SharePoint Changes Data Management

SharePoint Will Change the Way We Manage Data

Written by Ken Fleeman

ABARTA Oil & Gas is about to roll out Microsoft SharePoint as our company wide platform for digital document management.  Coupled with Microsoft 365 licensing, AOG employees will be able to securely access their email, calendars and documents from any internet browser.  Document creation and editing can also take place online without a local MS Office Suite installation.

SharePoint is web based so it provides instant familiarity for browsing and searching company datasets. SharePoint uses a social media style homepage for every user.  From that homepage you can communicate with coworkers, set up RSS feeds, tag and comment on documents and set specific alerts so you will be notified when something changes that you need to know about.  Alerts can come instantly or you may opt for either daily or weekly summaries.

SharePoint is also a powerful collaboration and project management tool.  Project sites are created using existing templates.  Team members are added from your contact list and in minutes the team starts working with a calendar, to-do list, file storage and discussion board dedicated to the new project.  As teams are forged and projects develop so can SharePoint.  Users will ultimately add workflows, forms and dashboards in their project sites to improve efficiency and accountability.

We are excited about the opportunity SharePoint offers to better connect with our field offices and eventually our venture partners.  Access to data across departmental boundaries is currently limited by the traditional roadblocks of licenses, proprietary data formats, non-indexed directories, network storage and bandwidth.  We will continue to use the legacy systems (Excalibur, GeoGraphix, Petra, Aries) to create work product.  The shareable output, however, will reside in SharePoint.  Imagine access to Geology, Operations, Engineering, Land and Accounting data in a consistent and familiar environment.

The benefits are numerous and game changing.  Improved group interaction and idea sharing, indexed, searchable files, customizable website format, standardized datasets shared by legacy software, secure world wide access and the concentration of corporate knowledge will transform the way ABARTA Oil & Gas does business.