- Has both consulting and development experience in your industry.
- Can customize the out-of-the-box capabilities of SharePoint.
- Understands how to organize data.
Experience in Consulting & Development in Your Industry
You don’t want a company with little experience in your industry. If the consultant cannot prove their track record of satisfied customers, then you might need to look elsewhere. Always ask, what brands the SharePoint Consultant has worked with. Depending on what kind of solution you want, you may want to find a SharePoint consultant that has worked with trusted brands. For example, HingePoint has worked with brands like Marriott, Verizon, Presidio, and IHG. Make sure that they have experience working in your industry (or a similar industry).Ability to Customize SharePoint's Built-In Capabilities
To meet your business' specific needs, SharePoint consultants sometimes only need to use the standard "out-of-the-box" (built-in) capabilities that come with SharePoint. But sometimes, they need to be able to customize SharePoint so it works the way you want. If you're looking for customization and the consultant can only perform basic configuration without any customization, you're going to be unsatisfied. The flip side is also true: if a SharePoint consultant only tries to push customization when you just need something basic, they aren't the right fit. Always ask, "Do you just configure out-of-the-box or do you customize SharePoint?"Understands How to Organize Data
Let’s face it, if you're using SharePoint, you most likely want to manage all the information in your company. SharePoint is a great document management system. Without it, your documents are probably unorganized and difficult to find. If the SharePoint consultant does not know how to make a hierarchy of data, you might not have the right fit. Always ask,"Are you going to help me organize my data? Manage it on an ongoing basis?"Conclusion
Hiring a SharePoint consulting firm can be an investment that provides a positive ROI almost immediately. If you're in the process of finding the right consultant, we'd love to hear what you're looking to accomplish! Feel free to start a live chat with our solution consultant on this page, email us, or call us at (214) 301-0000 to get started today.About HingePoint
HingePoint offers cloud and mobile applications for construction and real estate that are easy to adopt and employees love. Specializing in the systems that run the construction and real estate business including SharePoint, Salesforce, Procore, MS Dynamics, and Autodesk. Scale and grow profitably with Financial and Project Management Dashboards, document management, and workflow automation for field to office collaboration. HingePoint 8105 Rasor Blvd. Suite 241 Plano, TX 75024 (214) 301-0000 www.hingepoint.com [post_title] => What Makes a Good SharePoint Consulting Firm? [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => what-makes-good-sharepoint-consulting-firm [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2018-10-22 00:42:12 [post_modified_gmt] => 2018-10-22 05:42:12 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.hingepoint.com/?p=14204 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 14106 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2018-02-22 03:05:11 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-02-22 09:05:11 [post_content] =>Here are 8 reasons you should be using SharePoint to manage your commercial real estate projects:
1. Chances are you probably already have SharePoint
Microsoft states that they have over 250,000 organizations using SharePoint and that over 85% of Fortune 500 companies now have SharePoint Online. You are already saving money on licensing costs by owning the SharePoint application through your Office 365 licenses.2. Security
Using groups to maintain a scalable security environment is typically your best option because permissions are applied to the group as a whole, not individual people. So, when adjusting permissions, only one change is needed to a group (as opposed to multiple changes for different individuals). You can define a security permission from a site collection, to a site, to the lowest component of a single item or document. It's very easy to assign these permissions directly to an individual user or a group of users.3. Collaboration tools everyone will want to use
The ability to leverage Office 365 Groups, which deliver a means of group communication, is a solid alternative to Slack and other popular messaging applications. Using Groups gives your team the ability to view, edit, share all group files, view, and schedule group meetings with ease allowing for better communications among team members. Granting external access in SharePoint Online is a breeze and no longer a time-consuming inconvenience. Simply connect a Microsoft account to their company e-mail or create guest links to give users access to folders, individual files, and sites within your environment.4. 3rd Party Services Integration
Microsoft Flow puts real power in the hands of regular users by easily connecting and automating services vital to your business. Microsoft Flow features code-free interaction with hundreds of third-party services such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Facebook, Twitter, OneDrive, Microsoft Dynamics, and more.5. Ridiculously simple reporting tools
SharePoint features powerful reporting tools to quickly view and share data. You can build, configure, and update scorecards and dashboards.Data visualization with Power BI:
