Managing the Costs of SharePoint Governance
Just read a recent article on CIO.com that focuses on determining the "true costs" of Microsoft SharePoint. We've been saying all along that the ongoing resources and costs to manage SharePoint must be considered in any ROI or Total Cost of Ownership calculation.
From the article:
"Unexpected Costs
It's the unexpected costs-the costs that IT leaders don't think to include into their business cases for SharePoint-that eat into their ROI. To get the biggest bang for your SharePoint buck, factor these expenses into your SharePoint strategy.
1. Governance: SharePoint's greatest advantage-its simplicity and ease of use-is often its biggest curse. Because it's so easy to use, adoption is high. The drawback of high user adoption is that the product is used inconsistently. As a result, design and governance standards need to be created.
Time and effort needs to be put toward developing and maintaining a SharePoint governance plan that outlines the type of content that should be loaded into the system, records policies, standard processes and metadata constructs, and guidelines for approaching and supporting SharePoint projects. IT leaders don't need to design an entire governance strategy up front. Instead, they should do some initial planning and let their governance standards evolve to reflect changing user patterns. "
Several of our customers have chosen ControlPoint specifically because it can help manage these costs. For more information, see our White Paper on "How ControlPoint Reduces Costs Associated with Managing SharePoint"