In the context of an internal SharePoint solution I think that branding, in any more detail than basic colour and logo could be considered as a waste of investment.
I question whether an organisation can justify the investment required for awesome branding based upon the following questions:
- Does it help the organisation move towards its vision?
- What is the ROI of the branding work?
- Does the branding deliver clear and measurable business value?
- Does branding support and encourage user adoption?
Discuss….
Thanks Mark.
I think it’s a matter of level’s..
As Scott said above (Scott’s comments):
“..A basic, custom-branded master page to conform to an organization’s branding guidelines can take as little as a few hours and the outcome can be drastic and tremendously successful….”Â
And I agree that it makes sense as part of a wider set of Change Management and User Adoption activities and initiatives, but I’ve seen organisations focus immense amount of time creating ‘Metro Style’ UX for their SharePoint 2010 platform and then skimp on effort for change management, user adoption and governance. To my mind that’s crazy!
Yes we are human, but we need to be careful in the SharePoint world about ‘vanity metrics’ (See book ‘The Lean Startup’), these are metrics or measures that look good but are actually meaningless. Having an awesome looking SharePoint collaboration site that has lots of hits to the home page is meaningless if the rest of the site is hardly looked at all, or if there is no value on the home page.
As with a lot of what I consult, we should ask ourselves the question “What difference will it make” to every aspect of our SharePoint project, and if it isn’t substantial and positive then we should question the validity of that action.
All food for thought and there is no 1 right answer…
