I went to a meeting yesterday where they were talking about some of the changes in SharePoint 2010. Two things really stood out to me, and neither of them had much to do with SharePoint.

The first thing was when the presenter was describing how often company website structures model their business hierarchy instead of focusing on what the customer wants.

A gentleman towards the front of the room raised his hand and asked, “This is true, but how do we convince our management to structure our site differently?”

The second thing caught my attention when the presenter reached his, “what’s in it for me” section and talked about how long it would take to recoup your investment in SharePoint.

Why did someone have to ask how to convince his management that their site should focus on their customers?Why was the highlight of the presentation about how soon you could make your money back?

It could be that many businesses only care about profit. In essence, they pimp their products and services without ever really caring about their customers. As long as the are making money they are happy, even if their customers are quietly waiting for an opportunity to escape.

Why is it that so many companies have to be convinced to talk to their customers and actually listen to what they have to say? When I mentioned this as a solution to the website question there were chuckles throughout the room. It seems so simple, yet everyone recognized that this is a problem all too common.

Now let’s assume that the people attending the presentation were from companies who really wanted to connect better with their customers and employees within their business. Assume that they were looking for an effective way to organize information and collaborate on projects.

Everyone in that room already knew that SharePoint carries a hefty price tag. The issue at hand wasn’t whether they could afford it because they wouldn’t have wasted the time hearing about it otherwise. The issue was whether SharePoint is worth the price.

Red flags always go up when someone ends a presentation trying to justify price because it basically overshadows all of the benefits already presented.

Why not affirm the price at the beginning of the presentation and let the benefits justify the cost? If your customers decide it’s not worth it, you can always lower the price or make a better product.

I was speaking with a fellow co-worker today about bloated software because I’m working to take a SharePoint site and move it to Umbraco. I took a SharePoint HTML page that was over 600 lines of code and was able to drop it to about 100 lines of code in Umbraco, just by pulling out all the junk and creating valid markup.

I think SharePoint has some of the worst markup I’ve ever seen in my life. It would be a decent solution for document management and intranet sites, but I can think of a ton of better ways to spend the $20,000 they charge for an external publishing license.

With intranet sites you don’t really have to worry as much about browser compatability, or whether someone may decide to visit your site from a cell phone. You also aren’t as concerned about bandwidth because you are on a faster internal network and search engine optimization isn’t necessary… at least it shouldn’t be.

This all changes for external sites. Microsoft has done a great marketing job of diverting attention from SharePoint’s glaring shortcomings.

“Just look at all these built-in features out of the box!”

Sure, the features are there, but then you have to go and rewrite everything to get it to work right. Umbraco may not have all the bells and whistles of SharePoint, but at least I’m rewarded with a clean and valid website instead of spending a ton of money for something that I’m happy just to get halfway functional.

People are often so awed by features that they lose site of benefits, which should be the real reason to buy software. Microsoft always tries to be everything to everyone, and often they end up with a bloated mess. I hope they learn their lesson and start to rebuild some of their stuff. The Expression suite and Windows 7 are good steps in that direction, but the jury is still out.