The WCM capability of SharePoint Increases Revenue, Accelerates Publishing Cycles, Enhances Staff Productivity, and Improves Customer Relationships

Revenue Increase, Faster Publishing Cycles, Enhanced Staff Productivity, and Improved Customer Relationship are just a sample of the benefits that AMD, Conservation International, Continental Airlines, GOL Linhas Aereas Inteligentes, and Jones Lang LaSalle---among other customers---have derived from embracing SharePoint for their Web Content Management needs.

An independent study by Mainstay Partners evaluated the implementation of Microsoft® SharePoint® Server at five companies with the goal of understanding how they use the Microsoft solution to improve the effectiveness of marketing programs, control costs, and enable greater employee collaboration.  

The full report listed at the bottom of this blog post summarizes Mainstay’s assessment, which is based on interviews with executives and senior managers at the following organizations. 

Here’s an excerpt of the report to give you a sense of what to expect out of it:

     At a time when businesses are confronting significant challenges to growth and profits, marketing programs are coming under increasing pressure to deliver results with fewer resources. In response, organizations are deploying information technology in new ways to stretch budgets, boost productivity, and exploit new revenue opportunities though online channels. Many are adopting the latest generation of online marketing and collaboration platforms, offering companies substantial opportunities for reaping efficiency and productivity benefits while providing marketing programs with new capabilities for targeting customers with timely, personalized information.

     To better understand how organizations are using these new platforms to enhance marketing and collaboration, IT advisory firm Mainstay Partners conducted an independent assessment of five companies that have deployed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: AMD, Conservation International, Continental Airlines, GOL Linhas Aereas Inteligentes, and Jones Lang LaSalle. The study describes different ways the companies are deploying the Office SharePoint Server to support online marketing and collaboration programs and documents key benefits and trends. The benefits accruing to these companies fell into four broad categories: (1) new revenue-generating opportunities, (2) faster publishing cycles and time to market, (3) enhanced staff productivity, and (4) improved customer relationship management.
    

After migrating to Office SharePoint Server, one company studied is anticipating a revenue boost from better-managed partner promotions, and another saw a jump of 3,000 Web inquiries at its re-engineered Web site—30 percent of which represented promising sales leads. The study also documented a 30 percent to 75 percent rise in productivity at these companies, with automated systems and workflow tools in Office SharePoint Server enabling one company to manage its Web site with 60 percent fewer IT resources, helping another cut publication cycles from three days to an hour, and allowing a third to launch marketing promotions in three days compared to 14 days before. The study found measurable improvements to customer service and communications, with one company channeling 30 percent more calls to a support site based on Office SharePoint Server, and another creating an extranet to deliver client reports in a convenient and secure online environment.

     The deployments of Office SharePoint Server also reflected a wider trend—noted in recent Industry analyst reports—towards companies adopting an infrastructure approach to enterprise content management. Many of the organizations studied are utilizing Office SharePoint Server to run multiple environments—including Internet Web sites, intranets, and extranets—and integrating them with other business systems to form a unified, easily searchable enterprise platform. Below are profiles of these companies with descriptions of how the Office SharePoint Server is helping each enterprise build more effective and responsive Web marketing programs, improve team collaboration, and deliver better customer service—all with fewer resources.

Read the full report here.