So let’s start counting...Director of Sales is creating the June Monthly Sales Report for the Monthly Sales Meeting Conference Call in PowerPoint. This company has Small Business Server 2008. They use Exchange for their email and all communication. They have resisted in controlling the size of their mail boxes (really using their email as another file server) not to mention they keep everything…the delete key is not an option!

The Director oof Sales first saves the June PowerPoint Sales Report Presentation (4MB) file to his desktop. Remembering he needs to save it to the server for backup, he opens it again and saves it to his personal folder on the server. The he sends the PowerPoint file in individual emails for various approvals/recommendations. 1) he send it to the Controller asking to make sure the numbers are correct. 2) he sends it to the CEO to make sure the July goals and focus is correct. 3) he sends to the Creative Director to make sure that the marketing materials (photos and such for the current promotion are correct).

So far the current count of the June PowerPoint presentations saved at some location is: 8 of which 6 copies are sitting in the Exchange Server.

So this company has done great in building a business for beauty products, but the users do not have a great understanding on efficient use of technology. So what happens is that the PowerPoint files are then received in Outlook, opened, saved to the desktop of the individual, who then makes recommendations for changes, updates and saves, then sends it back to the Director of Sales. The Director of Sales then repeats the process saving a revised PowerPoint on the desktop and send outs for input to his 7 regional sales people, because of course he has included information about their regions that they need to confirm. They save it to their desktops; and repeats the same process that management did before. The Director of Sales receives the modified presentations back and sends it out one more time for management approval..... Gets the approval and sends the final version out for the Monthly sales meeting conference call (10 people).

After all of this that one June PowerPoint presentation, in all of its various versions, is saved in various locations, totals at least 93 copies. Over 375 MB of physical hard drive space is being used and if someone goes back later looking for the June Sales report which version will they assume is the correct version?

This where this thing called SharePoint Comes in...Document control! Collaboration!

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary the definition of COLLABORATE: to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor. Ok so sales reports may not be an intellectual endeavor, but they are critical to the core strategy communication of the business!!

Microsoft SharePoint makes it easier for people to work together. Using SharePoint, people can share information with others, manage documents from start to finish, and publish reports to help everyone make better decisions. And thus not having over 93 copies of the same file!