Hi everyone 🙂
Every company has them, perhaps it’s fueled by a distrust of a business vision, IT or they just plain don’t like SharePoint because it’s not as good as X or Y tool.
Identifying business goals and demonstrating a platform, in this case SharePoint that can help reach the goal is all fine and good but there is always an agenda with certain parts of a business that wants to block a new way of thinking and working.
How have you overcome this, brute force or have you just ignored it?
At the moment i’m facing this problem and I’m struggling to find a way past it so any advise or insights on how to tackle it would be great.
I came across this issue when I was trying to introduce WSS2 to a company I used to work for, the main objector was the Finance Director. There was no “financial” reason behind his objection it was his lack of understadning how it could be used to benefit the business – in my case.
I needed to have some kind of IT support/service desk for the department I was managing & the company was not going to invest in a tool to help a already over streched department. I was told it would be a waste of time that could be better used to “fix broken PC’s & write reports (the main role of an IT Manager in his mind). I had to prove to the directors that the IT department were being over streched & dramatically under resourced but the FD was adamant that despite having a free licence & all the servers already in place that he didn’t want any SharePoint development of any kind.
I went ahead & developed a service desk site anyway (in my own time) then demostrated it to the FD, he was still against the whole idea & even advised the MD against us using it – I requested a trail period, got it & from it managed to produced the desired reports to prove the flow of support coming into the department. SharePoint stopped being a “dirty word” after that & more users came from it (strangly enough, from the FD!!!)
What I have learned over the years is to use commerical arguments more than “techie” argments, we all get buzzed about SharePoint but ultimatley the “decision makers” are more worried about the financial impact on the operation.
Convince the “Bean Counters” & the rest will simply fall into place 😉
Thats my experience, hope it helps?
