Posts Tagged ‘collaboration’

« Older Entries

New GroupSwim Release – Big Number 7

September 22, 2009

We are proud to announce the latest release of our software.  The team worked very hard to bring this release to fruition.  The result is a great combination of new features and underlying social collaboration technology.

Question and Answer

One  exciting addition is the combination of a new content type (question and answer) with our new recommendation engine.  Questions fit perfectly into our group and permissions model.  They are different than discussions since the answer to a question is a definitive end to a conversation/issue/process versus a discussion that remains open-ended.

When a user asks a question, our recommendation engine trolls through previous questions and identifies similar ones in real time, eliminating the need to ask the question in the first place.  The engine finds similar questions by analyzing a number of factors including tags (automatically applied of course), people, related content, and a host of other factors.  If the user decides to ask the question (we keep a draft while the user looks at the recommended content), we’ve added workflow to manage open and answered questions, comments, and other elements unique to the process of asking and answering questions.  The benefits of this new feature are exciting.  We help users find information quickly if used internally, thus saving them time to do more important things than asking redundant questions and waiting for answers.  In the community product, this allows our customers to help their customers find answers without resorting to making a phone call or filing a case.  It also highlights the experts in the respective communities and leverages their knowledge effectively.

Navigation

We gathered customer feedback and made changes to site navigation.  We created a simple “Home” button and changed content navigation by adding a persistent “Browse” menu.  We also added a powerful “Manage” menu for site and group managers to more easily configure and update the site and groups.  Also, we made changes to the home page making it cleaner.  We removed the welcome message and tab-row, which better leverages the new drop-downs and provides more real estate for the feeds.  We also clarified the feeds (sort options) to better explain them to the users and avoid confusion.

Files

We added a new “File grid” view in our file collaboration application.  The files are displayed as icons and there is a pop-up to get more details if desired.  This change allows us to add more files to the page which improves the browsing experiencing and is very familiar to most users.

Profile

We upgraded the user profile to better highlight the expertise and activity GroupSwim collects.  Now, users can access the recent activity of other users and better understand their reputation.  You can now see the other users that follow someone and more information on the ratings they receive.

Other

Finally, we made the usual improvements to performance, fixed bugs, and improved the file upload experience.  We hope you enjoy the new software and look forward to hearing what you think.  Thanks!

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in GroupSwim, Release | Leave a Comment »

How question and answer helps sales teams

July 15, 2009

A prospect asked me an excellent question today. He wanted my opinion if Q&A (one of our upcoming features) would work for sales people. The typical objection he described is “sellers need answers very fast. Rather than using an on-line application, they will either walk down the hall, pick up the phone or send an e-mail directly to the expert who knows the answer. Therefore, for sellers at least, using some kind of Q&A technology, is futile.”

With most of the current slate of products and services available on the market, I agree with him.  However, I think things are evolving fast and this objection and situation will be gone soon.  Companies are going to need new technology (like GroupSwim) to harvest the critical information that passes back and forth in these emails and meetings to compete and scale their sales force.  We all know it can take weeks or months to bring a new sales team member up-to-speed.  A great question and answer solution like ours:

  1. Ensures the answers are right
  2. Involves other teams who can contribute to the “knowledge base”
  3. Makes it easy to use and find answers fast

This new technology DRAMATICALLY reduces the time a new sales executive needs to start working on prospects. One of our customers who is a VP of sales told us he had a new sales account exec ready to go in a matter of days when it used to take weeks or months. The benefits are even great if the product or service sold is complex or varies in different situations.

The content in the question and answer application also accelerates sales cycle.  Once many of the typical questions get answered and documents are added, the sales team simply searches for what they need and then continues with the pursuit.  They don’t need to walk down the hall, pick up the phone, or send an email any more – this saves time so they have more cycles to continue working on their quota.

As the technology matures and people can use it in the course of their work, it will become more natural to use for sales teams.  I think for now, the VPs and executives who realize this are already forcing change (some of our customers).  I think more and more of them will come to this conclusion over time.

As for the speed of response, the RSS feeds, Q&A workflow and email alerts can be tuned so that answers won’t sit unanswered.  It also allows other experts (professional services, engineering, etc.) to participate which improves the quality of the answers.  Finally, I think we’ll see goals and bonuses tied to participating in Q&A solutions in the future.  What do you think?

