There should be some sort of thought and planning process taking place when creating lists and libraries to store data in SharePoint.  While there are many questions one can and should ask, if you are new to this way of thinking, here are some of the basics to get you going.  If you’re working with spreadsheets, remember that many of them represent big business processes – you need understand that process end to end so you can collapse spreadsheets into one make life easier.

When people first start out with SharePoint, they tend to just upload a ton of documents into folder structures that mirror their fileshares.  That doesn’t begin to give you the business benefit that SharePoint can if leveraged more effectively. Understand all the functionality that SharePoint can offer you, then look at those documents with fresh eyes. Do they still need to be documents?  Can they maybe be a custom list to replace a form, a custom list to better surface data, surveys to capture, a discussion board to extract feedback on it, a task list to manage a to-do list. This only comes with practice and experience.  Keep going, you’ll get there.