SharePoint is

1) a platform for creating, rationalization and content management, collaborative web portals aimed at communication and management of internal business processes or addressed to relationships with customers or suppliers,
2) a portal of knowledge management, collaboration between users, integration and presentation of data and informations
3) an archival system, rationalization and document management
4) a content search system, also archived, full-text
5) a platform for killer applications
6) a server component of the whole Microsoft office suite
7) a possible front-end for business intelligence.

We are talking about

• Cooperate,
• Communicate,
• Share,
• Control.

Possible applications of SharePoint

• Document management (dematerialization of paper)
• Portal Human Resource
• RDA Management, Holiday Requests, permissions, workflow applications in general
• PLM Collaboration
• Business Intelligence on ERP
• Ad hoc processes
• Budgeting Process
• Product Information Center
• Customer Information Center
• Employees Information Center
• Sales and Agents Portal
• Supplier Portal
• Marketing Portal
• Help Desk and Tiketing
• Creating integrated deals from Microsoft Word with the ERP data (customers, products,pricing)
• Workflow Change Requests for Products and Issues
• Collection and distribution ERP documents center (orders, invoices, etc..)
• Extending ERP with the collaboration capabilities
• Possibility of using the services of SharePoint workflow to integrate and extend the ERP processes
• Searching for information in the ERP directly from Microsoft Office and SharePoint
• Possibility of use by different business functions (Sales, Marketing, Purchasing, Research & Development, Administration, etc..)

Microsoft's positioning compared to competitors