If you are considering and/or evaluating Lync 2013, be sure to listen to the eGroup Roundtable Series: Lync 2013.

Our guest was Dale Sayers, Microsoft Partner Technology Advisor, covers the “who, what, where, when, and why” of Lync. He also shares his knowledge of how Lync fits into Microsoft’s overall Office and Cloud Strategy and explains Lync’s integration with Office and SharePoint.

Lastly, Dale talks about the various programs for enterprises who may want to kick Lync’s tires with zero up-front investment. Listen in to hear details.

As always, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed to hear all the latest eGroup Roundtables.

eGroup’s SharePoint expert, Brad Shannon, was recently quoted in SearchContentManagement’s article covering SharePoint upgrades, “SharePoint upgrade requires sharp focus on planning, user preparation.” His advice on how to better prepare for an upgrade is pasted below.

Give the entire piece a read and then start documenting your infrastructure!

A company’s technology infrastructure also needs to be prepared for upgrading to a new version of SharePoint, and as part of that process, it’s important to document the existing features and services in a SharePoint environment as well as the new ones that will be deployed in the upgrade, said Brad Shannon, an application services engineer at eGroup, a technology consultancy in Mount Pleasant, S.C.

“If you don’t know what you have in your environment, you’re going to find out the hard way,” Shannon said, explaining that the more detailed the documentation of the current environment is, the better an organization can prepare for the SharePoint upgrade.

Companies should also start with a clean SharePoint farm, Shannon advised. “That means you don’t have anything on the farm you don’t need,” he said. Sometimes SharePoint systems will include items used for testing purposes that were never fully deployed or removed. Leaving them in place can create more work for SharePoint administrators, Shannon said.

In eGroup’s latest Roundtable Series, Jason Webster and Ian Jones discuss Microsoft’s Business Intelligence and Big Data solutions and how customers are leveraging the tools to gain better insight into operations. One of the key takeaways and reasons you need to listen to the Roundtable is that “big data is achievable in 2013.” Let Jason and Ian tell you how.

Microsoft’s BI & Big Data Solutions Explained

Some highlights of the discussion include:

• key components of SQL 2012 and how is it enabling greater insights for corporations into their data
• simplified methods of building complex analysis solutions
• Excel 2010/2013/Services plus SharePoint for Self-Service BI
• eGroup’s BI process and customer examples

Visit eGroup’s Application Services page for more information.

In eGroup’s latest Roundtable Series, Jason Webster and Brad Shannon walk us through the latest buzz from the SharePoint Conference show floor. Despite the fact it was 6:30 am PT when the Roundtable kicked off, both Jason and Brad were clear, concise, informative and dialed into their SharePoint A-games.

If you’re looking for discussion on any of the below topics, you need to listen to this 50-minute Roundtable.

• Business Management, Workflow and Collaboration
• Business Intelligence and Analytics
• Application Development
• Content Management
• Enterprise Search

Click Live from SharePoint Conference 2012

For more on eGroup’s Application Services team and SharePoint expertise, be sure to visit our SharePoint Planning Services page.

eGroup’s Application Services team uses Microsoft’s SharePoint as the corporate information hub; ensures user success by outlining comprehensive adoption plan

MT. PLEASANT, S.C. – November 19, 2012 – eGroup, the Southeast’s leading provider of cloud, application and end-user computing services, today announced the success of its recent supply chain process improvement project at Dispenser Services, Inc. (DSI). DSI services over 25,000 beverage dispensers across 2,500 customer locations in the Southeast.

Due to limitations with DSI’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, the company relied on various manual processes which delayed communication between customers and the field service team regarding the availability of equipment needed at customer sites. The existing system lacked the capability to track detailed movement through the refurbishment workflow, and therefore required staff to enter data manually into ad hoc spreadsheets. As a result, DSI began experiencing heavier call load to service centers, delays in processing and ultimately some unhappy customers.

Based on Microsoft’s SharePoint, eGroup quickly designed, developed and rolled out a central site which embedded the existing service delivery processes into the collaboration platform. Instead of DSI staff having to print 100 page reports each day, eGroup built a dashboard which allowed for easy viewing, as well as provided the capability to perform movement updates from one screen thereby reducing the time to process by more than 50 percent. The new Equipment Movement Tracking (EMT) process enabled a significant cost savings, allowing growth without requiring additional people. Without the new EMT process a new full time position would have been required.

Rick Fowler, Application Consultant, eGroup, said: “At eGroup, we believe each and every SharePoint project is unique to the specific requirements of the business. For example, during the discovery and interview process at DSI, we noticed the large number of emails that were sent and received during a typical request. After doing some fact finding, the pattern of communication was documented and the automatic sending of emails was integrated into the workflow to alert appropriate internal and external contacts of the updated status. This one automated step keeps all constituents coordinated and aware.  Similar email processes were used to send alerts when delays occurred. These alerts improved the company’s SLA performance, thereby improving customer satisfaction. As we believe that SharePoint is about collaboration, we set out to ensure it served as an integral part of DSI’s workflow, not a peripheral added task or added step.”

Over the course of the implementation, eGroup closely interacted with DSI staff performing the process to spot these opportunities for improving the entire plan which magnified the benefits. In addition, eGroup instituted a formal user adoption plan which incorporated best-practices around internal training and communications, content migrations, user support, empowering feedback loops, and user incentives.

Fowler continued: “These types of wins for users are paramount for creating a successful SharePoint site – one that is truly collaborative and integrated into the enterprise. When daily tasks are part of the SharePoint environment, then all of the information becomes more valuable. It becomes a true information hub, as it is intended.”