Jive SBS Syndication Feed

The Passion to Dream Big

communities@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:07:31 GMT

"I believe in being an innovator."

- Walt Disney

I've often quoted Walt Disney in presentations because his vision and passion for innovation resulted in entertainment experiences the world had never seen. And over half a century later the company he founded continues to deliver those experiences today.

Years ago I attended a seminar at Walt Disney World, and the cast member presenting asked the audience "how many of you are creative and have big ideas." We all froze, and no one raised their hand – perhaps we were all a bit intimidated by our surroundings.

I'm smiling looking back at the moment because the reality is we all have a big idea or two. Ideas can pop into our heads at practically any time. The bigger obstacle most organizations face is how help their teams "run an idea up the flagpole" so it has visibility to the right people at the right time. Employees of companies using Jive SBS have been easily sharing ideas for years because our solution has such powerful collaboration capabilities.

The other obstacle organizations face is how to capture ideas and feedback from the people who "write the check:" their customers. Every day customers share their opinions about products and services online, sometimes with the growing-in-popularity #fail on Twitter. They expect companies to listen, and they expect visibility into what actually happened with their feedback. In many cases, however, customers find themselves screaming into an echo chamber. Annoyed customers and missed opportunities don’t lead to big ideas and breakthrough experiences.

Today, we launched Jive Ideation to bridge between the natural innovation capabilities of Jive SBS with the ideas swimming around in conceivably your best untapped resource – the people who use your products every day. Jive Ideation helps you tap the power of crowd-sourcing and social networks to identify and nurture the best ideas for bigger outcomes.

Isobar interactive agency Molecular Inc. has been at the forefront of the ideation effort for years, helping its clients use crowd-sourcing to drive innovation efforts. We previewed Jive Ideation with Brett Borgeson, Engagement Director at Molecular who had this to say:

"These days, big brands are looking for ways to connect more directly with their customers, making the brand experience as intimate as possible. For brands reaching a mass audience, this is no small feat. Jive’s Ideation offering gives brands an efficient and powerful way to provide this kind of interaction with customers, allowing them an easy way to influence a company’s direction, or future product offering."

Innovation is a process, not an end game. Capturing your customers' (and employees') ideas will help send your current process into exciting new directions. To quote Disney again:

"Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world."

Jive Ideation is an awesome example of customer feedback expanding our imagination for extending Jive Social Business Software. To learn more on our latest big idea, check out our webcast, Jive Ideation: Make Your Enterprise a Powerhouse of Innovation, hosted by Adam Mertz, Jive Product Marketing Manager.

Buh-Bye, Email?

communities@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:38:37 GMT

I couldn't resist but think of the classic clip from Ellen Degeneres' stand up act when I was jotting down ideas for this blog. While I realize we may never completely say "farewell" to email, it's fascinating to see questions on the future of email make their way to center stage.

Back in October, Jessica Vascellaro of the Wall Street Journal started an online firestorm with her article, "Why Email No Longer Rules," generating a heated debate among readers, with 200 people commenting about whether or not email is in a death spiral.

Fast forward just a few months, and now Gartner weighs in on the subject in their Gartner Predicts 2010: Social Software is an Enterprise Reality report which leads with this little bombshell:

By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

Here's the "wake up and smell the coffee" reality: Social Business Software is much better equipped than e-mail to handle the rich business conversations that are a reality of today's flattened world. And SBS is an incredible tool for leveraging the right people at the right time to help you work better. As we're fond of saying at Jive, "reply all" is no way to collaborate. The report went on to say, "social networking will prove to be more effective than e-mail for certain business activities" and that changing demographics "will lead 20 percent of users to make a social network the hub of their business communications" over the next four years.

Social Business Software is an enterprise reality, but it’s not all unicorns and rainbows. Gartner also notes that IT-led efforts to "bolt-on" social features to existing platforms will result in a "more than 70 percent failure rate." No doubt that you will hear a lot about trying to make big IT implementations "more social," but it takes a lot more than adding a Facebook-ish interface or opening a support case from a tweet to make business social. Jive has built a native SBS platform over nine years of working closely with some of the largest - and most innovative - companies in the world. Companies who have their sights set on big outcomes, and are using Jive SBS today to achieve those outcomes.

If you're looking to move beyond "reply all," give us a call. We'd love to share more on how the world's #1 rated Social Business Software solution can make an immediate impact on your business.

The Economist: I Spy A-Space

communities@jivesoftware.com — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:25:35 GMT

When a Jive customer is prominently featured twice in the media in one week - including in The Economist - you know that customer is doing something special with Social Business Software!

