The Next Generation

With SharePoint 2010 coming in the first half of 2010, SharePoint is taken to a new level. Not only will it make it even easier to create custom solutions on top of the SharePoint platform, SharePoint will bring existing features to a new level. BI capabilities, a complete new Enterprise Search engine, more user friendly site creation and adjusting, it will all be featured in this next generation step of SharePoint. 

In outplacement projects, Ascento (part of T-Groep)provides guidance to people and groups of people looking for a new job.  Most of these people enter these outplacement projects through collective lay-offs and many are not very familiar with the current expectations when it comes to job interviews, networking and creating a CV. That’s were Ascento comes in with guidance and coaching on a group and individual level.

For enabling the communication and guidance between Ascento consultants and outplacement participants, Ascento has chosen SharePoint for their Outplacement Extranet.  Built on Windows SharePoint Services, the application provides participants with a portal where they can find all the information they need when looking for a new job, as well as come into contact with their personal consultant. Basing the application on WSS gives them the advantage of an easy manageable and extendable application. It also provides an easy single sign-on experience for the consultants on the same content that external participants can log into.  This facilitates the communication even more since both parties are working with the same application and thus have the same user experience.

Euricom provided the architecture, installation and configuration of the base application and extended the basic WSS features with custom developed features to make administrative tasks easier and more efficient. With an  e-learning site to accompany the Outplacement Extranet, the participants as well as the Ascento consultants have been given an online library with material to help them find their way around the Outplacement Extranet. 

For their infrastructure projects Dimension Data personnel gathers a lot of documentation about a specific infrastructure installation during the project. To manage this documentation and to make sure that the latest versions of documents are always consultable, they were searching for the correct tool to manage documents and manage the entire project in one central application.

Because of the fact that people at the office and people in the field had to have access to this tool, SharePoint seemed the perfect match for their problem.  Furthermore, SharePoint provided a collaboration platform between Dimension Data and their customers so that communication improved dramatically. Not only could Dimension Data people access their important documents, the customer was now also involved closer in the project management process.

Euricom designed and helped build a SharePoint environment complete with project and document management template sites to give them the opportunity to manage documents, manage a project and communicate within the team and with the customer in one tool that could be accessed at the office or in the field.