In a meeting the other day, an experienced senior officer told a group of his colleagues that he'd just been through the fastest software development experience in his career. What he could have also said is that the majority of the solution was created by his own staff, who had been trained to do exactly that.
His office needed a document clearance tracking system to manage executive correspondence. The whole effort took about a month, and about 90 percent of that time was taken in clarifying the processes for clearance, not the software configuration. Total incremental cost for the system? About $10,000.
Equally as important, because the solution was designed and developed by the professional staff who have to use it, the risks of implementation drop dramatically. Moreover, it is being implemented in an organization of slightly over 20,000 people where 19,000 are registered SharePoint users. Yes, the proficiency is uneven, but the overall SharePoint literacy is far higher than it is in comparable organizations.
Bottom line - when properly implemented SharePoint is a capability that creates a core shift in the ability of an organization to innovate and collaborate.
~Andy