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in GroupSwim, Strategy, Trends | Leave a Comment »

Collaborate Effectively with Contractors

June 29, 2009

Many companies use contractors frequently to support their business.  These virtual or “temporary” employees serve significant roles that a company doesn’t have or doesn’t wish to retain on an ongoing, fully employed basis.  They perform important tasks such as:

  • Sales augmentation
  • Marketing
  • Public relations
  • Web development
  • Human resources

These are core skill sets for a company’s ongoing success.  Ironically, these people are often poorly connected into their clients and rely on email to perform their work.  They struggle to communicate and collaborate effectively with the company, whether it is in their best interest or not.  When their contract ends, they walk away with the majority of the experience and learning they gained.  This isn’t something they intend to do – it is simply the way it works in most situations.

There is a far better way to work with contractors to not only retain their valuable knowledge but also make them more effective while working for you.  Using GroupSwim, you can make them a part of your company without the overhead or trouble:

  • Collect documentation and processes to ramp new contractors up quickly
  • Create groups for different firms or contractors and work with interactively
  • Use web documents (wiki pages) to track versions and work collaboratively with them
  • Discuss issues and questions using a private forum
  • Document issues, track milestones, and measure results
  • Amass emails from prior engagements and add new information as it is created
  • Manage important files and documents to find them in the future

GroupSwim offers the features and flexibility to maximize your investment in contractors.  Using email as most companies do is wasting money letting valuable information walk out the door.

Tags:, ,
Posted in CMC, Enterprise, Methodology | Leave a Comment »

Top 10 Reasons GroupSwim Is the Best Business Software

June 16, 2009

GroupSwim is a great business application for collaboration and community.  Here are the specific reasons why we, our customers and analysts think so:

1. Easy to use - Our software is simple to use .  We “borrow” techniques from software most people already know and then invent the rest.  We put videos everywhere, religiously update on-line help, run our own customer community, and answer emails and the phone faster than you can believe.

2. SIFT – SIFT stands for Social Intelligence Forensic Technology.  This is the name of the platform that underlies the GroupSwim applications.  This is the secret sauce that allows us to auto-tag content, identify experts by topic, find related information, suggest related questions as users type them, and more.  SIFT significantly enhances the value of the content you and your customers put into GroupSwim by making connections you might not know exist and proactively identifying content based on user history and interests.

3. Customers – We are fortunate to have a growing list of fantastic customers.  They provide great feedback and support us through thick-and-thin.  The list includes software companies, consulting firms, designers, not-for-profits, schools, power companies, financial services, affiliations, and more.

4. Social - We built GroupSwim on the premise that information and people are connected.  Knowledge with no context loses much of it’s value.  By knowing who worked on something, what they know, what they follow, our customers get much more value from the discussions, files and wiki pages they use in GroupSwim.

5. Team – Our team is top notch.  Everyone is deeply committed to our customers and building awesome software.  We are the kind of vendor you want in your corner as you run your business.

6. The alternatives are not good- If you aren’t using GroupSwim today, you probably shuffle between email, files everywhere, sharepoint, a wiki (maybe), and other frustrating tools.  Imagine all this in one fantastic package.

7. Cost- GroupSwim is a great value no matter how you cut it.  The time we save and the loyalty and value created drive the return-on-investment off the charts.  GroupSwim requires no hardware, consulting services, training or time to set-up so you can get your site going immediately.

8. One place to go- By using GroupSwim, your employees and customers don’t need to know what application they are in or have multiple places to search.  GroupSwim has search boxes everywhere and scans discussions, questions, files (including the contents), wiki pages, member profiles in one simple step.

9. New features - We roll out new product at a remarkable rate.  We do major releases every two months and minor releases each month.   

10. User adoption - People use GroupSwim with no training and very little encouragement. 

I’m sure you will agree that there aren’t many software companies you know of that can count all these qualities.  We hope you agree.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in GroupSwim | Leave a Comment »

Collaboration Software Examples

April 28, 2009

Collaboration software like GroupSwim addresses one or more issues organizations face today. They could include:

  • Losing information in a morass of email and disconnected documents
  • Wasting customer time as they struggle to find information they need to solve their problems
  • Getting work done and communicating across distributed teams and systems

If you are wondering how, you are in luck. Here are some examples of how collaboration software looks when it is deployed and in action.

