Usually, organizations opt for migrating content from your existing SharePoint site or a third-party document library to SharePoint Online.

Organizations migrate their data online to reap the benefits associated with the latest collaboration and productivity tools. The choice of SharePoint Migration varies based on your specific needs, strategies, and direction.

If you need to review the entire SharePoint Migration process, check out The Definitive SharePoint Migration Guide and Checklist.

Why do you need to migrate?

Microsoft is known for its ability to upgrade its SharePoint Online platform continuously. Every new platform comes with better features. You can access your SharePoint anywhere and anytime on the cloud.

1. Increased Collaboration

SharePoint helps your employees centralize your document administration to increase the collaborative spirit between your team. The shift to remote working in the past few years is a tremendous boon to any organization.

The Online version offers users flexible access on their desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.

2. Enterprise-Level Security

The enhanced security features developed in newer SharePoint versions use enterprise-level security updates to protect your organization’s documents.

3. Access to the Microsoft 365 Ecosystem

Companies often switch from 3^rd party document management platforms to SharePoint because of how they can integrate SharePoint with the rest of the Microsoft 365 tools they use.

SharePoint documents work great with the Office Suite, Power Platform, Dynamics 365, and Teams to transform your business processes digitally.

SharePoint Versions

SharePoint created several versions before they developed their online system. Standard SharePoint versions include:

• SharePoint 2001
• SharePoint 2003
• SharePoint 2007
• SharePoint 2010
• SharePoint 2013
• SharePoint 2016
• SharePoint 2019

The older your version, the more time and resources are needed for proper planning and execution. However, the migration is doable. If you have SharePoint 2010 or earlier, you must perform multiple migrations to modernize your SharePoint platform.

What data sources do you want to migrate?

You might not want to migrate every document over to your SharePoint Online site depending on your organization’s size and the complexity of your document storage solution.

For example, you have multiple departments with different document management sites in your organization. Some departments prefer to keep their documents at their current location, while others update their systems.

To understand what data sources to migrate and which to leave alone, you can ask the following questions.

• What documents do you need to move?
• Do you want to delete documents past a specific time frame?
• What about duplicates?
• What is the average document size?
• What types of documents do you need to transfer?
• Do you think any files are corrupt?

Download your FREE eBook on The Definitive SharePoint Migration Guide and Checklist.

SharePoint Migration Map

There are 5 phases in a SharePoint migration. Those phases are:

• Discovery
• Assessment
• Pilot
• Execution
• Onboarding

Discovery

Organizations must analyze their entire document management system makeup to discover the right document structure for their intranet. The proper design includes user permission and data dependency mapping.

Assessment

After reviewing the organizations’ processes and integrations, it is vital to understand your migration requirements. The right SharePoint strategy reduces the number of hassles during the execution.

Pilot

Before moving your documents, it is crucial to test, test, and test each aspect of the migration process. A pilot allows you to test the performance of the new SharePoint enhancements and functional equivalencies.

Execution

Once you test, strategize and plan your organization’s migration map, it is time to act. Keep all stakeholders informed of the migration status.

Setting realistic expectations for the team is a vital component of migrating your documents. You need to ensure all stakeholders know your migration plan and how it affects their operations.

Finally, test everything. Execution does not mean you forget the pilot stage of the migration. Instead, it is vital to migrate your documents smoothly.

Onboarding

The migration is not over when you transfer your documents. Next, you need to onboard your team to ensure they know how to make the most out of the new SharePoint site.

What to consider with SharePoint Online Migrations?

Time

How long does the migration take? Part of this estimate should include how much time it takes to plan & assess the data and how many documents you need to transfer. You need to consider your documents’ size and quantity to determine how long the transfer takes.

Resources

Here are some questions to determine your resources.

• What tools can you use for the migration?
• How many people do you need to finish the project on a timely basis?
• Can you complete the project internally or with external consultants?
• What other resources do you need to complete the migration?

SharePoint Online Migration Final Thoughts

Migrating your enterprise management software to the latest version requires time, energy, and patience. If you need help doing this more effectively, let us help you.

Schedule a free, no-obligation consultation with our SharePoint online migration team today.

One of the best procurement management software tools is the SharePoint-powered Bid Management Add-In. The software digitizes pre-bid and post-bid activities to help with:

• Streamlining the bidding process
• Reducing paperwork
• Managing tenders and bid compliance
• Reducing the risk to purchasing decisions.

What is the Procurement Process?

Before we get into how procurement management software works, we want to cover the basics of the procurement process. In this case, procurement refers to the techniques & methods to streamline the supplier process. It also involves processing and preparing demand, negotiating prices, and inventory control. Procurement is a strategic process involving the exchange of goods and services. It is a proactive approach emphasizing value and identifying and filling future deficiencies. 

Methods of Procurement Process

Procurement has three different types of processes:

• Direct
• Indirect
• Services

Direct– Acquire goods, materials, and other services that you need on stock for growing and developing the organization. Often these goods and services help their external audience. Direct procurement is ideal for building long-term collaborative supplier relationships

Indirect– Source goods and services for internal use to help with the day-to-day operations. Indirect procurement is ideal for short-term transactional supplier relationships.

