Tap into SharePoint potential with BPM software With more than 3 million users worldwide, SharePoint is Microsofts

fastest growin g technology of all time. With very little learning curve, flexibility in organ izing information, easy search and retrieval of valuable information and several other benefits, more and more enterprises now prefer to invest in suites that c ombine portals, content management and collaboration solutions. Many CIOs will t ell you that SharePoint is a critical component of their technology portfolio. But SharePoints somewhat unplanned growth in the last 2 years has led to problems such as insufficient workflow processes, disorganized content and lack of cohes ive site creation strategy. Although the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 stack include s sites, communities, content, search, insights and composites, one of its estab lished uses is undoubtedly for improving process management functionality. Almost every good BPM Software Suite in the market today integrates with Microso ft SharePoint. If you are already utilizing Microsoft SharePoint for document m anagement and enterprise content management, then BPM is something you will even tually want to consider to add advanced workflow capabilities. Off the myriad business benefits of extending BPM to SharePoint, some key busine ss benefits are: Business user empowerment: enhanced collaboration, allowing business managers to build enterprise wide workflows for processing documents, custom lists and cont ent types in SharePoint. Stronger processes: Centralized process management and analysis. Highly visible processes and promotes consistent practice of standards thus making processes re liable, repeatable and manageable. Improved productivity: Manage enterprise wide content and automate and streamlin e business processes for agile decision making Rapid ROI: Efficient processes with reduced processing costs and reduced IT inve stments A product like Invensys Skeltas SharePoint Accelerator extends advanced BPM & wor kflow software advantage to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for maximum utilization an d broader adoption of native SharePoint capabilities. It makes sense for Enterpr ises to leverage existing SharePoint investments with the added BPM and workflow functionality code free workflow design, extensibility of all BPM functionality such as queues, KPIs, dashboards, custom reports, built in SharePoint activitie s and wizards within workflows et al to bring in the entire goodie bag Process o ptimization, Quicker time to market, Operational efficiency across the board and of course better bottom lines.

Perhaps the best value addition BPM software brings to SharePoint is generating workflows from within SharePoint using built in SharePoint wizards and activitie s. Adds meaning to Collaboration - both with dispersed knowledge workers and exist ing systems that integrate with SharePoint. As an integrated platform, BPM software with SharePoint also lends itself to bus iness application development for key areas of business. By extending security and access rights management to documents in SharePoint, t ransparent, traceable processes and enhanced accountability can be enabled acros s the Enterprise. In our next post, we discuss how Collaboration can be leveraged across the Enter prise value chain using BPM and workflow software with SharePoint.