When it comes to creating an accessible business solution, a powerful user experience is everything. It’s what stays with users long after they’ve finished working, and it can drive user adoption. For these reasons, the field of user experience design has shown rapid growth over the couple of years. However, finding the balance between functionality and user engagement can be a tricky compromise for any UX designer.
For many companies, Microsoft SharePoint is the go-to when it comes to intranet solutions. In fact, in 2012 SharePoint passed 2 billion dollars in earned revenue and has steadily grown since then. This is because its deep functionality and customizable nature allow it to be deployed as an enterprise business solution across a variety of industries. However, this deep functionality can come at the price of accessibility, as designing and managing SharePoint sites can be a bit of a complex task.
Our partners over at Gig Werks have been providing industry specific SharePoint solutions and modernizing the user experience since 2001.
But what exactly does this type of user experience design entail? Well, for Gig Werks it starts with document sharing and security. Most of their industry specific SharePoint packages offer some iteration of a document management solution. In the broadest sense, these allow for documents to be accessed and shared by different users quickly and easily from within the SharePoint infrastructure. However, at the industry specific level, two document management solutions will have completely different sets of functionality, each tailored to optimize user experience in that specific industry or role.
For example, when it comes to user experience design, solutions that cater to the legal profession, The ProjectReady Matter Management Engine from Gig Werks allows for the fully scalable and easy management of all Matter related information and data including the creation of Matter sites, secure external collaboration and task management that is easy to use. On the AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) front, there is the ProjectReady document control suite and other ProjectReady applications which delivers a unified platform to manage project and program life cycles, maintain control of documents and drive global enterprise collaboration from an easy to use interface.
This variety of SharePoint solutions makes Gig Werks a logical choice for parent companies who may have subsidiaries in different industries, but want a UX that facilitates cohesion and agility company wide. It also helps keep documents that need to be accessed by both parent and subsidiary companies secure, as well as accessible to those who need them.
By partnering with LiveTiles, Gig Werks is able to bring the user experience design functionality to SharePoint, too, only now they use the LiveTiles platform to create a vibrant and intuitive ecosystem for their solutions to live in. With its responsive design, the LiveTiles platform comes optimized for mobile devices, allowing for Gig Werks solutions to be viewed quickly and easily, as the scenario of employees working remotely have risen in the last few of years. If we look at the last twenty years, the jump is massive. The story told by these statistics is that telecommuting isn’t a trend, it has been steadily becoming a facet of the digital workplace for some time now.
Beyond just being optimized for mobile devices, the LiveTiles Platform also provides users with integrated social media functionality. Yes, Yammer, Twitter and Facebook integration are all available from LiveTiles out-of-the-box. And while surveys show that social media is in part to blame for the epidemic of wasted workdays, integrating social media into the workplace has proved to have positive effects. None more important than facilitating a culture of workplace collaboration and optimizing the user experience for all employees.
Pulling all these individual solutions together into one coherent ecosystem can have a positive impact on productivity. More importantly, however, it provides a dynamic user experience. Our partners over at Gig Works know this, and their solutions make it possible for users to adapt to the challenges of a dynamic environment in an agile manner.