SmartCompany is an example of a company that is using GroupSwim to collaborate internally. This site is one of our demo sites; it is configured so you can access it, but most internal sites are private. You can see there are a variety of groups that are a mix of organizations and functions. Try a couple of things to see the power of GroupSwim:

  1. Once you are in SmartCompany, search on “GroupSwim” in the search bar at the top right of the home page. You will see we provide a list of all discussions, emails, files or wiki pages that have anything to do with GroupSwim (this is a demo site so the content may not always make sense). Our search engine is extremely powerful and even searches the contents of documents like PDFs, PowerPoints, etc..
  2. Click on this link to see one of our wiki pages. This particular wiki page is an example of how you can combine images and text into a really easy to use “Frequently Asked Question”; your site comes with this same page. Wiki pages can be used to track issues, competitive profiles, request for proposals, and other dynamic documents that change frequently and multiple people work on them.

The Pool is an example of a customer community site. It is an excellent way to build a relationship with your customers. Try a couple of things to see how a vibrant customer community works:

  1. Check out the group we use to gather feature suggestions from our customers. They provide valuable input for us as we plan future releases.
  2. Click on this customer’s profile (he is awesome). He shares best practices about GroupSwim and provides great suggestions for us.

I hope these two examples provide a good vision of how collaboration software like GroupSwim might function.

Tags:, ,
Posted in CMC, GroupSwim | Leave a Comment »

3 Ways to Make Your Company Extinct

April 22, 2009

The current economic climate is challenging companies like no other.  The advent of new technology and financial upheaval is only accelerating change.  The internet and changing workforce demographics present both opportunity and challenge, but few companies are really addressing them.  Industries like automobiles, newspapers, financial institutions and entertainment are prime examples.  No company is immune will eventually need to take steps to address this shifting landscape or will go extinct.  Here are a few mistakes that are easy to identify and cheap to avoid.

1. Rely on Email (Inboxychus)

The vast majority of companies continue to utilize traditional tools to communicate and collaborate.  Do you know of many companies that don’t rely on email and sending documents back and forth?  It is no secret that relying on email is both archaic and wholly inefficient.  It is foolish to think that maintaining this reliance is anything but a drag on a company’s efficiency.  The amount of information that workers in a dynamic environment need to function continues to grow, but the tools they have to access and manage it stay the same.

How to avoid extinction? Companies MUST invest in technology to help their employees better collaborate and communicate with one another if they really expect to get more from less.  There are plenty of technologies to try including wikis, instant messaging, internal forums, etc.  You best start establishing priorities and get busy, or your employees will continue to trod around in the mud.

2. Bore Your Customers (Stagnasaurus)

Many companies communicate with customers and partners through emails and static websites.  Consumers and business customers are accustomed to having information on-demand using Google, Wikipedia, Twitter and a host of other sources that have changed the way people find what they need.  Companies not upping their game furnishing better information for their customers will soon be left behind.

How to avoid extinction? Invest in building a customer community or other web presence that is dynamic, searchable and easy-to-use.  Some companies are even changing the way they market themselves.  They offer products, services and community as the core of their offering, not just a “product”.  When you buy a product or service from a company, you are forming a relationship with the company.  The better experience the company provides aside from the core offering, the more likely they are to keep that customer and sell them more stuff.

3. Install Software (Technologicus Wrex)

It never ceases to amaze me how many companies are still out there insisting on purchasing software that “must” be behind the firewall.  Like anything else, there are exceptions and I’m sure readers will pile on that this is crazy, but is it?  The only two legitimate reasons to install software in a data center are security and performance.  Well, I’ve got news for you.  Both issues can be addressed without getting into the business of maintaining software.

How to avoid extinction? Invest in solutions that don’t require hardware, software, training, customization, etc..  Most business applications are now available through SaaS or the cloud and they are awesome. They are out there if you look hard enough, and meet 80% of your business needs.  I’m willing to bet most of them are more secure than your data center.

