Microsoft Viva Engage vs. Simply Measured (discontinued)

Yammer is great when you have a company culture that encourages friendly collaboration and communication. It can be a great supplement (but certainly not a substitute) for bonding and sharing ideas and thoughts. Certain channels can be really successful, too, like a channel where people can post dog pictures or something fun like that!

Incentivized

When we we're determining what's important to us we think budget, are we stuck in a contract; can it grow with our needs without hurting our pockets; can it solve our needs because we're such a large company that we almost need several solutions in one. Reporting - am I able to provide management the details they need to know to prove ROI? Also can we prove that demand generation efforts lead to closed deals?

Incentivized

• Providing a platform for social news in the company where "bottom up" topics can percolate freely across department
• Social networking across the company where folks can divide their work into topics instead of teams
• Basic collaboration within a group including document sharing with ability to pin documents to a team

Incentivized

• Customer service analysis has been extremely useful for determining sentiment and adding context to real time crisis situations.
• Convenience of pulling data for all social channels at one time is extremely effective in making decisions in real time and to compare against other channel performance. The cross channel export minimizes a great deal of time for exporting data. Nearly all social channel data is available.
• Reports are extremely user friendly, visual and easy to export. Also the ability to see the raw data and to have it for historical reference is great.
• Key insights generated in the dashboard page help add fast context for performance.

Incentivized

• Although the social enterprise network works very well, there is room for some slight improvement - such as the ability to attract users. By being part of the Microsoft Office Suite, it is offered as an "add-on" and many overlook it and see it as unnecessary at first. It would be smart for Microsoft to sell it as its own product so it could gather more popularity as a "social network".
• Giving an option to filter results could be better as well as giving an option to turn off the "recent activity" bar on the home page.

Incentivized

• While it incorporates MOST platforms not all of them, I believe Pinterest was still in trial. They will need to keep up to date as new platforms emerge.
• Not a super user friendly interface. I found it to be a bit clunky and dated looking.
• While their training was good, and they had good support resources, I think they good do more with marketing and education to help my team uncover more value from the software.

Incentivized

Microsoft is dedicated to continual improvement on Yammer. They realize the value that Yammer brings to the table with their clients. In the short time that we have had Yammer implemented, we are just now beginning to see the strong impact it has on becoming more effective and efficient around collaboration.

For my current client, it's not right - they would not be actionable with the data to really need this tool. For my past clients, I would suggest they stay on it and i think they would agree.

Incentivized

Overall easy to use and intuitive, although limited in the possibility to personalize layout and look & feel of a site. Some functionalities are not easy to use, like document editing, but some others are quick and effective (posts and tagging above all). Performance and responsiveness of the Yammer site is typically acceptable, in my experience.

The interface is very simple and organized around the core elements of the platform : the reports.

Very available

It's a simple product but it does provide value.

We have never had to use the support for Yammer. The tool works well and we have not come across any bugs. User Interface is simple and easy to use, similar to other forum type products, thereby removing the need for any extensive training. Team members are invited in and immediately are able to start using the tool.

Incentivized

Extremely fast response and they go above and beyond without asking. The support team has provided me data beyond our limit before and it was not an issue and not an extra cost, really good business support.

Incentivized

The training that Microsoft provides is very generic training for Yammer. I like the fact the training is short and easy to understand

We organically implemented the product

Very good implementation.

Our team briefly used Salesforce.com's Chatter product before switching over to Yammer in 2012. While Chatter is essentially the same product as Yammer, it left much to be desired. Chatter's design was (and remains) clunky and difficult to navigate. Yammer is a simple, easy-to-use product that offers similar functionality as Salesforce's Chatter.

Incentivized

Simply Measured has more in-depth reports than other tools in this category. Other tools may feature a lower price and are easier to learn. Others focus on only one channel, let's say Twitter. Simply Measured is comprehensive, extensive and has the depth to match. It's one of the few tools that can measure the impact of an individual message as opposed to the account in aggregate.

Incentivized

• My company is pleased with the positive impact Yammer has created departmentally and on an individual basis with work flow efficiency.
• Adversely, most old and new employees are more familiar with SharePoint, causing the company to pay for training for all current and incoming employees.
• As Yammer becomes more widely used, the need for training may diminish, which is where we will see our return on investment, as the product clearly provides a more effective form of file sharing and communication between employees and their department.

Incentivized

• Increased efficiency of reporting. Although I still keep my own spreadsheets and create a few charts and graphs, Simply Measured's reports have saved me countless hours.
• Greater Visibility: Simply Measured's reports have helped increase the visibility of what the social media team is doing. What executive doesn't like a smart report?