Brand Portal vs. Sharepoint

A Brand Portal or Communication Shop. You may have heard or seen something about it. Then you will also have wondered whether it is suitable for your organisation. Possibly, there is already a SharePoint or another intranet, or a purchase is being considered. SharePoint is the most frequently mentioned option for content & asset management, but there are more options.

Purpose of the solutions

SharePoint

SharePoint is described as an online platform for managing and sharing knowledge and information. To stimulate collaboration and transformation. With the versatile CMS (Content Management) functionality, you can easily communicate information. With extensive document management, you can work together on documents more efficiently.

Brand Portal

The goal of a Brand/Communication Portal is to provide everyone in the organisation with tools to create recognisable, professional content.

The CMS functionality is well-suited for recording brand, corporate identity, or other communication guidelines. The Media Repository is very useful for managing and accessing large amounts of media files. The template studio is ideal for applying guidelines and media files directly to content.

Features for recording guidelines & information

Most of the similarities between the tools are in this part. Both SharePoint and a Brand Portal offer CMS functionality, but there is a small difference. SharePoint is a general, similar to a website CMS. The CMS functionality of a Brand Portal is specialised in introducing brand & corporate identity guidelines.

So both tools allow you to build web pages. But a Brand Portal offers additional options for recording brand guidelines through style elements such as colour cards, logo banks, fonts, etc. This gives the reader a professional look.

But the main difference between the two tools is that with a brand portal, you can easily grant external parties, such as agencies and printers, guest accounts. Permanent or temporary. They can then access the Brand Portal without needing a company account. With SharePoint, this is often cumbersome.

Features for storing, managing, and sharing assets

In SharePoint, you can store photographs, videos, logos, and similar media. This can be done via functionality comparable to your hard disk explorer. So, the well-known folder structure.

With a Brand Portal, you get away from the folder structure. Instead, an extensive metadata structure is used. This allows you to quickly find the right files with specific search filters and advanced search engine functionality. The endless searching through all kinds of folders is a thing of the past. This structure is also ideal for Brand Portal administrators, as they can use the metadata structure to maintain control. For example, by using automatic expiry dates for photography or by making images available only to a specific user group.

Conclusion

A Brand Portal and SharePoint should not replace each other, but complement each other. A SharePoint is often indispensable in your organisation. Especially with sharing company information and collaborating on office documents. But to achieve recognisable, professional communication from every position, SharePoint falls short. So it is best to place all brand-building blocks for creating content in a Brand Portal. Here are our three main conclusions:

• SharePoint provides basic functionality to easily share information and files within your organisation. It is sufficient if you know the intranet very well and always know exactly what you are looking for. But if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for or where to look, finding what you need can be very frustrating and time-consuming. In addition, it is a major ongoing responsibility for administrators to keep the entire library GDPR-compliant.
• You do not want to inhibit colleagues’ enthusiasm to communicate on behalf of the organisation. That’s why you probably only want to show the content that is relevant to them. Moreover, it is very error-prone if everyone has the right to use and/or modify everything. SharePoint has a rights-and-roles structure. But with a Brand Portal, you can fine-tune this on a per-page, per-image, or per-template basis. In addition, a Brand Portal contains workflows for approval and review.
• Making guidelines and files available does not guarantee they will be applied correctly. Office templates are very error-prone, and colleagues are still swimming in too many possibilities. This is especially difficult if you don’t have a background in communications. You can facilitate them effectively with smart-house-style templates from the Brand Portal.

Tip: Use a SharePoint Connector from your Brand Portal solution. If one searches SharePoint for something that is actually in the brand portal, the results are displayed as a link to the brand portal. Very handy!