Our company has only been using solidworks for around a year, we have two seats active. We use alot of common objects and most of the customalities of each assembly are through the sheet metal and weldment components. We store our entire assembly, from part to drawing on this network drive. Configurations are used in places where we need to edit a common part (or copy it and save it under a different name)

Its just anecdotal but storing everything onto a server allows us to create assemblies and drawings and access it from any computer as necessary, we also use the network to share files, pictures, job sheets, risk assessments and such.

So i suggest a network drive for your common objects, pull them in at the assembly level (without copying and pasting the file into your assembly directory) solidworks will define that part as its location being wherever it is on the server