This document discusses how SharePoint can drive digital transformation through customer engagement, empowering employees, optimizing operations, and transforming products. While some see SharePoint as ubiquitous, the speaker argues it remains transformative when used to engage customers through extranets, empower employees with a digital workplace, optimize processes with workflows and data, and transform intangible products like customer service. True transformation requires considering business and technology goals together through digital strategies.

1. SharePoint and Digital Transformation
Is SharePoint Still Transformative?
Matthew W. Bowers, Partner
mbowers@mailctp.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-w-bowers-ab8a932
SharePoint User Group
St. Louis SharePoint Meetup

2. About Me
• 20 plus years in technology in various capacities
• 12 years with Covenant
• Numerous IT / technology certifications, including SharePoint,
Dynamics CRM and Cloud
• Passionate about Digital Transformation and Business Innovation
• Passionate about how various technologies (CRM, SharePoint, IOT,
analytics) can be used to drive organizational innovation and
transformation.
2

3. Digital Transformation IS CONFUSING!

4. Digital Transformation
The term ‘digital transformation’ has been used to
describe anything from creating a fully responsive
mobile website….to developing a social media strategy,
but in reality, true transformation needs to involve
much more than just the end product.
https://www.marketingweek.com/2016/04/14/what-does-digital-transformation-really-mean/

5. Digital Transformation
So WHY is it
Confusing?

6. Digital Transformation is Confusing – What Exactly Is It?
Business Innovation
Digital Strategy
Disruptive Innovation
Disruptive Technologies
Business Innovation
User Experience
Digital Marketing
Digital Experience
Digital Disruption

7. Digital Transformation is Confusing – Who is Responsible?
CEO CTO
CEO
CLO
COO CDO
CFO
CMO
CIO

8. Digital Transformation is Confusing – So Many Voices

9. Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is the profound and accelerating
transformation of business activities, processes,
competencies and models to fully leverage the changes
and opportunities of digital technologies and their
impact across society in a strategic and prioritized way.
http://www.i-scoop.eu/digital-transformation/

10. Digital Transformation
• “To be clear, investing in technology to stay current or ahead of the
curve isn't the same thing” (as digital transformation).
• Pretty much every company is putting money into new tools,
platforms, and services. And, doing so is a matter of becoming tech-
enabled, which doesn’t mean companies are actually changing to
compete in a digital economy.
• With digital transformation, however, technology is driven by
purpose, and that purpose is meant to reshape business.” (emphasis
mine)
Brian Solis, Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group

11. Digital transformation hinges on four imperatives
Engage your
customers
Empower your
employees
Optimize your
operations
Transform
your products
Systems of
Intelligence

12. SharePoint as an Agent for
Transformational Change

13. SharePoint As Transformer
I was recently asked at another presentation,
where I was speaking on technology in general,
“is SharePoint truly transformative? Or, has it
become so ubiquitous and commoditized that is
no longer capable of driving transformative
change”.

14. SharePoint As Transformer
My answer was….
It depends!

15. SharePoint As Transformer
Before considering HOW SharePoint
can transform, let’s first look at the
ways in which it is clearly NOT going
to be transformative.

16. SharePoint That Is NOT Transforming
• An intranet that is deployed to simply be a replacement to network file
shares… is not transformative!
• An intranet that does not engage your employees… will not be
transformative!
• An intranet that does not consider business process realignment or
improvement … is not transformative!
• An intranet that simply replaces Exchange calendars and corporate
calendars …is not transformative!
• An intranet that is merely used to manage documents and versioning … is
not transformative!

17. Digital transformation hinges on four imperatives
Engage your
customers
Empower your
employees
Optimize your
operations
Transform
your products
Systems of
Intelligence

18. PRODUCT TRANSFORMATION
It was suggested to me recently, that SharePoint is
not transformative, because Microsoft has failed to
deliver on the promise of product transformation or
the imperative of transforming your product.
They were suggesting that SharePoint was not
transformative because the product itself had some
perceived flaws.

19. PRODUCT TRANSFORMATION
• SharePoint tends to fall short in the imperative "Transform your
products".
• As a poweruser/developer, I see the decline of support for forms
(InfoPath) and development (SPD).
• It seemed like Microsoft was going to scuttle the whole SharePoint
product, but SP2016 seems to be making a comeback.
• Although SharePoint provides the tools to "get the job done", I still
get complains from several end users indicating how difficult it is to
use.
• This is mainly because of it's antiquated browser based interface. It
lacks the reactive appeal of responsive design. We'll see what the
future holds.