That customer is the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and in this week's The Economist magazine you'll find the DIA featured in the magazine's special report on social networking in the workplace. A-Space, the DIA's Jive-powered secure social networking platform, connects over 14,000 members of the U.S. intelligence community. We're thrilled to see A-Space program manager Ahmad Ishaq and his colleagues highlighted for the work they're doing to break down information silos in an innovative application of Social Business Software. And that second story I mentioned on the DIA? OhMyGov this week included A-Space in their list of top government social networks. If you’d like to learn more about A-Space, join us for a live webcast on February 10th. I'll be speaking with Ahmad about the DIA's journey with Social Business Software, focusing on topics including techniques for increasing adoption of enterprise 2.0 technologies.

We are also thrilled to see The Economist covering what we’ve been seeing over the past year – Social Business Software has become mainstream in business. Gone are questions like "are these technologies a good fit for the workplace?" Now the questions include "how fast can I implement Social Business Software?" as companies look to impact everything from generating new product ideas faster to compressing product life cycles to shortening sales cycles and of course improving customer satisfaction rates. Or, in the case of the DIA, how many lives are saved. As reporter Martin Giles points out in the article, “… In the corporate world such hoarding (of information) leads to lost profits. In the world of intelligence it can lead to lost lives.”

Social Business Software has come a long way from being seen as simply "Facebook for business." For more proof points, just check out the announcement we made earlier this week on Toshiba America Business Systems (TABS) and their implementation of Jive Social Business Software (SBS) to improve channel performance.

From all of us at Jive, congratulations to our friends at the DIA and to the hundreds of global organizations - including more than 25% of the Fortune 100 - who are putting Jive SBS to work in transforming their organizations. We're honored to be your business partner, and to help you set the pace for business for the next decade.

Making Mobile Magic

communities@jivesoftware.com — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:00:41 GMT

In today’s Wall Street Journal, the article Squeezing Web Sites Onto Cellphones captures one of the biggest questions being bandied about in marketing organizations the world over - how much, or how little do customers want and need via their cell phones? And perhaps the even messier question – how on earth does one go about catering to and developing for the multitude of different devices?

The stats do speak for themselves – by the end of 2011 174 million people will be accessing social media from their mobile devices. 67% of people already work wirelessly to get their jobs done. We're all spending growing amounts of time interacting with our "community"—however we define it—and creating lots of content via our smart phones. As a result businesses large and small must determine how to best serve our evolving needs.

Delivering a rich mobile experience really boils down to two approaches – a thin, basic application that stretches across a multitude of platforms, or a more robust approach, developing rich experiences that tap into the benefits and unique offerings of each device and platform.

As I mentioned in the article, Jive truly believes the magic happens when you're able to go deep with functionality. Does it take longer to develop? Of course. But just ask our customers: it’s worth the wait. Take for example our recent launch of Jive SBS for the iPhone. Because we developed a native application, we deliver a gorgeous interface that takes full advantage of the iPhone, giving users the ability to publish blogs, upload photos, find people easily within Jive, and publish updates with geo-location.

But don’t worry, we’re not stopping there. 2010 will be another year of jaw dropping innovation for Jive, so get ready to be wowed.

JiveWorld09 - SOLD OUT!

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:04:36 GMT

If you've ever been involved in planning or producing a major public event, you can probably relate to the “all hands on deck” call that goes out in the 30 days prior to the event. There are often hundreds of "to do's" as the clock clicks down to showtime.

Fortunately, we crossed off one of the big "to do's" over the weekend when we tallied up the registrations for JiveWorld09 and realized the conference is sold out! We announced this in a press release today, and I wanted to share some additional comments today in JiveTalks.

Before I continue, a huge THANK YOU to Jive customers, prospective customers and partners from all of us at Jive! In the year of the "non-conference" - and in an environment where every travel dollar is scrutinized - we appreciate this incredible vote of confidence. We’ve had customers tell us their budgets restricted them to only one event this year – and they chose ours. That has everyone on Team Jive even more motivated to deliver a high-impact program that arms conference participants with the information they need to move even more aggressively with their Social Business Software agenda.

We’ve started a waiting list because there’s always the possibility that someone who previously registered won’t be able to join us. If you’re interested in attending JiveWorld09 and didn’t register, I encourage you to add your name to this list as soon as possible. We’ll start at the top and work our way down when we have an open slot. We’ll also be providing select conference materials through the JiveWorld09 community site.

And if you can’t join us in person this year, you can still participate in video form. Check out the contest we’re holding and share what it means personally to you and your organization to “Jive Together.” Entries will be shown during the conference as a video mashup.

We’re in the midst of announcing some of the most significant innovation to ever come out of Jive, and we’re just beginning. We’ll have much more to share at JiveWorld09, and I predict it will provide even more inspiration to lead a Social Business Software revolution in your organization.

JiveWorld09 - Register NOW to Feel the Love!

communities@jivesoftware.com — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:34:20 GMT

How was your summer?

