There is a rapidly increasing trend of social platforms and tools being used internally (not just externally) within organisations. This was actually one of the hot topics discussed at the Mashable Social Media Day 2012 Unconference Melbourne held at Inspire9 this past weekend.
Long gone are the days of the basic company Intranet with different company areas and static documents. Sure, everyone has a company Facebook page and Twitter account, but are you really connecting to your customers and clients? Are you even connecting with your colleagues? Companies are getting social, so get with the program!
We’ve come across a few interesting social platforms we’d like to share with you to help you better utilise and engage your team and connections.
Yammer
Yammer is a private company social network where you can securely collaborate across departments, countries, content and applications. It is a very popular enterprise social network tool and is actually used by over 200,000 companies around the world.
Some of the great features of this software include:
Great platform for the company to collaborate, share knowledge and ask questions
Improved visibility across the organisation to engage employees
Ability to share content by posting to team workspaces and editing in real time
Connecting and collaborating with customers and other partners
A flexible administration so you can customise and control your network
There is a basic network you can join for free to test Yammer out for yourself. There are some great paid packages for more functionality.
Icon
Spigit are a leading global Social Enterprise company and the minds behind Icon, the free private crowd sourcing platform. It’s a great way to generate ideas and innovate. It also offers intergration with Yammer.
Got a burning question you’d love answered? Don’t have the budget to do research? Well with Icon, you choose who you want to engage on the platform and you can leverage their creativity, ideas and feedback to make better decisions and truly innovate.
You get the flexibility to create a crowd or community that you want to interact with. You then set up challenges by asking a question to the crowd. The crowd will post their ideas and then vote on the best one. People are incentivised to participate with a point system for challenges and participation.
Icon is free to use and Spigit also offer SpigitEngage which is a more comprehensive enterprise platform that enables end to end innovation management.
Tip: the more people you invite to participate in your crowd the more useful you will find this platform.
Chatter
Chatter is a trusted employee social network designed by Salesforce. It enables businesses to become more social and encourage greater collaboration anywhere around the world in real time.
Some of it’s great features include:
Chatter messenger feature where you can have private or group conversations
News feed so you can see what’s going on
Social intelligence to recommend relevant people, groups files and records
File sharing so you can securely share documents and track versions
Create groups so you can easily share information, collaborate on documents and work more productively
Create Workflow approvals
Integration within SharePoint
Salesforce have a free trial version that you can download and test out for yourself and there is also a paid option with the full suite of features.
Rypple
Have you ever sat through a boring performance appraisal and just thought ‘What’s the point?’. Well you’re not alone. Rypple offers a new way to look at performance management and is a great solution offered by Salesforce.
The web based platform helps companies to improve their performance through key features including:
Social goals to improve collaboration
Coaching and ability to create private shared spaces
Fast and frequent feedback rather than waiting for a meeting or review
Recognition with thanks and custom badges
Performance summaries to make performance reviews more relevant
These great features mean that team members know where they stand and can be accountable for achieving their goals.
There is a basic free plan so you can trial it for yourself and there are paid plans with more features if you find it’s what you’re after.
We hope that you’ve found some of these suggestions useful. If you’ve had experience with these social tools or any others, we’d love to hear from you below.
There is a rapidly increasing trend of social platforms and tools being used internally (not just externally) within organisations. This was actually one of the hot topics discussed at the Mashable Social Media Day 2012 Unconference Melbourne held at Inspire9 this past weekend.
