Six Reasons to move from SharePoint to STACK
#1: Complicated Setup and Maintenance
Many people think that they can buy SharePoint, complete some setup, and get started.
Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case.
SharePoint does have some out-of-the-box functionality – and you can build useful things with just those functions. If you want features that meet the needs of your company, you’ll need to work with a developer. That’s one of SharePoint’s weaknesses.
If you’re at a big company, you might have a developer in house that can take care of it (it largely requires skill in ASP.NET, which isn’t uncommon). To get the most out of your system, however, you’ll need someone who’s well-versed in SharePoint development. That’s rare – and more expensive, which we’ll discuss shortly.
The complexity isn’t over once you’ve customized your instance of SharePoint. It’s multiplied, in fact, because now you need to maintain and update it. If you want to install a new plugin, you may need to bring a developer back in.
Updates can break your customizations, too. You’ll need more development to get things working again.
Then there’s the maintenance of the whole system. You need to track of who’s using what, how your resources are organized, and how to get the most efficiency out of the structure you’ve had someone develop for you. That takes a lot of time.
It’s not unreasonable to bring on at least one employee whose job is solely focused on SharePoint – a SharePoint Administrator. As you can imagine, that adds significant cost.
#2: Expensive to License and Host
Okay, so we’ve established that SharePoint can be expensive to set up and maintain. However, that’s not the only expense you’re looking at. One of the SharePoint’s disadvantages is its licensing structure.
Here’s a quick breakdown:
- SharePoint Online 1: $5/user/month
- Office 365 Business Essentials: $5/user/month
- SharePoint Online 2: $10/user/month
- Office 365 Business Premium: $12.50/user/month
- Office Enterprise E3: $20/user/month
- SharePoint 2016 server (for on-premises use): $2,500+*
Good luck finding any information on how much it actually costs to run an on-site SharePoint server. In our research we have seen ranges from $2,845, $7,000, and $9,000 for server costs. It may depend on how many users you’re going to run through that server.
How do you choose between these subscription levels? Your guess is as good as ours. Some include storage, others include access to standard Office apps (or no Office apps), you can get email, or not…working your way through the options is a bit like finding your way out of a maze.
By the time you figure out which subscription plan you need, you could have set up STACK. Not to mention, STACK is designed with pricing transparency in mind.
#3: Requires Employee Training
Even tech-savvy employees are likely to require training to get the most out of your SharePoint intranet, especially if you’ve done a lot of customization.
Many companies offer SharePoint training course – that alone should tell you that SharePoint isn’t intuitive to use. If you have more than a few employees, that training is going to be expensive.
And in addition to the monetary cost, there’s going to be a notable time cost as well. It can take you a quite some time to get your SharePoint instance fully set up. Getting all your employees trained is only going to add to the time before your company benefits from using it.
#4: Poor Search Capabilities
This might not seem like a big deal at first. So, what if the search function isn’t perfect? If everyone uses SharePoint like they’re supposed to, you won’t need advanced search performance. You’ll just be able to find things.
That’s how it starts – you might continue thinking that for a while.
But things spiral out of the control fast (as we’ll discuss in a moment). Subpar search is a big deal. If you look online for discussions of SharePoint disadvantages, you’ll see that this is brought up often.
It’s one of the biggest limitations of SharePoint, and it’s worth keeping in mind.
#5: SharePoint Always gets Messy
If you’ve worked with SharePoint in the past, you’ve seen this happen. You go to track down a document from a few months or a year ago. It’s not where it’s supposed to be. Maybe there are multiple copies in a few different locations. The documentation that says where it’s supposed to be is wrong. You figure out who probably used it last. Then find out that they’ve left the company.
That document is gone, and you’ve wasted several hours when you could have just recreated the document instead.
The huge number of features, extensive customization, and a wide variety of uses within a single company means things get complicated very quickly.
SharePoint best practices and workflows break down. People start cutting corners. Files get forgotten and misplaced. Within a few years, you have a big mess on your hands. For a long time, that won’t affect your employees’ day-to-day work.
But after a certain point, SharePoint becomes more of a hindrance than a tool. (Which is why SharePoint has a reputation…too many people have seen this happen.)
If you’re just using it for short-term document storage, that might not be a huge issue, but if you’re looking to create a SharePoint knowledge base that helps your employees be more productive, you probably shouldn’t.
#6: SharePoint Is Slow to Adapt
SharePoint is like a cruise ship: It’s huge and powerful. Nobody knows every part of it, but there’s no denying that it has some serious momentum. Trying to turn it with anything less than hours’ notice is next to impossible.
Microsoft is an innovative company, but rolling out new changes to any of their products is a massive undertaking. That includes SharePoint. If you’re hoping for frequent updates with new features that help your company be more productive, you’re going to be disappointed.
If you want your organization to move and adapt to new problems quickly, you need a tool that does the same. You need a tool that isn’t designed as a one-size-fits-all. SharePoint isn’t that tool – STACK is.
SharePoint’s Disadvantages Can Cripple Your Productivity
When you want to use a software platform to improve communication, collaboration, and productivity across your company, your first thought may be SharePoint. Don’t make that mistake.
Instead, explore options that are laser-focused on getting you what you need. These are the tools that will help your employees be more productive, which means better results for your bottom line. In the pharmacy world, STACK’s curated information ecosystem approach not only addresses all of the reasons above to make the switch, it empowers your organization to overcome the deficiencies you find in software that’s been built for the masses.
