The partners are driven by the technology of SharePoint, the main contractor bases are primarily obsessed by the technology of SharePoint, the developer community are challenging the boundaries of what is achievable with the technology of SharePoint, the conferences obsess over the detail of SharePoint technology. The client projects are all too often driven as technology (infrastructure) projects. I can't argue with that because it is progression.
Well I can actually. What happened to what the business user wants? What happened to business strategy, business analysis, business objectives, business requirements and business desirability? What happened to listening to the customer and meeting those needs. For years now the emphasis has been far too much on the technology of SharePoint and far less on the business capabilities, services and business adoption of SharePoint. Next week the SharePoint Best Practices conference will open its doors and undoubtedly there will be much discussion on the technological progression of SharePoint 2010. Excellent.
But back to my point. If you look across the global market place for business focused SharePoint partners, those concentrating on meeting business requirements (I see the same needs in so many diverse companies) and those partners concentrating on SharePoint business adoption you will be hard pressed to find many. Indeed that is because they really aren't that many. Too many partners have a wholly technological bias to SharePoint solutions and far too few have a greater desire to strategise from a business angle.
To prove the point go and type in to Google, or should I say Bing, 'sharepoint strategy'. One may have thought that there would be literally thousands of partners listed who are tackling this issue. Indeed no there are not. In fact you will be lucky to find much of relevance except Salem and a few old articles by other sources. You certainly will not find many, if any, pay per click ads on the subject. Simply put, there is far too little focus on the subject of SharePoint strategy and adoption in the current marketplace. And why would there be when a partner can simply develop a single technology-focused solution and deliver it to generate revenue.
The situation is exacerbated by Microsoft's own partner model that certifies for technical excellence but offers less to the partner community in terms of certified business consulting partners, certified user adoption partners, certified user experience partners and so on. This underlines the issue that if there is no partner programme for the skills that make all the difference to an end user organisation then SharePoint will continue to have a technology-led bias, and the issues around adoption and making the most of a wide range of inherent business services will remain.
The technical community of SharePoint worldwide has matured immensely but the much-needed skills behind business service release and adoption remain largely ignored save for the few specialist business consulting firms within the global SharePoint community. For SharePoint to truly be leveraged by businesses and for it to embed properly and deeply into a wider range of organisations for the long term, something has to change. The partner community must be enhanced through a means by which partners can be certified in a wider range of skillsets for SharePoint than a pure technology focus.
Salem Consulting, and those like us, can never be more than a registered partner until something changes dramatically in the understanding of what is required to deliver SharePoint to business. Let us hope someone up high is taking note.
