Entrance recently completed the envision phase of a project that will lead to implementation of SharePoint 2013 for a local energy focused insurance company. We wanted to share how some of the new SharePoint features could be leveraged there to improve productivity.
As it stands, our client manages all their documents through a file share, and this system makes things difficult to find. In addition, they are currently a profitable but small company, and they would like to grow profits without hiring many extra employees. So the main areas where they hope to leverage SharePoint are for document management and improved workflow.
In the area of document management, SharePoint 2013 will feature drag and drop functionality much like we have seen with Dropbox or Google Docs. Since the client has thousands of clients, many documents cross the organization on a daily basis, so the benefits of the ability to quickly upload them to the right place in addition to easily finding old documents will be huge.
The client currently has 6 underwriters that need to be very efficient in accomplished their work. SharePoint 2013’s new workflow management system will help with this. Users can create and assign tasks, which can then roll up to an underwriter’s manager. The manager can then see which employees are at capacity and if needed, re-assign certain tasks to someone who is less busy. The overall goal of this system is not to hamper enable seasoned underwriters and thus allow them to do their jobs more efficiently. But a new underwriter should also be able to come on board and easily figure out how the system works step by step.
Unlike 2010, SharePoint 2013 already features this workflow ability out of the box, so no add-ons are needed. But if the project moves forward, Entrance will customize the workflow capability in addition to developing dashboards that allow managers to roll up task information at a high level.
You can find out more about improvements to SharePoint 2013 in this post!