SharePoint Consulting: Why Choose intranet.ai?

In this article, we will explore the figure and role of SharePoint Online consultants—professionals who help companies make the most of Microsoft 365’s solution for managing documents, information, and communication.

We will look at the pros and cons of relying on a SharePoint consultant to optimize the use of sites like the corporate intranet, discovering why, in some cases, such services fail to deliver the expected results.

We will then introduce intranet.ai: our solution to increase productivity and employee well-being, going beyond the traditional concept of SharePoint consulting.

What you will find in this article

• SharePoint consultants: who they are and what they do

• SharePoint consultancy: pros and cons for companies

• Why choose intranet.ai: more than just SharePoint consulting

SharePoint consultants: who they are and what they do

SharePoint Online from Microsoft is used to build modern corporate sites, where it’s possible to:

• digitize corporate archives by migrating them to Microsoft’s cloud, enabling real-time collaboration on documents and access from any device;

• share targeted content, such as news posts and service communications;

• organize spaces for services and resources useful to employees;

• create pages dedicated to individual departments or specific initiatives.

To adapt to the needs of every organization, SharePoint provides a wide range of features, each designed to help users carry out the activities listed above—and more.

In fact, SharePoint can integrate with external products to expand and diversify the capabilities of its sites. These include Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Forms, and Planner from the Microsoft 365 suite, solutions from the Power Platform (Power Automate, Power BI, and Power Apps), and employee experience modules from Microsoft Viva. It can also integrate with business software and third-party apps like Twitter, Adobe, and Google.

Thanks to these integrations, many opportunities open up for companies looking to improve productivity and employee engagement. However, knowing how to implement them effectively is key to achieving the best results. That’s where SharePoint consultants come in.

A SharePoint consultant is a professional trained to teach companies the ABCs of document management and corporate communication through the correct use of the components that make up SharePoint Online sites—such as web parts, lists, and document libraries.

In addition to providing advice and guidance to internal IT departments, consultants handle the architecture, design, development, maintenance, and migration of SharePoint-based sites. This allows them to make a meaningful contribution in building a digital workplace that’s not only functional, but also intuitive and easy to use based on users’ daily tasks.

It often happens that a solution like the corporate intranet is developed with significant investment, only to be ignored by the intended audience. This is often due to poor site navigation or the lack of tools to carry out tasks in the new digital work environment.

An example could be a disorganized services page that doesn’t allow interaction with company resources—like booking a meeting room or submitting a support ticket. Or the intranet may lack a people directory, the contact list with names, roles, and useful links for finding and reaching out to colleagues.

Another example could be the presence of ineffective archives. This means that SharePoint libraries have not been properly configured to simplify the drafting, approval, storage, and sharing of documents.

Lists and libraries should be integrated with customized flows capable of automating:

• the storage of files received via Outlook emails;

• the saving of responses from Microsoft Forms;

• the approval request for adding or editing a document;

• the sending of notifications in Teams to alert colleagues about updates to shared files;

• etc.

All things considered, it’s clear that an archive should not be considered a simple container of documents, but rather designed to become a practical, smart, and scalable system to efficiently manage the continuous flow of information at the core of all internal processes.

The same applies to any SharePoint component. Especially web parts.

When configured and placed correctly, web parts can turn communication sites like the intranet and extranet into information-rich, interactive, and dynamic portals.

Let’s consider the “News” web part.

This component could be used to show intranet users the latest posts published by the organization or a department. By leveraging its filters, this web part makes it possible to strategically target communications and create newsletter-style boards to highlight on the site pages.

Updates from the global management, on the other hand, could be featured on the intranet homepage, so that colleagues never miss any important news.

If SharePoint sites are not able to justify the time, effort, and money invested to launch them, the solution could be consulting. But that’s not always the case. Let’s see why.

Is SharePoint Online really necessary in a company?

SharePoint consulting: pros and cons for companies

The question now is whether it’s really necessary to pay someone to build a good site with SharePoint Online. The answer may vary from case to case, but we believe that consulting can help clarify a key point: understanding how and when to use SharePoint’s individual features to provide users with the best possible experience.

As mentioned, SharePoint is an extremely flexible platform for digitizing the complex set of business activities, and this is made possible by the wide range of features it offers. In fact, it enablesdeep customization to adapt to the needs of each individual organization.

Asking for help from consultants can be crucial to building sites that are useful for employees and secure for company data, which is exchanged, updated, and archived daily in sites such as the company intranet.

Let’s take document libraries, for example.