Embedding Power BI reports to a SharePoint page (display charts, dashboards, reports, KPIs, etc.) on your SharePoint site makes the information readily available to users. Additionally, the analysis/metrics tools are now available within the program instead of having to import them; so, significant time is saved on importing data from other sources. You can also use Excel to build your reports and display them within SharePoint. [caption id="attachment_14067" align="aligncenter" width="800"]6. Mobile/Tablet Friendly
Access to everything, from anywhere, and on any device. This is HUGE for the real estate and construction industry! View and work on documents while on the job site or in the field. With SharePoint Online, you have all the information you need on every device so you can get more work done with ease.7. Task Management
SharePoint allows you to manage a set of tasks that may belong to a project, a business initiative, or a department. Users can also create customized list views, combined with out-of-the-box workflows to manage personal tasks and assign tasks to their team members or anyone else in the company.8. Flexibility to make it work how you want
SharePoint is designed to be configured however you want and to provide the most value when managing commercial real estate projects. It can be very intimidating to try and figure out where to start with SharePoint because (by default), SharePoint is installed as a blank site without any content. At HingePoint, we have guru developers and architects that have ALL the Microsoft certifications. We can help you create customized SharePoint Online, Web Parts, .Net, and Office 365 APIs that are integrated with Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory (AD), and SQL Servers.Conclusion
If you properly implement SharePoint, it will transform your company’s productivity. Employees will be more efficient, you’ll have better access to your company’s data, and you’ll be able to better report on key metrics. HingePoint’s custom SharePoint solutions have helped many companies struggling with unorganized data and manual, multi-step processes. Those same customers have transitioned into a more organized, productive organization through automated workflows and easy-to-find information. Interested? We'd love to have a conversation about what you're working on. Start a chat with our Solutions Architect on this page, give us a call at (214) 301-0000, or contact us here. --About HingePoint
HingePoint offers cloud and mobile applications for construction and real estate that are easy to adopt and employees love. Specializing in the systems that run the construction and real estate business including SharePoint, Salesforce, Procore, MS Dynamics, and Autodesk. Scale and grow profitably with Financial and Project Management Dashboards, document management, and workflow automation for field to office collaboration. HingePoint 8105 Rasor Blvd. Suite 241 Plano, TX 75024 (214) 301-0000 www.hingepoint.com [post_title] => 8 Reasons to Use SharePoint as a Project Management Solution for Commercial Real Estate [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => using-sharepoint-for-commercial-real-estate-project-management [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2018-04-24 02:46:32 [post_modified_gmt] => 2018-04-24 07:46:32 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.hingepoint.com/blog/sharepoint/using-microsoft-sharepoint-as-a-project-management-solution-for-construction-industry-copy/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [3] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 14108 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2018-02-20 12:01:55 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-02-20 18:01:55 [post_content] =>Best Posts of 2017 - Microsoft SharePoint
HingePoint takes great pride in being an industry leader for Real Estate & Construction companies when looking for SharePoint Consulting and Development services. 2017 was our most successful year to date and we thought it would be helpful to provide a recap of our most popular SharePoint blog posts from the previous year. Here's a quick overview of our 2017 insights about SharePoint and what’s new in terms of SharePoint updates, best-practices, tips, tricks, and more:#5. How To Use Office 365 & SharePoint Online To Build A Perfect Intranet
Looking for the perfect intranet solution? Want to maximize your Office 365 investment? This article outlines key tools and features to get you started.#4. SharePoint Out-Of-The-Box Tips And Tricks From SharePoint Experts
A great read for those looking for some the practical SharePoint tips and tricks from our guru project manager that he learned through first-hand training and heads-down hard-work with our clients.#3. 4 Ways To Use SharePoint For Company Data Management
Do you consistently find yourself wasting time hunting for files and documents? We detail four areas where SharePoint helps companies become more efficient and have more accurate, accessible information for employees.#2. 7 Trends In 2017 For Commercial Real Estate: SharePoint Remains Top Collaborative Tool
In the commercial real estate industry, there are trends that can directly influence how companies work and achieve maximum growth. Here you will find HingePoint’s take on the top technological trends for commercial real estate developers.#1. Top 5 Integration Features of Office 365 and SharePoint Online
Finally, our most popular SharePoint post of 2017. Read up on SharePoint upgrades and improvements over the last year that drastically impact users in terms of transporting cloud-based Office 365 capabilities onto the SharePoint platform. We identify five improvements we use to get the most out of Office 365 and SharePoint. This article was so great that @SharePoint Retweeted it!Thanks for Reading!
