Supply chain disruptions, talent shortages, cybersecurity threats, rising interest rates and global economic fluctuations continue to impact the business landscape in 2024. To effectively address these challenges, organizations are continuing to focus on strategies that will create stability and growth potential in the wake of uncertainty.
For many business leaders, the future of work involves cultivating a culture of agility, advancing technology investments and accelerating their digital transformation efforts. By leveraging advanced technologies, organizations can drastically enhance business processes, culture, and customer experiences to effectively evolve and compete.
These advanced technologies include the themes of automation, artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics and customer relationship management. As an enabler to change and digital transformation efforts, it is suggested that more than 250,000 companies, with 85% of them being Fortune 500, are turning to SharePoint Online to solve their pain points.
SharePoint Online — Advancements
There are many benefits to using SharePoint online, including:
- AI: SharePoint Online AI capabilities are fueled by the power of Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and predictive analytics and can help automate processes, utilize data driven insights for faster decision making, and elevate the customer experience. With multiple business workflows, businesses need flexibility within the business functions. Common functionality like routing documents for approvals, collecting feedback and tracking issues can be streamlined to achieve maximum efficiencies.
- Data Management: Businesses are inundated with data and how they utilize it can make a significant difference in business outcomes. SharePoint Online provides the ability to access exact data points from anywhere, anytime. Configurable back-end connections enable users personalized experiences minimizing inefficiencies and improving production.
- Security and Compliance: Given the sheer volume of projects, managing business-critical information effectively and efficiently is a business priority. Effective document control with specific permissions helps manage appropriate access and regulate needs and compliance.
- Content Management and Collaboration: With project variables, a robust content management system to ensure document consolidation, timely approvals, edits and feedback management can eliminate redundancies and significantly improve performance. Workflows can be established to route documents for approvals while managing version control, edits and translations so employees are always working with the updated version in a simple and consistent user experience.
- Administration and Customization: Businesses with multiple offices need to ensure they can build custom applications as well as apply changes across the organization’s platform in one centralized location versus having to access multiple systems. With a central administration console, administrators can monitor and update data across the organization on one central platform.
Modernizing Operations for a Steel Service Company
Recently, Cherry Bekaert worked with one of the world’s leading steel service center companies to modernize its legacy on-premises software to accommodate global operations.
Recognizing that operations could be streamlined, and productivity improved, Cherry Bekaert helped the company migrate their environment to Microsoft SharePoint Online. By leveraging SharePoint Online, the company began creating environments whereby employees could store, organize, share and access critical business information from any device. By investing in this cloud-based power technology, the company is already starting to see some improvements in their operations.
Custom Workflows
SharePoint Online also includes features and tools that allow an organization to build solutions to accommodate business needs with no code. Cherry Bekaert also is helping the steel service company with tackling capital expenditures.
“As a professional services firm, we are business leaders first in the IT context, leveraging technology to help company’s grow,” said Jonathan Schrader, Digital Advisory Business Applications Leader at Cherry Bekaert. “We understand business and how technology applies to an organization’s custom needs.”
Based on the company’s business model, precision with managing capital expenditures was a key area of focus. After their data migration, the organization needed to further customize workflows to allow for delegation functionality.
The organization wanted to delegate approval functionality based on different project variables such as changes and revisions, dollar amount, stakeholder availability, funding sources and locations, and approval timing parameters. Certain project expenditures needed to be approved by different level roles at different times in a project.
Additionally, delegation functionality needed to be integrated to ensure the task did not stall in the event a stakeholder was unavailable to approve. Leveraging Nintex Automation Cloud in tandem with SharePoint Online, Schrader and team customized workflows to establish delegation functionality, eliminate duplications in approvals, and automate the capital expenditures approval process enhancing quality, collaboration, accuracy, and performance organization wide.
A Microsoft Consultant With Your Business Expertise
As a Microsoft Solutions Partner, Cherry Bekaert's Digital Advisory team has the expertise and resources to deliver a fully customized SharePoint solution that aligns with an organization’s business goals.
“It’s realistic for business leaders to be hesitant when contemplating a migration from on premise to online,” said Schrader. “Leaders are often concerned with complexity, disrupting work, uncertainty with costs and the challenges that come with change management and rightly so. However, with the right solutions partner that understands not only the technology but the core business at hand — those concerns diminish exponentially.
“Hiring a Microsoft Consultant to drive your digital transformation initiatives enable the organization in its entirety to focus on the work at hand. It is important for the consultant to natively understand the business objectives so that they can effectively design and execute business strategies that meet the end goal both now and long term. Technology continues to advance, features upgrade, compliance changes and best practices evolve.”
Having the right partner to guide you through your SharePoint experience positions an organization for long-term success and growth with enhanced collaboration, improved productivity, strong data security and streamlined operations.
About Cherry Bekaert Digital Advisory
Cherry Bekaert’s Digital Advisory team is comprised of strategists who have broad industry experience and keen business acumen. Utilizing an agile and flexible approach, we help examine what you want to achieve with a focus on people, process, technology and culture. We are here to help organizations manage risks, enable growth and support sustainable operations. Leveraging our strategic process, we help digitally enabled organizations — especially middle-market companies — do more with less.
Cherry Bekaert stays on top of the latest technology trends, but we know that technology is not a one-size-fits-all solution. We're here to guide you on what technology makes sense to adopt as it pertains to delivering the highest value to your organization.
Interested in exploring Microsoft Solutions? Contact Us!