If there are conflicts between SharePoint sites and the external applications where the uploaded documents come from, this could lead to file loss or even the exposure of sensitive data. If we add the absence of a solid admin control system, the result would be an inability to trace that loss within the organization’s information network.

In this case, consulting could help repair and, more importantly, prevent security breaches in the document management system, allowing users to share and work on information within a secure digital workplace. But that’s not all.

Although SharePoint is a fairly intuitive platform, there may be cases where customizing its components requires programming and code writing.

Experienced consultants have the necessary IT knowledge to independently configure components such as libraries and web parts, or to communicate effectively with client company technicians.

As a result, consulting can make the difference between experimenting with SharePoint’s potential and actually unlocking it without taking unnecessary risks.

However, there are cases where consulting does not produce positive results.

This is because the SharePoint consultant profession has become very appealing in recent years, attracting an increasing number of people due to interest in Microsoft innovations and the promise of a competitive salary. For companies, it has become more difficult to understand who to turn to in a saturated market where offers are expensive and limiting. We say “limiting” because most consultants offer standard services.

The reason lies in the lack of strong technical know-how to shape the platform, expand its features with integrations and new components. Some consultants may not have the experience to anticipate the friction between what SharePoint allows and what must be included in a digital workplace to be useful on a daily basis.

The problem is rooted in a knowledge limited to the platform’s basic mechanisms, as well as in experience too shallow to know how to break out of those patterns. Fortunately, though, the SharePoint consulting market is evolving.

More complete proposals are starting to emerge. Like the one from intranet.ai.

Why choose intranet.ai: more than just SharePoint consulting

intranet.ai doesn’t just offer consulting: it provides a ready-to-use solution that allows companies to go digital in just a few days and at low cost.

Our experts have developed an intranet already equipped with the features needed to support all business activities, regardless of the industry.

We can extend the core capabilities of our intranet solution by integrating components tailored to each company. To do this, our team specializes in developing applications based on the main products from:

• Microsoft 365

• Microsoft Viva

• Microsoft Azure

• Microsoft Power Platform

In addition, intranet.ai relies on the technical know-how of Dev4Side, the first software house in Italy to achieve top-level expertise in Microsoft technologies.

With a portfolio of over 200 successfully completed projects and in addition to that, the title of Microsoft Gold Partner, we have the skills to keep improving our solution and solve each customer’s specific challenges.

The companies that have chosen us adopted a fully functional digital workplace, then enriched it with custom-built features just for them.

Why choose intranet.ai to build your company’s digital workplace?

We must emphasize that the value of intranet.ai is not based solely on its strong vertical expertise. What allows us to connect with companies and understand their challenges—as well as the services and experiences they want to offer their people—is the multicultural nature of our team.

The diversity of perspectives, experiences, and approaches is an undeniable asset that has always helped us handle the unexpected in any project.

Listening skills, experience, and our proven technical know-how allow us to offer much more than standard consulting.

Our job is to make other people’s work easier, and we are ready to support the growth of the intranet we build together with our clients even after the go-live—months or even years after the collaboration ends.

We help measure its effectiveness and promote its use among employees.

We explain to corporate users how to use Microsoft tools and the services integrated into the digital workplace, always based on the SharePoint Online intranet. We stay in regular contact to evaluate strategy changes and continue refining the implemented solution.

intranet.ai is not just a product. It’s a relationship.

To clarify, here is a table showing what we can offer to any company looking to get the most out of its investment in Microsoft 365, and in SharePoint in particular.

SharePoint consulting: intranet.ai’s offer

intranet.ai SharePoint services Description

Digitalization We create the ideal digital workplace to optimize internal processes, reducing inefficiencies and resource usage with Microsoft technology and SharePoint Online’s capabilities for document management and internal communication.

Migration We manage the migration of users, data, and business systems to the new digital workplace based on Microsoft 365.

Development We expand the functionality of our solution with custom components that are easy to manage and use.

Intranet project management We configure our SharePoint intranet and the integrated Microsoft 365 environment based on each company’s needs. Together, we build the ideal digital workplace to digitize internal processes by integrating existing business software. We help clients measure the effectiveness of their intranet and improve its performance, even months after implementation.

User training

We organize online sessions to teach users how to manage the new digital workplace independently. We offer microlearning content to explore Microsoft 365 products in detail and maximize the value of the company’s licenses.

Internal communication management

We help companies promote their new intranet with newsletters, gamification initiatives, pop-up videos, and much more. After the go-live, we support content creation and special initiatives to keep the intranet fresh. We gather feedback and ideas from the corporate community to keep users engaged and supported in their work.