We hope that you found this recap beneficial as we took a look back at 2017. There are big things coming in 2018 that we are extremely excited about.1. Chances are you probably already have SharePoint
Microsoft states that they have over 250,000 organizations using SharePoint and that over 85% of Fortune 500 companies now have SharePoint Online. You are already saving money on licensing costs by owning the SharePoint application through your Office 365 licenses.2. Security
Using groups to maintain a scalable security environment is typically your best option because permissions are applied to the Group as a whole, not individual people. So, when adjusting permissions, only one change is needed to a group, opposed to multiple individuals. You can define a security permission from a site collection, to a site, to the lowest component of a single item or document. It's very easy to assign these permissions directly to an individual user or a group of users.3. Collaboration tools everyone will want to use
The ability to leverage Office 365 Groups, which deliver a means of group communication, is a solid alternative to popular messaging applications, such as Slack. Using Groups gives your team the ability to view, edit, share all group files, view and schedule group meetings with ease allowing for better communications among team members. Granting external access in SharePoint Online is a breeze and no longer a time-consuming inconvenience. Simply connect a Microsoft account to their company e-mail or create guest links to give users access to folders, individual files, and sites within your environment.4. 3rd Party Services Integration
Microsoft Flow puts real power in the hands of regular users by easily connecting and automating services vital to your business. Microsoft Flow features (some) code-free interaction with hundreds of third-party services such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Facebook, Twitter, OneDrive, Microsoft Dynamics, and more.5. Reporting tools that are ridiculously simple
SharePoint features powerful reporting tools to quickly view and share data. You can build, configure, and update scorecards and dashboards. Data visualization with Power BI: Embedding Power BI reports to a SharePoint page – display charts, dashboards, reports, KPIs, etc. on your SharePoint site makes the information readily available to users. Additionally, the analysis/metrics tools are now available within the program instead of having to import them; so, significant time is saved on importing data from other sources. You can also use Excel to build your reports and display them within SharePoint.6. Mobile/Tablet Friendly
Access to everything, from anywhere, and on any device. This is HUGE for the construction industry! View and work on documents, while on the job site. With SharePoint Online, you have all the information you need on every device so you can get more work done with ease.7. Task Management
SharePoint allows you to manage a set of tasks that may belong to a project, a business initiative, or a department. Users can also create customized list views combined with out-of-the-box workflows to manage personal tasks and assign tasks to their team members or anyone else in the company.8. Flexibility to make it work how you want
SharePoint is designed to be configured however you want and to provide the most value when managing your construction project. It can be integrated into just about any construction software you have. But... It can be very intimidating (and frustrating) to try and figure out where to start with SharePoint because by default, SharePoint is installed as a blank site without any content. Wouldn't it be nice if you had access to guru developers and information architects who could get SharePoint up and running for you (and integrated into your current construction software)? From SharePoint consulting to creating and implementing the plan, we're here to help.About HingePoint
HingePoint delivers cloud, mobile and analytics solutions for the construction industry. Specializing in the systems that run the construction business including SharePoint, Salesforce, Procore, Microsoft Dynamics, and Autodesk. Scale and grow profitably with Financial and Project Dashboards, document management, and workflow automation for field-to-office collaboration. [post_title] => Using Microsoft SharePoint as a Project Management Solution for Construction Industry [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => using-microsoft-sharepoint-as-a-project-management-solution-for-construction-industry [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2019-03-12 10:37:25 [post_modified_gmt] => 2019-03-12 15:37:25 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.hingepoint.com/?p=13915 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [5] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 13245 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2017-12-08 03:11:15 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-12-08 09:11:15 [post_content] => There are many reasons why your organization's SharePoint database doesn't have the clean and trustworthy data you need to run your business efficiently. Most businesses realize the data and documents you store in SharePoint are extremely important. For example, SharePoint is probably your "system of record" for marketing data and customer data. It may even run the company's intranet (containing things like human resources policies, IT procedures, your team document libraries, etc). Project collaboration, issues tracking, and task management critical to operations may be in your SharePoint system. Our customers turn to HingePoint because they struggle to keep pace and organize SharePoint. They may have even outsourced the development of SharePoint in the past, but it still isn't working as efficiently as the Microsoft commercials lead you to believe is possible.4 Reasons Why You Might Not Have the SharePoint Data You Need
1. The Data Doesn't Exist
Management or associates may assume you have information about your processes and training, but in some cases, it literally may not exist yet. Nobody has created it and put it in SharePoint. This may sound obvious, but it's something to consider. For example, one of our customers wanted to know what projects everyone was working on. They did not understand why they could not see that level of detail. The reason? They didn’t have tools that were collecting that information. We integrated T-Sheets with SharePoint and now they have that data.2. Dirty Data
Your SharePoint data may not be "clean". What is clean data? Clean data is properly organized, fully filled in, accurate, and searchable. SharePoint lists and syncing Excel Sheets into SharePoint may result in incomplete or inaccurate data. This is especially the case if employees don't fill it out accurately and/or you don't have a data management and data quality process in place.3. Downstream Data
