Modern businesses are inundated with collaboration tools that help people communicate with their teams, chat with colleagues, and share information with customers.
However, encouraging employees to adopt approved tools can be challenging for business leaders, and their entire value often doesn’t become apparent until employees begin using them.
Indeed, an MIT Sloan Management Review and Capgemini Consulting found that nearly two-thirds of companies (63%) believe their pace of technology change is too slow. Therefore, employees aren’t onboarded onto new technologies quickly enough, companies struggle to adopt new tools quickly enough, and they end up behind the curve compared to their competitors.
An excellent example of this is the web-based collaboration and document management platform Microsoft SharePoint. SharePoint enables businesses to store data and documents and easily share information between departments, patients, and users. The solution also helps users to create secure intranets to create centralised spaces for departments, groups, and teams to collaborate on documents.
Despite these benefits, it can be challenging for employees to maximies SharePoint’s potential. Part of the problem is that users spend little time in SharePoint and are unfamiliar with its benefits, as they typically use Outlook as their primary communication and collaboration tool. But businesses can help employees to reap the benefits of SharePoint by utilising automation to bring valuable content into SharePoint.
What are the business benefits of SharePoint?
SharePoint enables companies to take control of their data management issues and improve communication between teams through tools like data lists, document libraries, meeting workspaces, and task calendars. By implementing SharePoint, businesses can enjoy benefits like:
Better task tracking: SharePoint enables companies to improve the analysis, collection, display, organisation, and processing of data. As a result, they can automatically track the timely completion of tasks that typically require substantial manual administrative effort, and project managers can gain real-time views of program activity.
Enhanced data management: Businesses can use SharePoint to manage data more effectively and securely. The software enables them to better assess the data that enters the business from employees’ mobile devices and via the public internet, then issue real-time alerts and reports of data security issues. As a result, employees no longer need to carry out time-consuming manual analysis, which ensures greater insight into and response to security incidents.
Removing data silos: SharePoint provides one location for businesses to store their most critical data, such as project information, customer data, or payment details. This removes the risk of data siloes and offers simple dashboards that enable real-time insights without having to download lengthy and complicated reports.
Simple data management: As a Microsoft program, SharePoint is compatible with tools like Excel, PowerPoint, and Word and is easy to sync with users’ Outlook calendars. Therefore, companies can quickly transfer their existing data into the required format, saving them vast amounts of time and resources on training employees.
Cost reductions: Most businesses with basic IT support already have access to SharePoint, and some departments are probably using it. They therefore don’t need to purchase new software, and the solution is supported by Microsoft. Costs can also be reduced by spreading the cost of technology across multiple departments.
Automating between Outlook and SharePoint
Businesses can easily import data from employees’ Outlook inboxes into SharePoint document libraries. As a result, teams can enjoy improved productivity levels, and the company ensures data security compliance and transparency.
Most employees are already comfortable creating folders in their Outlook accounts to store data and communication for specific categories of emails or quickly find data relating to customers, projects, suppliers, and vendors. With those folders created, users can manually move relevant emails into them, but they’re often too busy or distracted from managing their inboxes.
But automation can help businesses address this issue. Users can set this up themselves by creating a rule to automatically file emails. However, this relies on users taking the time to successfully create the automation rules.
Boost SharePoint adoption with Mail Manager
Given most employees spend most of their time in Outlook, it makes sense to implement a solution that naturally integrates with the email tool. Mail Manager is an artificial intelligence-powered Outlook add-in solution that helps businesses to store all emails and documents securely and in the correct location. It also integrates with SharePoint to help employees file and search for emails and documents within existing folders.
This integration capability is critical to helping companies take control of the ever-increasing mass of emails that users send and receive. And integrating Mail Manager with Outlook and SharePoint is far more effective than relying on users to use Outlook or Windows Explorer to file data. It increases data visibility, offers enhanced records management, and enables users to find and share data with colleagues and customers more quickly, which boosts client satisfaction.
Crucially, users don’t have to leave Outlook to transfer data to SharePoint. Mail Manager does all the hard work for them, ensuring no manual intervention is required.
The benefits of automating email storage through Mail Manager include:
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Automatic filing: Mail Manager uses AI capabilities to ensure all emails, both sent and received, are filed into the most appropriate folder within companies’ existing systems.
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Time savings: Mail Manager also features an AI search tool that ensures any email or attachment can be discovered within a few seconds. That means users no longer have to waste time searching for emails within their inboxes, only to find data has been lost or deleted.
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Data availability: Emails and documents are available to every project team member whenever they need them. This ensures that all data is easily discoverable even if the person who filed an email is on holiday or has left the business.
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Secure storage: Sensitive data is automatically stored in secure locations, as opposed to employees keeping emails in individual inboxes, on desktops, or deleting vital information.
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Cybersecurity: Businesses are under growing pressure to protect sensitive information. Mail Manager delivers critical data storage practices that help them protect employees and their information from the rising threat of cybercrime.
Discover how Mail Manager can help your firm simplify email and information management in SharePoint and Outlook with a free trial of the solution.