20. PRODUCT TRANSFORMATION
• The discussion of how or whether SharePoint remains a
transformative technology, is not dependent upon Microsoft’s
using it as an internally deployed technology for their own
transformation.
• Nor does transformation hinge upon SharePoint’s perceived
flaws or perfections etc.
• How does any organization use, deploy, implement or leverage
SharePoint to drive digital transformation.
• And how does an organization integrate other technologies
with SharePoint in unique, different or challenging ways that
drive organizational transformation.

21. PRODUCT TRANSFORMATION
• Important to note or clarify, product transformation can
be more than a discreet physical product in the market.
• It can be more intangible products or offerings such as
customer service, customer care, dealer or warranty care.
• Programs that are part of a greater whole being offered in
the market.
• What are some interesting use cases where SharePoint
can still be used for intrnal product transformation?

22. PRODUCT TRANSFORMATION
• IOT portal
• Dealer portal
• Warranty portal
• CRM integration
• Product / Equipment life cycle management portal
• Customer Care programs
• Customer Engagement

23. PRODUCT TRANSFORMATION

24. Digital transformation hinges on four imperatives
Engage your
customers
Empower your
employees
Optimize your
operations
Transform
your products
Systems of
Intelligence

25. OPTIMIZE OPERATIONS OR PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
• So, what comes first? Digital transformation or improved
operations and business process?
• Does improved operations and business process drive
digital transformation?
• Or does digital transformation just naturally lead to
enhanced operations and improved business process?
• In many ways, it’s a classic “chicken and egg” question!

26. OPTIMIZE OPERATIONS OR PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
• Survey the literature and you will find a wealth of articles
such as:
• “How Digital Transformation Is Helping Businesses Optimize
Operations”
• “The future is digital: Optimizing operations to enable
transformation”.
• But, you will also find,
• “Designing and improving processes for your digital
transformation”. Or,
• “Getting processes ready for your digital transformation”. Or,
• “Business Process Improvements are Shaping the Digital
Transformation Age”.

27. OPTIMIZE OPERATIONS OR PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
• At the very minimum, improving operations and business
process improvement are tightly interwoven with and
integral to digital transformation.
• You cannot have true digital transformation without
some focus on business process and operations
improvement.

28. OPTIMIZE OPERATIONS OR PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
• Using SharePoint lists to provide more robust forms of project, task
and process tracking.
• Replacing bloated Excel spreadsheets with SharePoint lists to
leverage versioning, auditing, workflow, enhanced task tracking,
management and close out.
• Service ticket tracking to streamline business processes to provide
faster response, efficient service delivery, and lower costs.
• Data, data, data and using SharePoint to surface data, provide data
reporting platforms and analytics engines.
• Application integration into CRM or ERP applications to enhance
reporting, data analysis and report distribution.
• Workflow maturity

29. OPTIMIZE OPERATIONS OR PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
• At the lowest level of maturity
• I walk over to the HR Office
• I go the appropriate HR rep’s desk
• I ask for the form
• Fill out the form
• Give it to the HR rep
• HR rep keys it into the appropriate system

30. OPTIMIZE OPERATIONS OR PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
• At one of the highest maturity levels
• I go the intranet
• Find the form
• Fill out the form online
• Send it to HR online
• Based on the values on the form it gets routed for approval or
automatically entered the system

31. Digital transformation hinges on four imperatives
Engage your
customers
Empower your
employees
Optimize your
operations
Transform
your products
Systems of
Intelligence

32. EMPOWER EMPLOYEES
• Next to organizational change management, this area is one of the
single most common challenges in any Intranet project
• This is because or related to, the single biggest reason for Intranet
failure: lack of end user adoption
• If your employees (read users) are not using your Intranet (read –
SharePoint site), the project is an abysmal failure, a waste of time
and resources, and does not drive business value or reduce risk
(read…. Does not drive Digital Transformation)
• The best Intranets, are successful and drive end user adoption
primarily because they drive employee engagement, empowerment
and enablement. (digital transformation

33. EMPOWER EMPLOYEES
• Digital transformation is not possible in the absence of
employee engagement (enablement or empowerment)
• Failure to engage your employees, carries other risks:
• Gallup, the poll folks, estimates that roughly 17 to 20 percent of
employees, nationwide, are actively disengaged in the
workplace.

34. EMPOWER EMPLOYEES
• Gallup identifies the three types of employees as:
• Engaged Employees -” Engaged employees work with passion
and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive
innovation and move the organization forward.”
• Disengaged Employees -” Not engaged employees are
essentially ‘checked out.’ They’re sleepwalking through their
workday, putting time — but not energy or passion — into their
work.”
• Actively Disengaged Employees - “Actively disengaged
employees aren’t just unhappy at work; they’re busy acting out
their unhappiness. Every day, these workers undermine what
their engaged coworkers accomplish.”

