Today I decided to spend a bit of time reviewing what Yammer is and how it could benefit the SMB market in south western Ontario. In summary it is like an internal Facebook for a company. If you said ‘So what, how does this make me money?’ Please read on.
Well, I started by reviewing some of the YouTube videos (this one was the most useful)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDg821lzl4Y
And then read several blogs (this one was the most useful)
Then looked at competitive products (this video helped explain the value the most to me)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juGMyU_xOck&feature=youtu.be
I believe that Yammer is best used to socially edit documents. It allows users to create and collaborate on documents in real time. Personally I create lot of documents on a day to day basis and I email them out for collaboration and review. I could use SharePoint but don’t, it’s not fast enough
SharePoint provides good document control with approvals and versions and capability of accessing these documents through a web browser but it lacks the ability to ‘ping’ others in your company to contribute and doesn’t do a great job when multiple people are working on the document at the same time.
Microsoft word provides some great change and compares management tools but it doesn’t work inside of SharePoint. But it is an ‘advanced word function’ and you need to be on a VPN accessing a shared folder on the network.
I also believe that companies who would use this have large teams of people working on intellectual property, ie. Banks, Insurance companies, Lawyers, etc. Companies whose primary product is ‘documentation’. Some softer benefits would be ‘collecting’ texts into documents for live events or creating attractive environments and a sense of community in your company.
I hope this helps.
Mike Fontaine
April 1st 2014