Many small businesses are now using their websites as a key distribution point for marketing materials, with corporate, service and product fact sheets readily available for download. But a problem tends to arise when some materials should be available only to a specific group. These may include special price breaks for your top customers or even a standard price list which, while you need to have on-line for your customers, could provide your competitors with just a bit too much information.
For many businesses, deciding on what materials should be kept close to the chest or made freely available via or on the Web is often quite difficult. Security is the big issue; and while creating standard websites with username and password-protected areas is common, for some small business operators it can prove just a bit too costly an undertaking.
To avoid the costs and time involved in developing such a website, a growing number of businesses have opted to go with Microsoft SharePoint Services, which is bundled with Microsoft Small Business Server 2003.
Deliver round the clock service
One of the enormous advantages of a SharePoint site is that it can play a major role in a small business’s ability to provide customers with around-the-clock service. There are many small businesses out there in Australia that recognise great potential in providing products and/or services to near neighbours such as Singapore and New Zealand. However, there is the problem of time differences.
If, for example, a Sydney-based business wanted to break into both of these markets and provide business hours access to all customers, then it would require staff being available from around 5 a.m. to deal with Singapore being three hours behind, through to 7 or 8 p.m. (depending on Daylight Saving) for New Zealand customers. It’s going to be a case of either additional staff or, for the business owner, doing it yourself.
While there will undoubtedly be some situations where person-to-person contact is required, you may be quite surprised at how much of the work can actually be carried out by SharePoint and careful planning. A simple starting point to understanding how is to have staff maintain a list of customer calls and the purpose of the calls. To make it easier, you might consider using a shared Excel worksheet or Word document.
Information you need to track is: customer name, time and date of call, and purpose of call. Once you have collected what you believe to be a fairly good sample, take the time to group and analyse the results. You may find that a large number of calls are from customers requesting information on delivery dates, chasing documents or files, placing orders, or – heaven forbid – lodging a complaint. Now, think about how a website accessible only to those people you designate could deal with these calls almost automatically. It’s precisely what a large number of companies are doing – using Web technologies for client self-service.
Using SharePoint, password protected areas (sub-Webs) can be set up for clients and provide them with:
Shared documents and files of any type
Forms to request meetings, quotes and orders or lodge queries (yes, and complaints)
Access to customer-confidential information such as price lists and special offers
On-line help files specific to your products and/or services
...the list really is unlimited
Extend the benefits in-house
SharePoint has proven to be an extremely popular platform for companies to use as a collaboration – internally and externally – platform. With Small Business Server 2003’s inclusion of SharePoint and strong support for broadband Internet connectivity, an internally hosted SharePoint offering for customers should be a relatively straightforward set-up task for your systems integrator (SI).
Another alternative, which has met with quite a deal of success, is a hosted SharePoint site. WebCentral is one ISP that has been delivering hosted SharePoint Team Services for over a year and is currently offering a free trial – ideal for small businesses looking to explore the SharePoint advantage.
One last point. While SharePoint has quite a fair amount of in-built customisation features, for my money, FrontPage 2003 is the best bet to get your SharePoint site looking exactly how you want it. OK, the last, last point. When I attended the Office 2003 launch in Sydney, I picked up a great book on FrontPage 2003, Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out from Jim Buyens. Aside from excellent coverage of using FrontPage to develop standard websites, it also has some pretty good beginners’ chapters on using the program to manage your SharePoint sites.