoint you can:
1. Store all your emails on a secure and centralised website (owned by YOU) for easy archive.
2. Keep a central task location for assigning tasks to team members. These tasks will automatically show up in your team’s Outlook 2007/2010 To-Do List. Those tasks will also link to your projects so you can easily find out what tasks are still open for each project.
3. Assign tasks to your team members, and automatically notify them that they have a new task. Alerts can be sent when there have been updates to the tasks.
4. Organise large events and store the related documents, assigned tasks, and generally post anything and everything related to the events. It will also integrate with Outlook for added efficiency.
5. Collaborate with team members on all documents and stay on top of who did what. Earlier versions can easily be restored in case someone has made too many mistakes. Your projects can also be linked to related documents.
6. Quickly manage all projects for your team or organisation so there’s no need to explore buying an expensive project management solution, you have full control in house.
7. Use the efficient check-in / check-out management feature to sort your documents and manage who edits any document at a given time.
8. Start an internal company blog to communicate and share ideas with your team. It can would only be viewable by those you grant access.
9. Reduce the pain of 100 different staff filing systems on shared drives & gain more control over your company’s documents with the content approval function.
10. Work offline on the files, project tasks, tasks, discussions, contacts, calendars, blogs, etc. and then sync the updated information later on.
11. Offer training materials to your teams, residents families, in a secure password-protected website that can be accessed anywhere in the world.
12. Offer a secure and private place to share documents and other information with staff or business partners.
13. Implement a help ticket solution for your business or management team without blowing your budget.
14. Access and work with your data using your smartphone for added convenience while traveling or out of the office.
15. Create better team communication and brainstorming sessions where everyone can participate no matter their location.
16. Centralise where company and team project announcements are posted. Everyone can receive notifications via email or mobile phone automatically, anywhere in the world.
17. Create “central” documents (and synchronise), so all team members, staff, and/or partners are able to work on the same document and make changes. Updates are accessible with a click of a button. Everyone can then sync back to the “central” document and have all edits merged into that single document – a great feature.
18. Easily add custom fields to any area and capture the information that’s most important to your company, all without the help of a web designer or IT person.
19. Pull up and update Microsoft Access 2007/2010 database from a local desktop and sync information to a central location that can be accessed from anywhere at any time.
20. Create a project dashboard where on one page you can view and filter on common project elements, such as: project details, project documents, project tasks, project issues, project calendar, project milestones, project lessons learned, project risks, project change orders, and more.
You don’t need to spend an absolute fortune on achieving the above – IT does not need to cost the earth to be effective. You can get this software and much more for under £300 is some cases and once installed is very easy to setup and use. You can share information across your company quickly and easily.
I would recommend Office 2007 or 2010 to get the most from the above, it uses the same ‘ribbon’ toolbar interface and the integration is amazing!
For a deeper understanding of the security of a SharePoint site in a healthcare setting take a peek at this one.
Keep in mind that a little training goes a long way in increasing use and productivity in the systems you use in your business.
www.lynda.com has many training videos reference SharePoint and many other packages, I highly recommend taking the time to learn this efficient and effective system and watch your productivity, along with your profits, soar!
Tony
