The basic framework for the Intranet and Sales division sites are setup in Office 365 and SharePoint. Now, it’s time to start defining the information architecture (IA) in preparation for adding sales contracts and building out the Sales CLM process.
Planning for the Future with Basic Information Architecture (IA)
Contracts are an organization-wide concept and so are customers. Most departments in the company have some sort of “contract”, and more than one department interfaces with customers (Finance – Billing, Marketing – Content Publishing, IT – Compliance). Similarly, the definition of divisions and departments is something which is defined across the organization.
Let’s couple that concept with the following statement: there is nothing more important to an organization’s success with SharePoint than defining, deploying, and enforcing some sort of well-defined information architecture. So, through collaboration and a bit of forethought, the following IA was constructed around the CLM process.
Simple IA for Sales Contracts and Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)
First, the actual stages of the lifecycle for Sales Contract Lifecycle Management were agreed upon:
Also, in partnership, pieces of the broader IA for the entire organization as well as specifics around Sales CLM are laid out.
This planning now enables a set of artifacts to be defined in SharePoint that are going to power SharePoint Search, navigation elements, content reusability, process automation, extensibility, and much more.
In the next post, we’ll see exactly how to implement this IA as content types and site columns in SharePoint Online.
Categories: Business, Business Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Office 365 and O365, SharePoint
Leave a Reply