SharePoint and Digital Transformation: Is SharePoint Still Transformative

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

Objectives
• Tell you a bit about Covenant
• Have a conversation about digital transformation
• Understand how technology plays a role in transformation
• Understand that it is not just about the technology
• Discuss the relationship(s) between digital transformation, business
innovation and disruptive technologies
• How is SharePoint capable of transforming?
• Some specific examples of SharePoint transforming!
• Drawing for a free SharePoint Health Assessment
2

2004
Covenant
Established
30+
Skilled
Professionals
1 bazillion
Successful
Deployments
133.33…%
Client
Satisfaction
#1
St. Louis
SharePoint Team

Business Intelligence
SQL Server
Azure
Office365
.NET Apps
Project Management
Forms & Workflow
IOT
Active Directory
Intranets
Extranets
Websites
SharePoint
Sitecore
Kentico
HTML5/CSS3
Microsoft CRM
And much, much more…

SharePoint Expertise:
• Intranets
• Extranets
• Pubic Websites
• e-commerce
• PMO/Project Portals
• Many other types of Portals
(M&A, Dealer, Vendor, Warranty,
Customer Care, etc.

About Me
• Three not so interesting things about me
• 20 plus years in technology in various capacities
• Passionate about Digital Transformation and Business Innovation and how
various technologies (CRM, SharePoint, IOT, analytics) can be used to drive
organizational transformation.
• Love to speak, present and write
9

About Me
• Three more interesting things about me
• I have adopted 3 children from China
• I am passionate about coffee! I am a home micro roaster!
• I am an amateur genealogist!
10

Questions
• How many of you are engaged in or looking to engage in a digital
transformation project?

Questions
• How many of you have defined the objectives for a digital

Questions
• How many of you think digital transformation is primarily the
responsibility of IT or the CIO?

Questions
• How many of you are engaged in or looking to engage in a
digital transformation project?
• How many of you think digital transformation is primarily
the responsibility of IT or the CIO?
• How many of you think that digital transformation is
achieved through deploying a new, responsive, mobile first
web site?

Digital Transformation IS CONFUSING!

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

Digital Transformation is Confusing – Who Drives It?
Executive Suite Operations
Finance
EmployeesMarketing
Human Resources
IT Sales

Digital Transformation is Confusing – So Many Voices

Digital Transformation is Confusing - So Many Decisions
Do we need
new
technology?
What is the
ROI?
What
technologies
do we need?
Who is
driving it?
Do we
need to
start over?
How much
will it cost?
Who can
help us?
How do we
get started?
How long
will it take?
When do
we start?
Should we
wait?

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

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/

Business Innovation
• Business innovation is an organization's process for introducing new
ideas, workflows, methodologies, services or products.
• Business innovation should enable the achievement of goals across
the entire organization, with sights set on accomplishing core
business aims and initiatives.
• Innovation often begins with idea generation, wherein ideas are
narrowed down during brainstorming sessions after which leaders
consider the business viability, feasibility and desirability of each
idea.

Digital Strategy
• A digital strategy is a form of strategic management and a business
answer or response to a digital question, often best addressed as part
of an overall business strategy.
• A digital strategy is often characterized by the application of new
technologies to existing business activityand/or a focus on the
enablement of new digital capabilities to their business.
• Formulation often includes the process of specifying an organization's
vision, goals, opportunities and related activities in order to maximize
the business benefits of digital initiatives to an organization.

Digital Disruption
• Digital disruption is the change that occurs when new
digital technologies and business models affect the value proposition
of existing goods and services.
• The rapid increase in the use of of mobile devices for personal use and
work, has increased the potential for digital disruption across many
industries.
• A powerful example is the way Amazon, Netflix and Hulu Plus have
disrupted the media and entertainment industries by changing how
content is accessed by customers and monetized by advertisers.

Digital Disruption
• The term digital disruption has become something of a cliché in
recent years and is often misused to describe any product involving
digital technology or the use of digitization to better compete against
marketplace peers. It is often confused with the term disruptive
technology.
• As digital disruptions impose greater demands on IT systems and
organizations, companies must consider an end-to-end approach for
upgrading and managing business technologies.
• - McKinsey Sept 2016

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that creates a new market and
value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value
network, displacing established market leading firms, products and
alliances.
The term was defined and phenomenon analyzed by Clayton M. Christensen beginning in 1995

Transportation industry in the 1800’s and before

• Not all innovations are disruptive, even if they are revolutionary. For
example, the first automobiles in the late 19th century were not a
disruptive innovation, because early automobiles were expensive
luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn vehicles.
• The market for transportation essentially remained intact until the
debut of the lower-priced Ford Model T in 1908. The mass-
produced automobile was a disruptive innovation, because it
changed the transportation market, whereas the first thirty years of
automobiles did not.

Disruptive Technologies
• Term coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton M.
Christensen to describe a new technology that displaces an
established technology
• A disruptive technology is one that displaces an established
technology and shakes up the industry or a ground-breaking product
that creates a completely new industry.
• Amazon
• Uber
• Apple iTunes
• Netflix
• AirBnB

What IS the biggest Distruptor?

