Here’s how it would go- the project manager from the home office on the East Coast flies out to the engineering team on the West Coast. Monday is a lost day getting ready for the trip, getting meeting documents together and making whatever other arrangements needed to cover a week out of the office. Tuesday is a travel day, so if our hapless project manager is lucky, they’ll get to the West Coast office just about in time for everyone to head out. Wednesday is a meeting day, but only half of the people needed are actually in the meetings, because no one had the correct schedule. Adding to the confusion, the 50-plus pages of printed meeting documents are wrong, the numbers are all from an earlier analysis. The Thursday meetings go slightly better, but by this time things are badly off track, and anyway there’s an afternoon flight back home to worry about. By Friday our poor project manager is back in the office, exhausted and with only half of the goals for the trip accomplished, and at tremendous time and expense. Seems crazy, right?

Unfortunately that scenario is still very common for SMBs that have to collaborate with geographically distant teams. It’s a “sneaker-net” mentality that can bleed budgets and drag out project execution, two things that smart businesses simply can’t afford in a down economy. The solution for this is Hosted SharePoint.

1) People oriented computing
The secret to any successful project is good communication. With hosted SharePoint, people can work from the same documents, communicate tasks and report on progress with blog and wiki tools, and manage the project workflow across all the involved teams.

2) Collaborative workspaces
Avoid delays due to scheduling conflicts with collaborative workspaces and social networking tools that allow both “real time” interaction and “any time” collaboration. With SharePoint users can work together despite time zone and geographic obstacles that would otherwise slow progress.

3) Content Management
Put an end to version management headaches by creating and managing all relevant documents, task lists, and web based content from a centralized platform. Hosted SharePoint includes workflow tools and rights management to eliminate confusion and speed project execution. SharePoint is integrated with Microsoft Office applications for easy adoption into existing work habits.

4) Easy Information Access
SharePoint lets you build portals that can be customized for each user or team, and deliver exactly the content they need quickly and efficiently. By taking a ‘people first’ approach, you can take advantage of individual work styles and allow people to work in the manner they find most comfortable and productive.

5) Enterprise Class Tools
SharePoint gives you powerful information collection and analysis tools that not only make project execution more efficient, but they allow businesses to fine tune their processes in an ongoing basis. Easily design and create web based forms to input information directly into business applications, integrate enterprise grade search tools, and built in analysis and reporting tools allow clear communication throughout the organization.

If you’re wasting time, energy, and money on “sneaker-net” approaches to collaboration, it’s time to consider a hosted SharePoint solution. Low cost of entry, fully scalable architecture, and superior reliability, availability, and performance all make hosted SharePoint the right choice. Whether it’s collaboration between a handful of people across town or hundreds of people around the world, hosted SharePoint can have a dramatic impact on your project delivery.

Over the last 15 years e-mail and cell phones went from novelties to critical business tools. Those of us who are a little longer in the tooth remember struggling with brick sized cell phones and command line Pine based e-mail accounts provided by the local library, and that so much has changed so quickly belies the relatively short time frame.

E-mail today comprises the foundation of most business communications. Ironically, e-mail isn’t even fast enough for today’s business environment, and is augmented with instantaneous communications via SMS, Twitter, and social networks like Facebook. The loss of e-mail service is crippling to most small and medium sized businesses. Unfortunately most of these businesses also lack the resources needed for a truly bulletproof e-mail solution. That’s where Managed Microsoft Exchange Hosting comes in.

For businesses with 1,000 employees or less, managed Exchange hosting is a cost effective, powerful solution for all their e-mail requirements without the need to invest in hardware or specialized IT personnel. By outsourcing Exchange server management to a leading provider like NaviSite, SMBs can take advantage of enterprise class service at a fraction of the cost. Backups and maintenance, spam and antivirus protection are automatic. Plans are built on a “pay as you go” model, allowing for budget friendly pricing and solutions that scale for businesses of all sizes. Most critically, and getting back to the original point, managed Exchange hosting features support for wireless devices like BlackBerries and iPhones.

Businesses that utilize Exchange put communications in the palms of their employees’ hands, literally. It’s certainly possible to use traditional e-mail with smartphones, but there’s a reason why Fortune 500 companies don’t rely on POP mail servers for critical communications. Microsoft Exchange liberates those communications and contact lists from desktops and laptops, giving your employees “on the go” access to the tools they need. For businesses that need even more robust collaboration tools, Exchange integrates smoothly with SharePoint and ActiveSync, allowing for seamless solutions that fit.

Clearly this is a time of tremendous change in the way businesses communicate both internally and externally. “Adapt or die” might be an old cliché, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Businesses that embrace that change will be poised to flourish in the 21st century. Companies that resist these changes run the risk of falling behind their competition, and at the pace of today’s business environment, that could be a critical mistake.