By David Lavenda

Each day your workforce is busy editing hundreds, if not thousands, of documents that are shared back and forth before they’re finalised. Stop for a moment and mentally walk through the last time you were asked to comment on a document. Did you receive it as an email attachment? Did you save it as a new file with your initials or date and email it back when you were done? Did several of your colleagues do the same, creating multiple versions of the same document? Chances are you answered Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes – aka a sure-fire recipe for document chaos.

Now, for those of you whose organisations have deployed SharePoint, how many of you still answered Yes for all questions? I’d hazard an educated guess at two-thirds. I say educated as a uStamp survey of business email users found that only one out of three survey respondents with access to SharePoint use it for daily document exchange, and 37% refuse to use it at all!

Of course, that’s not great news for the organisations that have invested huge amounts of time, money and resources to improve collaboration, only to receive these derisory results.

However, SharePoint is a fantastic tool and with free software to simplify SharePoint tasks now available, organisations can eliminate document chaos in just ten steps with a little education and a bit of tailoring.

A typical document collaboration nightmare

From business proposals and designs to reports and pitches, organisations have a myriad of different documents to deal with. A good example of a typical document collaboration workflow is contract negotiation. The review process will involve a number of internal departments – typically the sales team who generate the copy, with input needed from professional services, finance, legal and product teams. That’s before your customer even sees the first draft! We will therefore use contract negotiations as a case in point.

Before you get started with the actual document, Step “Zero” is to create a SharePoint sub-site for the contract project. You’ll need to assign the appropriate access rights, set it to prompt for major/minor version numbers when checking in documents, and allow ‘in place record management’.

If you want to simplify multi-step navigation to complete these SharePoint-related tasks, opting for software that enables you to bring SharePoint into your email client can speed up processes and reduces the need to switch windows. Software can be downloaded for free and installed in just a few minutes.

Okay, you’re ready.

Step One – Create an initial contract draft

Create a Word document and save it to a local drive. You’ll then need to upload the document to the contract site on SharePoint. Don’t forget to designate the document version. I recommend using minor version numbers (i.e. x.1) to denote internal edits.

Step Two – Circulate contract for feedback

Send the document as a (SharePoint) link to your colleagues. Ask them to use track changes when editing the document and to use comments when ‘checking in’ the document to highlight key changes.

As you circulate the link, your colleagues will always be working on the most current version. Additionally, using links eliminates wasted email storage. And here’s another interesting fact for you – 60% of email storage consists of attachments!

Of course, your colleagues will need to let you know when they are finished.

Step Three – Carry out revisions

As simple as it sounds, you’ll need to open the document and accept or reject the comments. By using SharePoint, you’ll eliminate the pain of having to reconcile multiple revisions as you’ll have just one set of edits to review.

Step Four – Create a clean version It’s now time to save the document as a major version (i.e. 1.0) so you can send a clean copy to the buyer.

Step Five – Send the document to the client

At this point, you’ll likely need to actually attach the document, unless of course you allow your clients to access your servers!

Step Six – Review the client’s comments

When you receive the document back from your client, the likelihood is that the name will have been changed. To preserve the document history, a legal requirement for most contracts, you’ll need to update the original document name to match the client’s one.

Step Seven – Internally review the client’s changes

Repeat steps two to six until all parties are happy and there are no further revisions.

Step Eight – Send the document to the ‘approver’

Again, as the corporate ‘approver’ is internal – usually the CEO or CFO, you can email a (SharePoint) link.

Step Nine – Ready for signatures

The ‘approver’ will need to declare the document as ‘a record’ to lock it down and prevent further editing and publish it as a major version. A link is then sent back to the principal negotiator so they can collect all the necessary signatures.

Step Ten – Save the email confirming the document is final

By saving the email from the corporate approver, with all the related documents on SharePoint, the negotiation history is kept in a single place and regulators are satisfied.

The final contract can now be sent to the client for signatures.

Making the steps quicker

I think you’ll agree that these steps are pretty straight forward. You can speed up the process even further with dedicated software from harmon.ie, allowing you to gain full featured access to SharePoint using an email sidebar, which makes SharePoint navigation 5-6 times faster versus using a browser.

This is because the entire document sharing operation is completed in the email window – from sharing the original document to using a simple drag and drop feature to add a SharePoint link to an email. There is no need to launch the SharePoint browser, navigate to a specific folder and edit properties. You’ll be automatically notified when colleagues have made their revisions. Remaining within a single context eliminates the inconvenience and distraction caused by toggling between multiple windows and applications. Most importantly, by integrating SharePoint with email, people in your organisation will jump on the SharePoint bandwagon, because it’s easy to do so within their established work routine.

And there you have it - ten easy steps to contract negotiations. Whether you use SharePoint on its own, or combine it with an email plug-in, this practical ‘how to’ guide can be replicated across all documents that your organisation collaborates on – whether they’re a sales strategy, marketing plan or even new product developments. By following steps one to ten your organisation can eliminate its document chaos and reclaim an average 30 minutes a day per person. What are you waiting for?

To find out more about the 10 Steps and download free software go to http://harmon.ie.

About the author

David Lavenda is Vice President Product Strategy at harmon.ie. For the past 20 years, David Lavenda has served as an executive for a number of high-tech companies. After completing a undergraduate degree in Physics, advanced studies in Electrical Engineering, and an MBA in Marketing, David co-founded Business Layers, an identity management company, serving as VP Marketing and Product Strategy from its inception until the company's successful sale five years later. Additional stints as VP of Marketing and Product Strategy for several successful high-tech companies followed. David is a technology expert blogger for Fast Company. He is also pursuing advanced studies in STS (Science, Technology, and Society) - focusing on the research of online behaviors.

About harmon.ie

harmon.ie (pronounced ‘harmony’) is a provider of social email software that brings document collaboration to every business user by transforming the email client into a collaboration and social workspace. Thousands of businesses already use harmon.ie social email to vastly increase user adoption of Microsoft SharePoint or Google Docs for document sharing, collaboration, and social networking. Formerly known as Mainsoft, the company has been building cross-platform enterprise software since 1993. For more information, visit http://harmon.ie.

For more on digital distraction go to http://distractedenterprise.com.