Determining the True Cost of Microsoft SharePoint

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.

: 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.

: After deploying SharePoint, users will need to change their approaches to creating and managing information. Given people's reluctance to change, a proactive change management program is recommended. This may be as simple as a formal communication from the executive sponsor stating the importance of SharePoint. It could also be an internal newsletter, e-mail campaign to promote the proper use of SharePoint, and "lunch and learn" demonstrations to give people a sense as to how SharePoint can make their lives easier. The costs of the change management effort will vary depending upon its intensity.