The challenge: After years of inconsistent information management, this company needed a tool that would facilitate collaboration, classify information, and provide document management. Adhering to a tight budget and minimizing implementation and training time were driving factors. Access Sciences contributed in a variety of ways to meet these goals.

• Worked with client executive leadership to develop an information management roadmap and define business requirements.
• Determined that Microsoft SharePoint could meet the client’s business requirements through basic configuration without custom code.
• Developed an implementation plan that presented a staged approach through multiple releases that would provide essential functionality in the first release and additional functionality in future releases.
• Designed the SharePoint farm architecture using virtual machines, as appropriate, to minimize hardware costs.
• Designed a site hierarchy that addressed all of the client’s business functions and provided the required site level security.
• Designed standardized site templates to maintain a consistent look and feel throughout the application and facilitate navigation.
• Configured document libraries to provide versioning and limited the number of past versions to lower storage costs.
• Used content types to implement a standardized metadata model across all document libraries.
• Developed a permissions model that defined which users would have full control of a site, which users would be contributors, and if read only access was allowed.
• Took advantage of SharePoint’s list functionality to meet client’s need to track support issues, contract management and file room management. Leveraged master lists to provide definitive data sources to be throughout the application.
• Governance policies were written to manage the SharePoint deployment:
  • A decision authority matrix was developed to determine who has the authority to grant a change to the application.
  • Processes were written for users to request exceptions to a governance policy.
• Developed training material that was delivered to all of the client’s employees. The training material was also stored in SharePoint so that it was accessible by all users.

The outcome: Access Sciences delivered a SharePoint implementation that provided the desired functionality, avoided complex customization, defined the governance needed to properly administer the system and provided a growth path to support additional functionality as the company’s requirements increase.