In some cases, you may be pulling in data from a downstream system such as a CRM (like Salesforce or Siebel), financial system (like Sage), or project management system. If the data isn't accurate or clean in that system, then you are importing dirty data from other systems into SharePoint.4. SharePoint Graphics and Charts
SharePoint has great list views, teams’ sites, and tasks lists, but it doesn't have the best chart and graphic capabilities. So, you may have the data in SharePoint, but you just can't seem to find it if it's not visually presented on the screen. There are many ways to enhance SharePoint with BI (business intelligence) tools like Tableau. See examples in the screenshots below. HingePoint can show you how!SharePoint Online
Team Sites
Microsoft Teams
Final Thought
If you properly implement SharePoint, it will transform your company’s productivity. Employees will be more efficient, you’ll have better access to your company’s data, and you’ll be able to better report on key metrics. HingePoint’s custom SharePoint solutions have helped many companies struggling with unorganized data and manual, multi-step processes. Those same customers have transitioned into a more organized, productive organization through automated workflows and easy-to-search information. Our experienced team can design and implement a custom intranet for your organization using Office 365 and SharePoint. Contact us today to learn more » Once it’s clear what these services bring to the table, it’s time to start putting them together to provide your users with a seamless intranet solution. Office 365 and SharePoint Online provide an incredible level of extensibility that allow for solutions which leverage the best of what Office 365 has to offer. We have guru developers and architects that have ALL the Microsoft certifications. Create your own Web Parts, .Net, Office365 APIs, SharePoint Online, and integrate them with Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory (AD), and SQL Server. [post_title] => How to Use Office 365 & SharePoint Online to Build a Perfect Intranet [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => sharepoint-online-and-office-365-ingredients-for-the-perfect-intranet [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2021-01-06 13:52:47 [post_modified_gmt] => 2021-01-06 19:52:47 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.hingepoint.com/blog/autodesk/autodesk-university-2017-preview-copy/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) ) [post_count] => 7 [current_post] => -1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 14234 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2018-03-13 10:00:31 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-03-13 15:00:31 [post_content] =>With the seamless integration of Office 365 and SharePoint Online, Microsoft has breathed new life into SharePoint, one of the most used platforms for collaboration, document management, team collaboration, IT support, web portals, project management, financial reporting, forms routing, and much more. The problem is very few companies take the time to maximize what Office 365 can do!
SharePoint Online improvements over the last year include upgrades that drastically impact users in terms of transporting cloud-based Office 365 capabilities onto the SharePoint platform. HingePoint identifies a few improvements we use to get the most out of Office 365 and SharePoint.
- The ability to leverage Office 365 Groups, which deliver a means of group communication, is a solid alternative to popular messaging applications, such as Slack. Using Groups gives your team the ability to view, edit, share all group files, view and schedule group meetings with ease allowing for better communications among team members. [Read more about custom integrations and consulting for Microsoft Teams here.]
- Using Microsoft Planner to your company’s teams or groups to create multiple task lists associated with different projects or daily to-dos. Microsoft Planner has many of the same filtering capabilities as SharePoint lists, so it is a niche replacement for tools that previously had to be built from scratch or customized from other list templates. Read more about Microsoft Planner here.
- The new workflow capabilities of Microsoft Flow feature code-free interaction with hundreds of third-party services such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Facebook, Twitter, OneDrive, SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics, and more. Microsoft Flow puts real power in the hands of regular users by easily connecting and automating services vital to your business.
- SECURITY: Limit who, outside your organization, gets to see your content. Granting external access in SharePoint Online is a breeze and no longer a time-consuming inconvenience. Simply connect a Microsoft account to their company e-mail or create guest links to give users access to folders, individual files, and sites within your environment. Don't want anyone with a gmail account to have access, no problem! Share your content with a specific group of people in your organization by setting permissions through Active Directory Security Groups. Use policies that will allow or block certain user behavior (such as documents with credit card info or employee salaries). Create a policy that blocks people from sharing that kind of information between one another.
- A new layout that includes rich text, images, videos, news, highlighted content, customizable dashboard, and recent site activity allows for a more mobile-friendly content display. Mobile SharePoint access used to be a nightmare due to the lack of responsive You can now access SharePoint from anywhere and communicate with your team remotely to get more work done with ease.
- Embedding Power BI reports to a SharePoint page - display charts, dashboards, reports, KPIs, etc. on your SharePoint site to make the information readily available to users. Additionally, the analysis/metrics tools are now available within the program instead of having to import them; so significant time is saved on importing data from other sources.
We have guru developers and architects that have ALL the Microsoft certifications. Create your own Web Parts, .Net, Office365 APIs, SharePoint Online and Integration with Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory (AD), and SQL Server.
If you properly implement SharePoint, it will transform your company’s productivity. Employees will be more efficient, you’ll have better access to your company’s data, and you’ll be able to better report on key metrics. HingePoint’s custom SharePoint solutions have helped many companies struggling with unorganized data and manual, multi-step processes. Those same customers have transitioned into a more organized, productive organization through automated workflows and easy-to-search information.
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