Background:
A key need when deploying a sophisticated SharePoint intranet or similar solution is to ensure the trust has the skills and resources available to maintain, configure and develop the solution. This support is commonly provided through a designated SharePoint Administrator (Admin) or other support person.
However it is rare for this role to need a Whole Time Equivalent member of staff; in fact it is common for the admin of a well implemented solution to only require about a day per week to run SharePoint and support users. Double this is usually sufficient in the first couple of months post-deployment.
Also not every issue that arises is an Admin issue – often there are elements of user training, solution configuration, information architecture and solution design, evangelism, development, business analysis and more.
Competent SharePoint skills are in short supply and are relatively hard to acquire. As a result trusts are often left with the option of trying to recruit someone as a full time member of staff despite only needing them part time, or training an existing member of staff and hoping they can become proficient quickly. The paradox is that the highest demand is immediately post launch, which inevitably precedes the recruitment or training and gaining of experience of staff.
Solution description:
Cloud2 are recognised leaders in delivering SharePoint into the NHS; as a consequence we have a team of highly skilled staff, including the full breadth of SharePoint skills, backed by our wealth of knowledge and expertise in the NHS and beyond.
We deliver our support skills via two main services: Flexible and Proactive support.
Flexible Support
Flexible Support provides a reactive mechanism to call on our skills when an issue or unexpected need arises.
Clients usually take Flexible Support because they believe that there will be bugs and issues that emerge following go-live and they need instant access to a means of resolving it, especially where their internal skills are limited. However the dilemma with traditional support is that if things go well most of the support package is unused – with Flexible Support our clients aren’t limited to just using it for call off issue resolution; it can be used for any of the needs listed previously or, indeed, anything else we know how to do.
Clients with a Flexible Support contract receive priority and benefit from a flat rate, irrespective of the internal resources we apply to the problem.
Flexible Support packages are typically offered in multiples of six days and run for a year or until exhausted. The support days are requested via email to our support address or to a dedicated support email for each client (or phone if urgent) and we aim deliver the support remotely where possible since this is more effective, responsive and cost effective.
Flexible Support is configured so that, nominally, one twelfth of the contracted support is used each month (so ½ a day per month for a 6 day agreement, etc.), however we try to be flexible too. Clients may mix and match support in one hour increments as needed, in any given month.
We aim for our Flexible Support to live up to its name; feel free to discuss anything you may require with us and we will advise whether we can help.
Proactive Support
Proactive Support provides additional planned support resource, usually with a schedule of activities to be worked on every week.
Clients usually take Proactive Support as an alternative to employing staff, as a supplement to in-house skills or as an interim measure pending recruitment or training.
Proactive Support provides a dedicated, named SharePoint expert with an agreed schedule. This is often 1 day per week, with some additional capacity allowance to cover peaks in activity. The role allocated may be a configuration engineer or an administrator, depending on need. We aim to deliver this through a combination of onsite and offsite effort; we have found that this combination approach has been incredibly effective with the offsite time providing us with the flexibility to schedule follow up calls and online review meetings to better fit our customers’ schedules while minimising lost time due to travel and ensuring ready access to the rest of our team where needed. Where a need arises outside the named resource skills he or she has full access to the entire Cloud2 team and will manage the delivery.
Clients usually provide a list of small projects and activities to be worked through during the support contract, with the ability to reassign the effort whenever a priority need arises.
The SharePoint Admin Support solution provides one of our Admins on a part time, structured basis. This can be as a long term engagement or as an interim until recruitment or training can be put in place.
Typically we recommend four days a month. Where possible we deliver three days remotely and one day on site. This provides:
- Full monitoring and proactive support of the SharePoint farm and applications
- Optimisation of indexing and other services
- Review of backup and other business resiliency factors
- Infrastructure assessment and monitoring
- Issue detection and prevention
- End user support and advice
- Business need analysis and solution implementation
This latter function is a role we consider to be a ‘SharePoint Guru’ activity; combining troubleshooting, business analyst with SharePoint configuration to address the business need, and covers ‘tweaks’ to an existing solution (such as adding metadata columns, creating views, enabling existing workflow etc.) through to providing an outline or detailed design on a full solution (or a recommendation that the scope is sufficiently large or complex that a project is required).
Key features:
- Highly skilled and experienced SharePoint Admin support
- Flexible and efficient use of expertise
- Maintain SharePoint infrastructure, application and support users
- Interim or ongoing arrangements
- Able to provide solution enhancements and business needs analysis
Benefits
- Cost effective
- Access to broader skill set from the Cloud2 team than available in a single employee
- Avoid/defer hiring full time staff
- Knowledge transfer to existing staff
- Ensures successful deployment and uptake of new applications