Services– This procurement process helps with staff augmentation and consulting services to fill the organization’s gap temporarily.

7 Procurement Process Steps

Below are seven standard procurement process steps you can integrate with your procurement management software to optimize your chances of finding the right vendors.

  1. Create new projects & Add RFPs

The RFP owner starts the process by creating a Request for Proposal (RFP) with details such as the title, start/end dates, RFP documents, descriptions, evaluation members, and reminders.

 2. Add and invite vendors/bidders with Procurement 

The RFP owners can add as many contractors as they want or find vendors/suppliers who can directly show interest in an open RFP. The vendors are chosen based on their experience and skill in previous projects.

 3. Notify vendors/bidders

The bid management software sends an email to all interested vendors in bidding for the project. They also receive reminder emails to remind them to bid before the bidding ends.

 4. Upload documents

Invited vendors/bidders need to submit all required documents before the end of the bid date to ensure they have a chance at winning the contract

  5. Evaluation notifications

All team members on the evaluation team get notifications after the bidding process finishes to evaluate the quality of the submissions.

  6. Vendor Selection

By analyzing the different documents and applications from bidders, the evaluation team selects the winning bid.

  7. Review/Audit process

The procurement management software keeps the activity logs for the bidding process to ensure anyone in the organization can analyze what went right and what to improve with the procurement process in the future.

Procurement Management Software

The procurement process we discussed above relies on the right procurement management software, as we discussed earlier. Our Bid Management Software collects bids from vendors/suppliers/contractors to speed up the process and reduce vendor headaches.

The traditional bidding process is a time suck where organizations chase vendors for documents and bids. Why waste your time when you can simplify the bidding process with the right software solution.

Additionally, Bid Management software creates role-based access for RFP owners, approvers, reviewers, and evaluators along with Super admins and project owners. These roles ensure that the right people in your organization work on the right section of the project.

Finally, the bid management process benefits from having a secured SharePoint system to help ensure all bids and documentation are safe.

Conclusion

If you are looking to optimize your procurement process, the first step is to have the right procurement management software.

Get started with a free 1-hour procurement process assessment and consultation with our team. Contact us today.

Managed Properties refines search, which is vital to help users receive better search results. Refined searches can be performed only on managed properties.

SharePoint Managed Properties:

Managed Properties include a list of text keywords and metadata (markup language) to enhance the quality of your search.

Crawl the properties to extract the data from the content and metadata and use it in the search index. You can then map these crawled properties with managed properties to improve the accuracy of your search results.

How to Add, Edit, and Delete Managed Property list:

SharePoint Online has two ways to manage the property list through the search schema: in the admin section or the site collection settings.

• Admin Section: You must need to log in with Admin credentials to utilize this option. You can create a new managed property at the tenant level by navigating to search schema in the SharePoint admin portal -> Search -> Manage Search Schema -> New Managed Property.
• Site Collection: Go to the site collection.

You will need to follow the below steps for both above options:

Create “New Managed Property”

Step 1: Go to Search > Managed Properties > New Managed Properties

Step 2: Fill in Managed Property attributes and save by clicking the Ok button.

After saving the attributes, the Managed Property is created.

Edit Managed Property

Step 1: Right-click on the Managed Properties, then click on the Edit/Map Property

Step 2: Edit the attributes and click on Ok button to save the changes.

Delete Managed Property

Step 1: Right-click the property menu > click delete > click ok to confirm deletion.

Mapping Managed property with crawled property:

While creating/editing the managed property, you can map the crawled property with the managed property using Add a Mapping button (Either you can use existing crawled property or first create crawled property and then use it in add mapping)

Step 1: Right-click on the Managed property, then click on the Edit/Map Property

Step 2: Click on Add a Mapping

 Step 3: Select crawled property that needs to be mapped.

Step 4: Click on the OK button to map.

The below image shows the mapped crawled properties.

Managed Property in User Profile Search and displaying it in User Delve Profile

Using a managed property in search APIs, you can create a searchable user profile property that you can display on Delve as well.

How to add a new User Profile Property?

Go to SharePoint Admin > User Profiles > Manage Users Properties > New Property.

For displaying on the Delve profiles, you need to configure the basic settings below:

• Default Privacy Setting should be set to “Everyone” for this property to be visible for everyone
• Check “Show in the Profile Properties section of the user’s profile page”
• For displaying this new property on the Edit details page, check “Show on the Edit Details page”
• If you want the property to appear in the search results, the “Indexed” property needs to be “Checked.”

After creating the property, you must check the field is crawled.

In SharePoint Online, crawling is an automated process, but to ensure crawling you need to add corresponding property values in at least one user profile. The crawling process can take anywhere between 15 mins to six hours.

After successfully crawling the property, go to SharePoint Admin > Search > Manage Search Schema > Crawled Properties. Your new managed property should now be displayed.

Once new properties start to display in crawl properties, map it to a managed property via the following steps:

Go to SharePoint Admin > Search > Manage Search Schema > Managed Properties.

