There are immense advantages for using SharePoint; it provides a common platform for different sub-teams of an organization, allowing them to collaborate with each other better, hence improving the overall productivity of the organization. Thus, it is not surprising that more than three quarters of all Fortune 500 companies today use SharePoint. Lured by the advantages of SharePoint, many small and medium companies are also tempted to use it. However, many such companies don’t have enough resources to build an in-house team of SharePoint developers within their organization; such companies usually try to outsource their SP requirements to reliable SharePoint development companies and service providers. Often many companies are baffled while selecting a suitable offshore SharePoint consultant because they don’t have a clear idea about how they can weigh the capabilities of different vendors, almost all of which claim to be the SharePoint consultant or development company. Here are a few tips that will simplify your selection procedure help you in making a more prudent choice:
- Microsoft Technology Partners: This is the first parameter in weighing the competency of any SharePoint consultant; ensure that the offshore SharePoint development company you hire or intend to hire is indeed a certified Microsoft partner.
- Experience: Like in any other business, experience in delivering SP services is an important parameter that will help you filter out an amateur SharePoint consulting company from an expert one. Try to select the company that has at least 5-7 years of experience in SharePoint consulting services.
- Past clients: Try to find out about the past and present clients of the company; this will help you analyse the suitability of a particular SharePoint consulting company for your organization.
- Case studies: Case studies provide insights about a company’s capabilities. Most companies usually provide a diverse range of case studies on their website. If you cannot find case studies on the website, ask the shortlisted companies to share their case studies with you.
- Quality assurance norms: Quality assurance is a must for ensuring that the SharePoint implementation delivers the desired results of enhanced collaboration and increased productivity. Thus, it is expedient that you take a close look at the consultant’s compliance norms, credentials, quality assurance policies and norms.
- Ease of communicability: Often, you might need to communicate with the offshore SharePoint development company to which you have outsourced your requirements. Hence, it is desirable that the company is more accessible to you, preferably at a close geographic location, or at least has a branch near you.
- IT policies of the host country: Often people carefully review all the attributes of the outsourcing company, but forget assessing the IT policies of the host country (i.e. the country where the outsourcing company resides). It is desirable to have a host country that has stringent IPR security laws and favourable IT policies.
- Ratings and reviews: Try to analyse the ratings and reviews of the company from reliable evaluators. This will help you get a better picture of the company’s capabilities in handling similar projects.
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SharePoint 2013 Consultant, Developer, Designer| SharePoint Integration, Migration and Custom Support 
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