35. Employee Engagement
• Gallup estimates that actively disengaged employees cost the U.S.
$450 billion to $550 billion in lost productivity per year.
• Companies with low engagement scores earn an operating
income 32.7 percent lower than companies with more engaged
employees.
• Similarly, companies with a highly engaged workforce experience
a 19.2 percent growth in operating income over a 12-month period.

36. Employee Engagement
•In an article published by Jonathan Pont, the
most-engaged workplaces experienced the
following performance metrics:
•2X higher customer loyalty
•2X higher productivity
•2X lower turnover

37. EMPOWER EMPLOYEES – DRIVE CHANGE!
• Make search work! Make it work spectacularly! Make it the one place they
can go to find literally ANYTHING in your corporate environment!
• Use application integration points. business connectivity services and
other avenues to allow search to reach into other arears of the
business! Make search a compelling and winning experience.
• Make your Intranet (read SharePoint site), mobile, anywhere, any device
accessible! Drive mobile on the go experience!
• The average worker today, will access your environment from no less than
3 to 5 different devices with different footprints. Make it easy to use.
• Make sure your Intranet is flexible! Give your users various ways to access
content, push content and find content.
• Ensure that you are providing fresh, new, dynamic content regularly! Give
the users a REASON to come to the Intranet on a regular, routine basis.
Stale, static content kills Intranets.

38. EMPOWER EMPLOYEES – DRIVE CHANGE!
• Quality, curated content. Use good governance. Make sound business
decisions about who can publish content, what types of content and
when to publish new content.
• Make sure you have a good, solid Information Architecture, and
navigation. A poor navigation experience makes for a very painful user
experience!
• Organizational change management and training! Technology is easy.
Deploying, implementing, delivering on the technology is not difficult.
• But, one of the single most effective ways to drive adoption, engage
employees and drive digital transformation from the employee (and
technology perspective) is to make SharePoint the linchpin or foundation
of an organizational Digital Workplace!

39. Digital transformation hinges on four imperatives
Engage your
customers
Empower your
employees
Optimize your
operations
Transform
your products
Systems of
Intelligence

40. CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
• Are customers important to digital transformation?
• Is customer engagement key?
• What comes first, digital transformation or customer
engagement?
• Does digital transformation drive customer engagement?
• Or does customer engagement drive digital
transformation?
• What does all of this have to do with SharePoint? Why
do I as a SharePoint guy, care? What’s in it for me?

41. CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
• Even those who argue that it is not just about customers,
will acknowledge that your customers are a key driver and
catalyst.
• “Although digital transformation is not just about customer-
facing functions, it’s clear that in many transformation projects,
the customer experience is a key driver and catalyst. In more IT-
oriented projects, the same goes for the user experience and
user adoption. Actual usage and adoption in fact is essential to
make such projects succeed.”
• (https://www.i-scoop.eu/digital-transformation/digital-transformation-customer-
experience-marketing/

42. CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
• So how does SharePoint fit into that picture?
• How is SharePoint, as a technology relevant to the
discussion?
• After all, don’t most organizations use SharePoint to
replace their network file shares and manage document
versions?
• How does the average SharePoint implementation
engage my customer?

43. CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
• I could argue persuasively that earlier versions of
SharePoint could be leveraged to deliver quite robust,
interactive, engaging and powerful web experiences as a
public facing, dot come marketing web site, fully capable
of driving power and engaging customer experiences!
• This is no longer possible since Microsoft deprecated the
web content management feature set and no longer
supports SharePoint as a public facing web site platform.

44. CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
• SharePoint can be used still as an extranet portal.
• Extranets can and do come in a wide variety of flavors.
Extranet is simply a generic term that states the
overarching architecture (shared access of an internal
resource to authenticated external users).
• Extranets or portals can be very specific in function and
address a wide variety of application needs.

45. CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
• Some examples are:
• Merger and Acquisition Portal
• Vendor Portal
• Contractor Portal
• Dealer Portal
• Customer Care Portal
• Customer Experience Portal
• E-Commerce portal
• CRM integration to drive drive customer behavior, interaction
or enablement, are things like:
• Event Management
• Customer Profile Management
• Help Desk / Case Management

46. QUESTIONS?

47. NEXT STEPS
• Call me to talk about SharePoint as Transformer
• Let’s do a Lunch and Learn
• How about a demo of the Covenant Toolkit?

48. Contact Me
mbowers@mailctp.com
618-972-2152
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-w-bowers-ab8a932
https://www.facebook.com/matthew.w.bowers.1
@matthewbowers58