Create a new Managed Properties with the following settings:

• Type as “Text”
• Check “Searchable”
• Check “Queryable”
• Check “Retrievable”
• In Advanced Searchable Settings, select “PeopleIdx” in the popup window.
• Click “Add a Mapping”.

Then you are done. Now you need to wait for spiders to crawl your SharePoint site, until new managed properties are displayed. This crawling can take anywhere between 15 mins to 6 hours.

Once the steps above are completed, you have a custom user property you can use to search your entire Office 365 ecosystem to find people, Delve profiles, and search APIs of the user profile.

Conclusion:

In this SharePoint Online search article, we learned more about SharePoint managed properties, how to create a new managed property in SharePoint search at the tenant level, and how to view, edit, and delete the existing managed properties.

If you have any additional questions about how to use managed properties to help your organization get the most out of SharePoint, please reach out to us for a free SharePoint consultation.

No matter the business, suppliers/vendors play a crucial role in a company’s success. One wrong choice can cost you a lot! The mismatches between a company’s requirements and the supplier’s offerings can delay projects, add costs, or destroy client relationships.

Therefore, selecting the right supplier or vendor to meet your business’s key requirements is necessary. This is where Ray Carter’s 10C model of supplier/vendor evaluations can help you.

It is a standardized procedure that helps you evaluate supplier/vendor performance to ensure smooth business operations and profitability. Let’s see how the 10C model of supplier and vendor evaluation simplifies your work.

What Is the 10C Model Of Supplier/Vendor Evaluation?

Outlined by Dr. Ray Carter, 10Cs of supplier or vendor evaluation is a model to assess a potential supplier’s sustainability. The 10 criteria help you decide on the best partners for your business’s specific needs.

Competency

First, determine a supplier’s level of competency. Make a thorough assessment of your suppliers’ capabilities, measure them against your needs, and ask what other customers think. Ask if they had any problems working with this supplier. Does this supplier have the skills or equipment to deliver the products you need?

Capacity

Is the supplier capable of handling the company’s requirements? If they don’t have adequate equipment, staff, or materials, it might result in business disruption. Research the suppliers’ resources to ensure that they have the capacity to help you.

Commitment

Whether it is about operating below a minimum order defect rate or staying compliant with industry and government standards, the supplier should produce evidence of their commitment. The best way to understand the quality of their work is through certifications such as ISO or Six Sigma. Also, look for evidence of ongoing commitments with other customers.

Control

The suppliers can control their processes, procedures, and policies. If they rely on other organizations for materials or have scarce resources, how can they ensure a reliable and consistent performance?

A Pro Tip – You can use bid management software to outline your organization’s requirements. With this tool, you can create customized vendor/supplier evaluation criteria that become the standard you want bid managers to meet.

Cash

If the supplier doesn’t have enough finances to keep pace with your organization’s needs, they won’t maintain a consistent supply. You might run into trouble if you choose to partner with them. Look for cash-positive firms that can show their financial strength.

Cost

The ultimate goal of a business is to generate profit. One key criterion for sourcing the right supplier is considering the cost of products and services they provide. You might find suppliers who offer huge discounts on quantity, which appeals to small businesses. Similarly, suppliers increase the purchase cost to meet their marketing expenses but offer the same quality product.

In that case, you should ask what additional benefits a supplier with higher cost offers over others. Keep in mind that cost shouldn’t be the deciding factor in your decision-making process. It includes more than just focusing on cost.

Consistency

Does the supplier have a record of consistency? Do they deliver products and services on time? While you can’t expect perfection all the time, they should have adequate processes and resources in place to consistently deliver the results you need.

Culture

If the supplier shares similar cultural values as your organization, it can build a strong foundation for the future. You can look for suppliers who have been recognized in the industry for cultural excellence.

Clean (Corporate Social Responsibility)

Organizations must focus on sustainability and reducing their environmental footprint. Ask the supplier to produce evidence of green accolades or practices they employ to adhere to local, state, and federal environmental laws.

Communication

Good communication is key to ensure everyone is on the same page. Find out your point of contact at the firm. In the event of supply disruption or crisis, you need to know who to contact.

How Can Bid Management Software Help?

A bid management software can help streamline the process of supplier/vendor evaluation. With this dedicated tool, you can efficiently and consistently communicate all your tendering activities. The software allows you to set bid qualification criteria, foster better communication between vendor and bid manager, create tenders (RFx’s), and develop evaluation processes.

Additionally, a BMS helps you-

• Set up customized global evaluation criteria for all your RFx. Outline specific criteria containing the most critical requirements of a particular RFx as well.
• Whatever the type of ‘RFx’ or ‘Request For’ document is, the software helps you choose multiple evaluators. Thus, you can have a look at the average ratings and make a well-thought-out decision.
• There are built-in queries and questions modules where potential suppliers can understand your organization’s requirements. This encourages better communication between a supplier and a vendor.
• With this software, you can maintain all the historical data and help bid managers source suppliers/vendors consistently.

Here are the top considerations per Carter’s 10C model, which you need to remember while sourcing a supplier. As a procurement leader, you can remove some of the burdens off your shoulder by using Beyond Intranet’s bid management software.