Many organisations use Microsoft's standard solution for their document management and that is SharePoint. But do they also ask the question: does SharePoint meet the organisation's information needs?

Microsoft Office 365 suite has everyone

Most organisations rely on the Microsoft 365 suite, simply because when you buy the basic Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications, the other applications are bundled into the same subscription. And for the most part, the Microsoft solutions are adequate: the tools can be used immediately and do not require much training.

Consequences of content creation quickly visible

As people use these productivity tools more, the challenge of efficiently managing the resulting output (read: content, documents, etc.) only increases. The risks of cluttered collections of documents, information in silos and failure to comply with rules increase. This is because it is easier for any member of the organisation to quickly create, duplicate and share content.

Add to this a large organisation with more demanding needs, and then the real problems begin. Professional service providers, for example, often work in regulated industries with strict rules on confidentiality and data retention. While Microsoft has capabilities in its premium subscriptions to support some of these requirements, few companies are able to leverage these capabilities. And if someone invests in records management, for example, they want a tool specifically for records management.

No central management of all data and information

The other major challenge in using Microsoft applications for information management revolves around Microsoft's lack of focus on organising data. Information in Microsoft 365 spreads very quickly across personal OneDrive accounts, email inboxes, Teams channels and different folders. When you create and save new documents within Microsoft 365, it is not easy to know where each piece of information should go. And because there is usually no enforcement of where information should be stored, that information often gets lost. This leads to duplication of documents and a chaos of different versions. Add to this outdated network drives and other business applications such as a CRM, and you are left with complete information chaos.

Don't make SharePoint cheap is expensive

The moral of the story? Just because SharePoint is free with the purchase of Microsoft 365 does not mean it is the best document management solution. SharePoint cannot adapt to your changing business needs without investing heavily in developers to make it happen.

Solutions specialising in information management, such as M-Files, are specifically designed to enhance the power of knowledge workers, increase consistency, reduce errors and secure and leverage existing knowledge in the organisation.

With M-Files, information can be seamlessly categorised and easily tagged for discovery, while maintaining business rules and security policies. M-Files uses metadata to improve document processing, searching and sharing.

Bring the best of both worlds together

The best part? M-Files integrates seamlessly into the Microsoft 365 suite and provides a more efficient way to store information across multiple archives. With M-Files, organisations secure their information processes and ensure compliance without sacrificing the productivity benefits of their Microsoft 365 investment.

This brings together the best of both worlds and organisations therefore enjoy several benefits. Organisations using M-Files alongside the Microsoft 365 suite:

• Solves the challenge of fragmented information and version control
• Automate processes that capture the entire document lifecycle - taking into account changing stakeholder groups - without duplicating content
• Maintain an information management structure that serves the whole organisation and can grow with changing requirements
• Ensuring compliance with indexing, training, retention and other records management requirements
• Secure information with dynamic document-level access rights for controllable temporary access without copying content.
• Avoiding duplication and "shadow content management" via collaboration tools
• Integrate with business applications outside the Microsoft ecosystem to connect and enrich documents with their database counterparts (e.g. as-built documentation with relevant ERP tags).

Ready to add that information management layer to your Microsoft 365 suite?

Schedule a personal online demo in and see what this could look like for your organisation!