As an IT consultancy, we at New Signature utilise a variety of excellent technologies in the course of our daily work. Sometimes the technology is low-tech, like whiteboards and marker pens, and sometimes it is cutting-edge emergent technology such as Enterprise Social tools. Yammer, Microsoft’s Enterprise Social media platform, is one such piece of emergent technology. Yammer allows an organisation’s employees to collaborate in a social network environment that is both productive and business appropriate. The best way to show how this might benefit your organisation is to explain how we use Yammer at New Signature, and the tangible benefits we have reaped from it.
Community
From our experience, Yammer has been excellent in establishing a sense of an online community in our organisation, and this is particularly valuable for new starters. Yammer’s layout and user interface are similar to that of Facebook, meaning it is easy for new users to scroll through and read posts. New starters can learn things about their colleagues which make it easy to get to know them better: from work-related information such as current projects they are working on, to more personal information such as which football team they support. As such, Yammer is very useful for giving someone a feel for the company quickly. We also regularly use Yammer to post about upcoming events, both professional and social, so there is undoubtedly a strong sense of community and activity that arises when you use Yammer to its full potential.
Collaboration & Assistance
For all users, new and experienced, one of the most significant benefits of Yammer is that it is an easily accessible place where people can share information. Recently a colleague asked if anyone else from the company will be attending a workshop. He got several responses and interest developed quickly, and eventually other colleagues decided to join him. Crucially, as he used Yammer he didn’t need to send out a mass email, which would have got a long stream of replies from across the organisation and unnecessarily filled up people’s inboxes.
Yammer makes this kind of communication easier and more engaging for those who are interested, and less obtrusive for those who are not. The time people would have spent reading and deleting e-mails was instead spent on their work, so Yammer aids productivity in that respect, as well as improving communication overall.
To summarise, Yammer has helped our business to develop a strong online community, and this has aided collaboration between colleagues and improved productivity. We believe that it is an extremely useful tool that can offer a lot of value to modern businesses.