Evolve and Thrive

These three areas are critically important for companies to improve in this environment.  All are often ignored and difficult to pin down with a measurable business case, hence why they don’t get funding.  In economic times like these, companies put off investments of this nature because the benefits are difficult to measure with precision; this is true.  You could make the same case for management training.  Companies invest millions of dollars training managers, but how can you measure if someone is a better manager?  Finanical results, employee retention, and other kinds of metrics are used, but can they be linked back to particular training class or skill; I don’t think so.  Most companies make a leap of faith that investing in their people and training will yield benefits in other areas.  I submit the same logic holds to investing in the three areas listed above.

Where do you think companies should be investing to stave off extinction?

Tags:, ,
Posted in CMC, Community, Enterprise, Random | 1 Comment »

Collaboration Software Return on Investement (ROI)

April 13, 2009

As you can imagine, we think about return-on-investment (ROI) all the time when talking about or selling our collaboration software.  Most of us inherently know lots of goodness comes from collaborating more effectively with our colleagues, partners or customers, but the really important thing to focus on for ROI is not collaboration by itself.  Collaborating more effectively yields other goodies that generate ROI like time saved, expenses reduced, increased sales, etc.. To really calculate ROI, you need metrics, a baseline, and measured improvement.  This sounds obvious but people don’t often take it one step further. I’m finding they rarely have a business case or even have access to metrics to prove it out.

I’ll give you a very simplistic example I used with a customer the other day who was asking about ROI for a consulting organization:

  1. Average employee cost is $50/hour (if this is a large consulting organization, this is probably too low but let’s go with it to be conservative)
  2. GroupSwim through faster answering of questions, creating content through wiki pages, sharing files, on-boarding new employees, and searching information quickly can save the average employee two hours per month
  3. 2 hours * $50/hour * 1,000 employees * 12 months = $120,000
  4. ROI for this investment = 108%

My guess is these assumptions are very low and the ROI is probably higher.  The high growth, decentralized, new employee characteristics lead me to believe we can probably save more time for people than 2 hours per month, especially when they are new and learning how to consult.

We are going to talk more about ROI in future posts.  In fact, we are going to discuss how there is a whole range of ways to think about and measure ROI.  Certain things like reduced call volume to a support organization are easy to quantify.  Other benefits like increased sales are not as easy to pin down, but we have some ideas.  What do you think?

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in CMC, Enterprise | 2 Comments »

GroupSwim Releases Next Generation Customer Community Software

April 6, 2009

We just released a significant upgrade to the GroupSwim online community software.  This software has been in the works for months and the team has simply done a fantastic job!  We are all extremely pleased with the results – check it out and you will be impressed.

This release introduces two of our most requested features, several “pet” engineering features and a bunch of productivity enhancements that make GroupSwim easier to manage and more fun to use.  The major themes are described below.

Content list

Content list

Widgets:  Easily one of our most requested features.  We’ve had a steady stream of requests to provide a simple mechanism to “embed” GroupSwim content within other web applications and properties.   Widgets are our answer.  Self-service, no coding required, JavaScript and IFrame support, this is powerful stuff.  We included nine widgets as part of this release:

  1. Content list: display a list of any content from your site – optionally you can even display a preview.
  2. New content: post a discussion, upload a file or create a new wiki page from virtually any application or web site.
  3. Groups list: showcase highlighted groups from this site, or simply create quick access to commonly used groups.
  4. Member list: spotlight you star members, link to managers, or publish a list of experts.
  5. Tag cloud: publish a tag cloud, or list of the hottest tagged topics on your site.
  6. Content preview: feature a discussion, wiki page or file – includes previewing the full contents.
  7. New content actions: publish a link to the post form, file upload or create wiki page to promote creating new content on your site.
  8. Search: search  for your GroupSwim content from anywhere.
  9. Sign-in/out: Communicate session status, link to the sign-in process.

To use the widgets on your site, contact us and we will turn them on for you.

