Involver - maybe best to not get involved.
January 13, 2014

Involver - maybe best to not get involved.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Oracle Social Engagement & Monitoring
  • Involver Application Suite

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle Social Relationship Management

We used involver as a tool for our social networks. We used it to build contests, interactive content, and social initiatives. It is also a way to get content online quickly, without having to go through IT or the sometimes painful steps of getting content live on our own server.
  • Pages can be built with relatively low experience, and without knowledge of html. They have many modules to choose from for creating content like forms, photo galleries, etc.
  • Previewing content is quick and easy. It is important to see what your project will actually look like, and they made this painless.
  • Easy access to data received in form fields.
  • They seem slow to evolve. Many of the other Social platforms made it obvious they were continually adding functionality and trying to stay ahead of the curve. It seems that after Involver was bought by Oracle, they were not much of a priority and their product suffered.
  • There is not enough control in what you build. At last use, if you wanted a 2 column layout, you were forced to use their fixed width for the columns. If you are building a form, you cannot change the order of the form fields, so if you want to add something to the top of the form, you have to delete all the other parts of the form you have built, and then rebuild it all in order.
  • The documentation isn't always very clear, or doesn't even cover all the features and functionality. I would have issues, and go to read the documentation only to find there was nothing related to my issue.
  • Connecting content you built through Involver to your facebook pages was a complicated process, and there were times it just wouldn't work for me without telling me why.
  • We were without a point of contact for an extended period of time after our account rep left the company.
  • It allowed us a quicker and more personal way to connect with our customers and fans
  • It allowed us an easier and more interactive way to host contests, where our customers could upload photos of themselves
  • We got stuck in a year long contract and quickly found it was not meeting our needs, and many of our social projects suffered because we lacked the capability to build out the ideas we were coming up with.
We had a quick trial with shoutlet before signing a long term contract with involver, though I was personally in support of going with shoutlet. I have worked on Shoutlet, Vitrue, Involver, Wildfire, and Olapic, and Involver/Shoutlet are just seemingly behind the times. I would much rather recommend a company who is obviously on the cutting edge of social media, like wildfire or shoutlet.
Involver may be a good fit for a company who is not too design savvy, or all that visual. It is really a pretty basic system. There are much better, more robust platforms out there now that allow for greater customization for those who want it, or better looking layouts from the start. Involver got left behind after being bought by Oracle, and in a space as fast moving as social media, it is unacceptable to fall behind. Hopefully they get their act together, build their team back up, and make it a competitive product again, but as of now it is antiquated.

Using Oracle Social Relationship Management

Our personal support finally came back at the end of our contract, but their product just could not offer what the competition offered. Social media is moving fast, and you need to work with companies that understand that and are at the forefront of trends, you can't get stuck with a company that is standing still.