What is the Biggest Disruptor
• Amazon didn’t kill the retail industry. They did it to themselves with bad customer service!
38

• Netflix didn’t kill Blockbuster. They did it to themselves with ridiculous late fees!
39

• Uber didn’t kill the taxi business. They did it to themselves by limiting number of taxis and
fare control!
40

fare control!
• Apple didn’t kill the music industry. They did it to themselves by forcing people to buy full
length albums!
41

fare control!
length albums!
• Air BnB didn’t kill the hotel industry. They did it to themselves by limited availability and
pricing options!
42

fare control!
length albums!
pricing options!
• Technology by itself is not the real disruptor!
43

fare control!
length albums!
pricing options!
• Technology by itself is not the real disruptor!
• Being non-customer centric is the biggest threat to any business!
44

Are you the disruptor or the disrupted?

So What IS Digital Transformation?

• CapGemini Consulting is often recognized as the first to
come up with the concept of digital transformation; as well
as using the term, and a digital transformation framework.
• They did so in collaboration with the ‘MIT Center for Digital
Business‘ during a three-year study which defined an
effective digital transformation program as one that looked
at the what and the how.
http://www.i-scoop.eu/digital-transformation/

Digital Transformation Framework: CapGemini Consulting and MIT Center for Digital Business

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.

• “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

• “Doing” digital and “being” digitally are two very different things.
While almost any organization can do the former, only those that
focus on customer experience, process design and a unified (“non-
siloed”) operating model can achieve the latter.
• By 2018, for example, IDC predicts that one-third of leading
companies in virtually every industry will be disrupted if not
displaced by digitally superior competitors. Knowing this, two-thirds
of leading CEOs have already made digital transformation the center
of their focus

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

Myths vs. Facts
Myth Reality
Digital is primarily about the customer
experience
Huge opportunities exist also in effeciency,
productivity and employee leverage
Digital primarily matters only to technology
or B2C companies
Opportunities exist in ALL industries,
NO exceptions
Let a thousand flowers bloom; bottom up
activity is the right way to change
Digital transformation must be led
from the top
If we do enough digital initiatives we will
get there
Transformation management intensity
is more important for driving overall performance
Digital transformation will happen despite
our IT
Business / IT relationships are key, and in
many companies they must be improved
Digital transforamtion approaches are different
for every industry and company Digital leaders exhibit a common DNA
In our industry, we can wait and see how
digital develops
There are digital leaders outperforming
their peers in every industry today

Is Anyone really doing Digital
Transformation?

Three Tales of Transformation (and a bonus)
•Build a Bear Workshop
•Royal Canin – eCommerce
•Happy State Bank
•Vermeer

SharePoint as an Agent for
Transformational Change

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”.

My answer was….
It depends!

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

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!

transformative!
• An intranet that does not consider business process realignment or
improvement … is not transformative!

transformative!
• An intranet that simply replaces Exchange calendars and corporate
calendars …is not transformative!

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!

WHY DO INTRANETS FAIL?
• Lack of end user adoption
• No end user stakeholder involvement
• Lack of fresh content
• “Stale” content inhibits end user interest/use
• No compelling reason to come back
• Does not add value for the employee
• Does not help them to do their job or make them more productive
• Inflexible
• Does not easily support organizational/process change
• Does not easily support work “on the go”

WHAT DO THE BEST INTRANETS DO?

WHAT DO THE BEST INTRANETS DO?
• Helps them get their job done!
• Improves Productivity
• Empowers users
• Enables users
• Engages users
• Ideally, should be the one and only place they need to go
to to do their job (submit expense claims, submit vacation
request, view benefits, view payroll information, view
401K info, schedule travel, make travel arrangements)

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.

• 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?

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

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!

• 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”.

• 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.

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Using workflow to update and enhance many obsolete and
manual processes to improve productivity and optimize time
for production.
• Optimizing financial reporting through automation in a
reporting portal. Can literally reduce month end close out
processes from 30 – 40 hours to less than 8 hours!
• Application integration into CRM or ERP applications to
enhance reporting, data analysis and report distribution.
• Portal applications to drive employee enablement and
engagement.
• Portal applications to drive customer engagement and
enablement.
• IOT Portals and equipment lifecycle management

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)
• Conversely, the best Intranets, are successful and drive
end user adoption primarily because they drive employee
engagement, empowerment and enablement.

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.

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.”

Employee Engagement
US Employee Engagement, 2013 vs. 2014
% Employees 2013 2014
Engaged 29.6 31.5
Not Engaged 51.5 51
Actively DISengaged 18.8 17
Gallup - 2016

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.

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

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.

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!

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?

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
• Most authors, researchers and leaders in digital
transformation would argue that your customers,
customer interactions and how you engage with your
customers is certainly key to successful digital
transformation.
• Just look at almost any article, blog post, book or other
material published by Gartner, Forrester, McKinsey or MIT
Sloan. It is a common theme.

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/

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?

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.

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.

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 customer behavior, interaction or
enablement, are things like:
• Event Management
• Customer Profile Management
• Help Desk / Case Management

Let’s Bring it all together!

The Digital Workplace
or
NOT your granddaddy’s Intranet!

Responsive Client Sites
What is Responsive Design?

Desktops & Laptops TabletsSmart Phones Touch Friendly

Desktops & Laptops TabletsSmart Phones Full Off-Canvas
Navigation

Desktops & Laptops TabletsSmart Phones

A Demonstration
Intranet Toolkit – an Employee Portal

NEXT STEPS
• Call me to talk about SharePoint as Transformer
• Let me come talk to your business about transformation
• Let’s do a Lunch and Learn
• SharePoint
• Innovation
• Strategy
• Azure
• Cloud
• Power BI
• How about a demo of the Covenant Toolkit on site with your
business?
• SharePoint Health Assessment / Cloud Readiness
assessment

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

SharePoint and Digital Transformation: Is SharePoint Still Transformative

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