| | December 20168CIOReviewIn My OpinionRealizing the Value of SharePoint Requires Scale and CommitmentBy Arthur Hu, CIO, LenovoWhen Lenovo chose to deploy SharePoint a little over three years, we did so primarily to strengthen collaboration amongst our global workforce. With over 55,000 employees, spread across more than 50 countries, effective collaboration is critical to Lenovo's ability to innovate and compete. Our experience so far? The benefits are there but require a significant investment in licenses, infrastructure, and people that may be beyond the reach of some smaller companies.Our Experience at LenovoThe demand for customized applications that essentially automate processes with simple to moderately complex workflows is high across Lenovo. And, there is frequently measurable value to the business in terms of reduced costs and the transition to automated and auditable processes. However, IT does not have the capacity to meet all of this demand.SharePoint addresses the demand problem by shortening development times and empowering users in the business. Following a traditional method of collecting requirements, revising, developing, user acceptance testing, and finally deploying the system to production could take a month or longer. With SharePoint, users can develop workflows in a matter of days without touching any code. And over time, more and more resources in the business can build automate workflows with little to no IT support.As we got started with SharePoint, we saw two possible approaches. We could build a large support team to provide white glove service to our users at substantial cost or we could invest in education, employee engagement, and self-service. Costs drove Lenovo to go with the latter approach. Arthur Hu
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