Last week I had the opportunity to participate in a webinar, moderated by Derek Weeks of OpenText Global 360, to discuss the results of the latest survey "How Are Businesses Using Microsoft SharePoint In The Enterprise?" It was a great discussion, with Sue Hanley and Dave Coleman joining me as panelists. I wanted to follow up on the webinar with some data from the SharePoint Maturity Model that corresponds with the survey results.
A few items to note:
- The demographics of the companies who've gone through the SharePoint Maturity assessment are quite similar to those who responded to the survey (see Slide 7 of the webinar presentation) - a wide range of company sizes, industries, and geographical locations.
- The maturity levels mentioned below are defined here on sharepointmaturity.com.
Training
One of the first competencies in the survey that maps to the SP Maturity Model is Training (see Slide 22 of the webinar). According to the survey:
- 44% of companies responded they do not have a training program,
- 13% responded that they are dissatisfied with their training options,
- 37% responded they are satisfied/comfortable,
- 6% that they are Very Satisfied.
Looking at the SharePoint Maturity data, the overall average for Staffing and Training is 340 - or about the midpoint of the maturity scale (where content owners from some functional areas are trained on the system). This improves with time - 1-3 years of SharePoint use averages in the 200s (training is informal or ad-hoc, in other words no training program), and 5-9 years of use averages in the 400s (multiple training offerings exist).
Given the relationship of training to adoption, I think there's a lot of opportunity here for organizations to evaluate their SharePoint training offerings early in their implementation cycle, and to put a training plan together (so that they can answer that survey question differently next time!). This doesn't have to mean hiring resources to run a formal training program; it could be as simple as some embedded videos around the intranet, a custom Help file, some power users who can make themselves available for questions, etc.
Integration
The next competency in the model that aligns with the survey is Integration (see slide 42 of the webinar). The survey asked "Are you exposing legacy or other application data?"
- 18% access their data through a separate interface
- 9% respond that SP data is integrated into a different system and pulled by users from that system
- 34% access some legacy data through SharePoint
- 7% access all legacy and new data via a single interface in SP
- 28% say data to SharePoint is not currently available
- 3% responded "other"
To me, these results indicate that at least 46% of the respondents' data and/or systems have no integration point with SharePoint, other than perhaps a link to external systems. In terms of maturity assessments, organizations' average rating is 216 overall (where a single system is integrated with SharePoint, aside from Active Directory). Organizations fall in the high 100s to low 200s for 1-5 years of SharePoint use, and from 200 to the low 300s for 6-9 years of use.
Although integration is a more complex undertaking than some of the other SharePoint competencies, it also has a bearing on adoption and user satisfaction, and directly affects an organization's ability to get to the next level in terms of business intelligence and insight. In the next survey I'd love to see that 28% number go down.
Search
Survey respondents rated the most beneficial SP capability to be "Improved content search and navigation across site collection boundaries" (see slide 46 of the webinar) - which I am classifying in the Search competency. While it's great that organizations are enjoying improved findability, there is still a lot of potential here - overall the maturity rating for Search is 191. Maturity levels remain low over many years of use with no discernible trend toward greater maturity. As Sue Hanley pointed out during the webinar, one of the keys to search issues is that SEARCH LITERACY IS NOT PERVASIVE among users. This should be one of the facets of any SharePoint training program.
Business Process
The final competency addressed by the survey is Business Process - and here the survey maps the question directly to the five maturity levels (thanks Derek!). Here's how the survey responses compare to the maturity assessments I've received:
| Fall 2011 SharePoint Survey | Maturity Assessments | ||
| Initial | 100 | 42% | 34% |
| Managed | 200 | 37% | 25% |
| Defined | 300 | 12% | 29% |
| Predictable | 400 | 5% | 5% |
| Optimizing | 500 | 5% | 6% |
| 101% | 100% |
The consistency of the 400 and 500 level responses make it clear how few organizations are really optimizing business processes in SharePoint. When these results are layered with data for years of use, a steady progression is evident, however even the longest users and largest organizations are not hitting the 400 mark on average.
It's great to have this growing body of data both from the SharePoint Survey and from the maturity assessments that continue to come in. I'm confident that we'll see improvement over the years. Thanks again to Derek, Sue and Dave for a great conversation!
Resources:
Recording of the 11/30/11 webinar with Derek Weeks, Dave Coleman, Sue Hanley, and me
Slides from the 11/30/11 webinar
2011 and 2011 survey results - whitepaper versions
The SharePoint Maturity Model and data
