SharePoint Projects Are ‘Stalling’ As User Resistance Rises Says New AIIM Report

Silver Spring, Md., February 24, 2015 – Nearly two-thirds of enterprises say that their SharePoint project has either stalled (26%) or isn’t meeting their original expectations (37%), according to new research by independent information management analysts AIIM.

Adoption of business social tool Yammer is slow too, with 18% of respondents saying it has been adopted in their organisation, but only one in ten of those reporting widespread and regular use. Four in 10 organisations admit they do not use any form of business social tool whatsoever.

The main reason for stalled SharePoint deployments given by the 409 respondents in the AIIM study, ‘Connecting and Optimizing SharePoint’, is the failure of senior management to endorse and enforce SharePoint. Inadequate user training and a general lack of planning, investment and expertise are also cited.

“Adoption continues to be a major issue with a number of enterprise tools, including SharePoint,” said Doug Miles, Director Market Intelligence, AIIM. “Enterprises have it, but workers are simply not engaging with SharePoint in a committed way. It remains an investment priority however, and the C-suite must get behind it more fully than they are currently if they are to realise a return on that investment.”

Despite only 11% of businesses feeling that their SharePoint project has been a success, 75% of respondents still have a strong commitment to making the Microsoft collaboration platform work. There has been a doubling of take up in the cloud 365 version, and nearly 40% of users continue to adopt multiple add-on products to fill in gaps and extend the functionality of SharePoint.

43% are happy with Microsoft’s product roadmap for SharePoint but almost half said they were concerned about a loss of focus on the on-premise version. 20% feel SharePoint is under threat from more modern cloud systems, while a lack of mobile support and difficult external access has been a frustration for 35%.

Only 14% of respondents have SharePoint connected to other ECM/DM systems, restricting its ability to provide an enterprise-wide search and access portal while 48% still have work to do to align SharePoint with their Information Governance (IG) policies. One in five organisations have not aligned SharePoint with IG policies whatsoever.

“SharePoint is a powerful and potentially invaluable enterprise tool,” continued Doug Miles. “But to get the most from it, organisations need to decide what they are using it for, commit to it and complete integration with other systems. It shouldn’t be left to IT either – business lines need to drive use, and SharePoint steering groups can play a big part in encouraging adoption.”

The research for ‘Connecting and Optimizing SharePoint’ was underwritten in part by ASG, AvePoint, Colligo, Concept Searching, Collabware, EMC, Gimmal Group, K2 and OpenText.

The full report is free to download at http://www.aiim.org/Research-and-Publications/Research/Indus…

The survey was taken using a web-based tool by 409 individual members of the AIIM community in December 2014.

About AIIM

AIIM has been an advocate and supporter of information professionals for 70 years. The association’s mission is to ensure that information professionals understand the current and future challenges of managing information assets in an era of social, mobile, cloud and big data. Founded in 1943, AIIM builds on a strong heritage of research and member service. Today, AIIM is a global, non-profit organisation that provides independent research, education and certification programs to information professionals. AIIM represents the entire information management community, with programs and content for practitioners, technology suppliers, integrators and consultants.