SharePoint is a powerful collaboration and information sharing platform that's great for facilitating project work in corporate environments.

SharePoint is not, however, designed to provide rapid access to actionable guidance through time-critical and complex policies and procedures. There are thousands of these mission-critical processes within complex, changing and regulated industries like banking, insurance and telecommunications.

Organizations that are looking to support their employees in this way can, in theory, build out this capability in SharePoint, taking a lot of time and money and without achieving a great outcome. Alternatively, organizations can purchase an out-of-the-box solution that is:

BPG Systems

SharePoint

• Contextually relevant - a BPG system identifies where every user is in their work and provides the most relevant guidance for that specific task.

• Keyword searching - relies on keyword searches initiated by user that can generate large numbers of out of date or irrelevant results.

• Role-centric - the guidance that an end-user sees is dependent on their role.

• Process-centric - users often need to wade through information that does not apply to them.

• Optimized for real-time support -Guidance is presented in a highly structured and consistent format optimized for providing clear, actionable support within a workflow. By default, information is presented in a narrow window that runs along the right edge of the screen, side-by-side with the applications that are being supported on the desktop.

• Multiple formats - Guidance is presented as MS Office documents (Word, PowerPoint, etc.), PDFs or webpages. Because these formats are unstructured they result in multiple styles and standards that hamper fast access and interpretation of information.  By default, information is presented in a full-screen mode, covering the applications that users are seeking guidance through.

• Incorporates BPG best practices - A BPG system constantly expands its process guidance capabilities, such as real-time alerts for content changes, feedback mechanisms between end-users and content developers, easy content authoring and maintenance for subject matter experts, non-technical processes for creating context-sensitive linkages and much more.

• BPG Capabilities must be developed - Guidance-specific capabilities are ad-hoc and often require significant development effort to implement.