Item: CommUnity by Personify
Rating: 10
Author: Jeffrey Montegut

Overall Satisfaction

Pros and Cons

Pros

A flexible, configurable platform that can be managed and updated without a requirement for technical skills.
Drag and drop, point and click update site administration.
A platform that is updated frequently with new features and capabilities (about once a month).
A broad, comprehensive feature set.
A platform that works in multiple languages.
Consulting before and during development phase. Ongoing consulting and strategic planning after product launch.
Product roadmapping is clear and well thought out. Good communication about what is coming and how it can be used in our community.
Senior management is very accessible and knowledgeable about the product and the industry. Attends and contributes to strategy conversations.

Cons

Not much to say in this section. Anything that the product doesn't currently do is quickly identified and prioritized appropriately on their road map.
Chat room functionality doesn't exist yet, but has been placed on roadmap.
Instant messaging between users doesn't exist yet, but is roadmapped.
We're unable to run a couple of specific reports, based on what's available in the reporting tool. There's a workaround that our community administrator can perform that is a little more time consuming.

Return on Investment

Our community has had more than 100,000 interactions within the first 7 months of launching - and the product has been stable.
Small World Labs even contributes to the conversations in the community by participating with our community members and moderating, when necessary.
Our community experiences a high level of knowledge sharing (one of our goals), and is resulting in more informed and creative volunteers.

From the first conversation and beyond, it has been a pleasure working with Small World Labs. Their staff are genuinely interested in understanding our business and our goals, and actively make recommendation on continued improvement and long-term strategy. All of their staff demonstrate a clear understanding of the product and when to expect new features. Furthermore, their CEO, Michael Wilson, is more than competent and has proven to be an industry expert. He understands both the technical side and the community strategy side of the business. In fact, we have already initiated a project to build a second community with Small World Labs for a separate business unit.

Likelihood to Recommend

You can tell from the CEO and all staff that this is a very competent company that wants you to succeed with integrity. There is a strong
support and services team that works collaboratively with us to make
sure we are always getting what we need. They provide
24x7 emergency support, online ticket support, email support, a client
community, and the ability to call and talk to the same account manager or
community consultant every time (I even have Mariano's skype and he replies on weekends!). They recently launched a client community - so they are now even practicing what they preach. Our questions in the client community are always answered quickly.

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Integrity, Competence, Reliability

Modules Used