A SharePoint 2010 customer for a year now, Sita reports that Colliers has greatly enhanced and improved how employees communicate. But Sita and his staff had to do a lot of customization to tailor SharePoint to Colliers' needs.

SharePoint's out-of-box capabilities will not solve all your problems, notes Sita, and that's where customization comes into play. Colliers decided to modify SharePoint internally by hiring developers.

The first place Sita looked for inspiration? LinkedIn.

"LinkedIn is a phenomenal repository for networking," says Sita. "Its user interface is directly applicable to our business where we have experts on certain real estate subjects who are geographically dispersed."