Softjoe Partnerships

The Softjoe Collaborative works with organizations to create compelling and effective solutions for engaging employees, customers, partners and other networked affiliates.

We often help deliver these solutions through the use of social business platforms. A new generation of technologies has improved connection and even real-time relationships among business constituencies. These platforms can dramatically enhance connectivity, deepen engagement and improve productivity.

Softjoe Technology Partners

The Softjoe Collaborative has worked with several social business vendors, and has established formal business relationships with some of the top vendors, with other relationships in development.

Yammer is a popular new social technology that is easy for an organization to adopt and use. Yammer looks and feels like Facebook, with an activity feed as the primary interface, with the additional ability to upload files, add links, create groups and more. Like other emerging apps in this space, Yammer is easy to use and adopt, and its use tends to grow virally within organizations because of the ease with which participants can share updates and files. These platforms are really more effective alternatives to email, because they are based on a subscription not a push communications model. For more info, contact Harry Klein.

Convo is an enterprise social networking tool somewhat like Yammer, but Convo also enables collaborators to work directly on content ranging from Word docs, to images, to PDFs, even video, with all collaboration integrated into the news feed. An important feature is Convo's ability to markup and comment on web pages and web apps. Enabled by Convo's built-in web browser, you can hold private conversations with your team on public content posted anywhere on the web, including enterprise applications. Convo also includes built-in instant messaging, group chat and real-time editing, making collaboration more responsive and engaging. For more info, contact Tad Staley.

These tools are meant for use within an organization - workers who share the same email domain - but can be extended to collaborators outside the organization, enabling organizations to more effectively work with partners, consultants, contractors, agencies and other extended team members.

Both platforms can be adopted for free, within minutes. We recommend starting this way, as a pilot program to get better familiarity with the platform. As adoption within an organization expands, there will be a growing need to ensure appropriate structure, policies and governance of the network. Both platforms have a Premium version, which lists at $5 per user per month (presumably lower for large organizations), which enables the more mature use and administration of the network.

Softjoe Engagement Partners

The Softjoe Collaborative can help you choose which of these platforms, or some other, is the best fit for your engagement requirements. We can then guide you through the implementation process - the key element of which is not technical. Other key factors include the following:

• Strategic: how does the solution align with our business objectives?
• Organizational: how do we change behavior within the organization to improve sharing?
• Promotional: how do we ensure all constituents are informed and enabled on using the platforms?
• Sustainable: how do we create champions, processes and programs throughout the organization to ensure ongoing success?

Softjoe is comprised of solo practitioners and small firms of highly experienced and effective professionals in the online social and collaboration space. These experts come together to collaboratively deliver focused and effective solutions for enterprises needing support in the execution of their networked engagement strategies.

Customer Engagement Strategies is a consulting firm that helps their clients grow their businesses with social media, marketing and business development strategies that begin with listening to their customers. This improves customer acquisition and retention and is key to business success. For more info, contact Harry Klein.

For more information on how we can help you evaluate and leverage these and other platforms, please send us a note at info@softjoe.com.