Site appearance and white label controls: This was another top requested feature (the introduction of widgets made improvements in this area even more important).  With widgets, site content can be collected and used in many new and exciting ways.  Effective widget deployment also requires deeper branding and site appearance control for a seamless user experience from the widget to the GroupSwim site.  We added significant new capabilities in three areas:

  1. WYSIWYG controls to create your own theme in addition to our excellent default themes.
  2. New controls to customize the headers and footers – now you can make your site headers and footer match your application or web property down to the pixel.
  3. White label controls allow you to remove all references to GroupSwim including the help section.  We even extended the capability to the emails GroupSwim generates – you can now map the emails to your own domain.

Restricting group membership: Thanks to Thorsten for suggesting and pushing this great feature.  You can now “restrict” a member to a selected set of groups (one or more.)  This means the “restricted” member will have no access or visibility to any other group or piece of content on the site.  This is a great feature for adding clients and consultants so they stay contained in just the group/groups you intended.

Image Lightbox: This has been Luke’s pet feature and he has done a great job.  We’ve long been dissatisfied with our image quality.  To address, Erik and Luke dug deep to tune our image processing and newly inserted images look vastly better.  But, that was still not good enough.  Luke’s question,  “Why do you have to download the image to see it in full resolution?”  Introducing the Lightbox.  Click on any image and we provide a full resolution preview of the file.  It’s slick and very handy.

Google Analytics, Webmaster tools and SEO: Now you can use your Google Analytics and Google Web Master Account with your GroupSwim site.  We also added support to control robots.txt and add your own META tags.

Of course a whole slew of bug fixes and tweaks have been applied across the site.   You can read the details of the release, here, on the GroupSwim Pool.

Enjoy and keep the feedback coming – its been great.    Also,  as a preview,  this release was actually a double-header and a couple of  amazing features will be released soon.   The team has been very busy.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in CMC, GroupSwim, Release | Leave a Comment »

GroupSwim Takes Collaboration Software to CloudCamp

March 20, 2009

Jari Koister, CTO ofGroupSwim,  presented and participated in a panel at CloudCamp in Cologne, Germany.  The camp was organized in conjunction with the Webhosting Day, one of Europe’s largest events for that sector. In addition to GroupSwim, a number of leading cloud computing companies presented, including Martin Buhr of Amazon, Michael Crandell CEO of Rightscale and Kristof De Spiegeleer Cloud Visionary of SUN, and founder of Q-Layer which was acquired by SUN.

It was interesting how strategies and products have evolved over the last 12 months, and how many more example of applications of cloud computing exist today. At GroupSwim, we leverage cloud computing to provide scale, reduce cost and enable innovation in our product.

My biggest take ways were:

  • It is really starting to happen and large enterprises are seriously considering using cloud computing.  The most realistic areas of early adoption are primarily the SaaS level applications and the infrastructure level.
  • Hosting companies are trying to figure out what to do to avoid being out-maneuvered by new cloud computing solutions.
  • Large IT companies like SUN and HP are trying to reposition their products as private cloud products. It is clear there is quite some work to be done in articulating both the positioning and value of such products.
  • There is an opportunity for companies that try to reduce the complexity of applying cloud computing.  However, it will be a difficult to generalize such solutions for anything except those systems that  adhere to standard blueprints.

I think CloudCamp is a great format for companies who want to use cloud computing, learn and share experiences. The Camp is a mix of presentations, unconferences and panels and provides for a great way to share ideas in this new and exiting space.  Here are the slides I presented.  Let me know what you think.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in CMC, GroupSwim, Methodology, Technology, Trends | Leave a Comment »

GroupSwim Named 2009 Cool Social Software Vendor by Gartner

March 16, 2009

GroupSwim is pleased to announce that Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, has selected GroupSwim as one of its Cool Vendors in Social Software for 2009.
Gartner has identified Social software as one of the hottest areas in the software industry in terms of innovation, press attention, and client inquiries.  Gartner’s report highlights new and interesting companies.  In order to be a “Cool” vendor, you must:

  • Offer technology that is innovative or breaks new ground on what users can do
  • Impact customers by helping solve business problems
  • Intrigue the Gartner team with the solution’s potential

GroupSwim also received the 2009 Collaboration Solutions Product Innovation of the Year Award from Frost & Sullivan.
You will need to be a customer of Gartner or Frost & Sullivan to read the respective reports.  We are very pleased that both recognized GroupSwim as a leader in the space.

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Analyst, CMC, GroupSwim | 2 Comments »

« Older Entries