Arnie Howes Email and Phone Number

I have partnered with executives, business owners, and mid-level managers since 1996 to set strategy, make decisions, solve problems, and increase bottom line success using the Microsoft technology they’re already paying for.Unused and misused technology remains the biggest opportunity for rapid and sizable improvement in business, both for mega-corporations and small businesses.As a formerly certified Kepner-Tregoe and Alamo practitioner and someone with more than twenty years of experience leading organizations through successful adoption of Microsoft technologies (mainly SharePoint & Teams), I work with clients to help:1. Prioritize concerns and opportunities.2. Develop sound plans to address the most urgent/important items on that list.3. Communicate and execute those plans using creative and strategic Microsoft 365 solutions (especially using SharePoint to track EOS® and other executive management strategies).Nearly every engagement involves adoption (or re-adoption) of Teams and the Microsoft 365 suite of business apps.Few businesses - whether large or small - realize the purpose of Teams and Microsoft 365, let alone how to successfully adopt them. Many actually harm their businesses by implementing the 365 platform without a strategic plan.I’ve found my niche in helping executives/business owners finally (and quickly) make sense of Microsoft technology.

Although my experience in the past 20 years has included a diverse range of business consulting activities, my career has gradually evolved during the last ten years into one of facilitating collaboration culture change, much of which has included creative uses of SharePoint as it exists out-of-the-box.I have designed an advanced strategy for Duke Energy’s Fossil-Hydro SharePoint and collaboration environment and we are into our fifth year of implementation across the entire fleet and support organizations. I have also coached our supply chain and helped that organization replicate our successful strategy and structure.The strategy that I designed using learnings from seven years of SharePoint work at Duke Energy prior to the most recent merger with Progress Energy includes:• Customized and consistent collaboration SharePoints for dozens of generating stations, regional fossil-hydro organizations, and central shared services organizations• Collaboration coaching for organizational leaders from supervisor to senior vice presidents• A social media-style newsfeed to replace well over 50% of local emails while also improving communication• Solutions customized for specialized collaborative processes, such as unit outages and fleet-level approval of activities with operational risk• Solutions customized for generating stations, including LOTO Request, Hot Work Permit Logs, Confined Space Entry Logs, single plant action item lists with custom categories, security gate logs, etc.• Permissions automated to the point that local administrators rarely have to adjust them• Safeguards against the common SharePoint traps of out-of-control document libraries and unmanageable content• Simplified and consolidated list structure to prevent local administrative overload• Seamless navigation from top to bottom of the SharePoint site collection and ability to adjust to organizational changes• An entire support site with a help ticket system, support forum, and tutorials