As the newest member of Jive's executive team, I spent a good part of my summer Jiving with our incredible customers: a powerful, forward-thinking community that's leading the global shift toward a social business mandate. And I have to share an "ah-hah" moment I had from those conversations: our customers don't just work inside Jive, they love Jive! There's a passion for Jive unlike any other software solution I've been associated with.

And it's really showing up in the traction we're getting for our inaugural community conference: JiveWorld09. Registration is so strong, so early, that we'll most likely be ending registrations next week - a full month before the conference. I'm not complaining, mind you! In the year of the "non-conference" I'm thrilled our customers are making an exception to tight travel budgets and taking time away from the office to join us in San Francisco.

I'm sure it helps that this not your run-of-the-mill conference around a run-of-the-mill product - and that this is the first opportunity you and your fellow Jivers have had a chance to come together. Just wait until you see who's going to be there: we have a jaw-dropping roster of Jive customers participating as speakers and panelists.

Working inside Jive takes a variety of forms, and we're holding a video contest to encourage our customers to share what it means personally to them and their organization to “Jive Together.” The results will be shown at JiveWorld09 as video mashups and, from what I've seen to date it's nothing short of amazing how innovative our customers are.

If you're still on the fence on attending - perhaps still sifting through a backlog of to do's from your summer - please do register sooner rather than later!

BTW, you may have seen the recent blog post that Jive's CEO - Dave Hersh - and his family are moving to the Bay Area. On behalf of the small (but energetic) group of Bay Area Jivers,we'd like to welcome Dave and his family to the Golden State. We look forward tohaving them - and their discretionary income - help us chip away at California's budget deficit.

Extending SBS Again - Unveiling Jive Market Engagement!

communities@jivesoftware.com — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:35:38 GMT

As Jive’s CMO, I have the privilege of blogging about our newest offering, the Jive Market Engagement Solution. I'm confident this solution is going to rock the world of marketers everywhere!

Usually we blog on a new product concurrent with issuing the press release announcing that product. However, in the final moments Monday of preparing the news for release, my time was focused on another developing story at Jive: our first community conference – JiveWorld09 – is on the verge of a sell out!

Now that we’ve creatively added more capacity to JiveWorld, I’d like to share some thoughts about yesterday's announcement and why I'm so excited.

First, the facts: our Market Engagement Solution is a new product that combines the power of buzz monitoring with Jive Social Business Software (SBS). We’ve selected Radian6 – a leading social media monitoring platform for understanding "the big conversation" occurring in the social web – and tightly fused it with Jive SBS. Marketers bring observations from Radian6 into a “Market Space,” a new element of Jive SBS. There, marketers add other observations – perhaps a tweet or blog post – and socialize those observations with colleagues. Think of it as our version of the "War Room," where the right people come together at a moment’s notice. Once a plan of attack is established, actionable Viewpoints are published to help organizations move faster in the moment of pain or opportunity.

And because the solution is available via the cloud, there’s no need to wait behind other initiatives for IT resources.

The time is now for this approach as marketers are in a lather about the increasing velocity of social conversations and are struggling to stay on top of those conversations. When we were preparing for press interviews - more on the market reaction in a moment - our PR team reminded me of the classic I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel go to work in a candy factory. They manage at first, but you're probably smiling now as you remember how quickly they were buried in a speeding conveyer belt of chocolates. Like Lucy and Ethel, marketers are getting buried in alerts and “helpful” heads-up emails as yet another co-worker asks “I saw some customers twittering that they are dying to have feature X in the product. Should we do it?” And as those emails circulate throughout an organization, people are reminded that “Reply All” is not effective for collaborating on a firestorm or real-time, online sentiment.

At Jive, we are electrified by the responses we’re getting from customers, and the market reaction has been equally electrifying:

Susan Scrupski writes “The Jive Market Engagement announcement is the first Enterprise 2.0 announcement of its kind blending traditional social media monitoring and measurement with a leading enterprise social computing platform.”
Jeremiah Owyang and R “Ray” Wang commented “Jive’s offering is really a customer relationship module in disguise, yet because of the web-based offering marketing can implement this pseudo-CRM solution without involving IT.”
In his Collaboration 2.0 blog, Oliver Marks begins his analysis with the provocative headline “How Kanye West influences enterprise social business strategy.”

For more reactions, please see our News section.

As always, thanks for taking time today to Jive with us. If you haven’t already done so, please register now for JiveWorld. Even though we increased capacity, we’re still limited in the number of additional registrations we can accept and we don’t you want to miss out on seeing Jive's Market Engagement Solution – and all the other powerful capabilities of Jive SBS – up close and personal in San Francisco!

Jive Together: Announcing JiveWorld09

communities@jivesoftware.com — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:14:14 GMT

As Jive's new CMO, I couldn't think of a better topic for my first blog post than to announce JiveWorld09, our inaugural community conference.

When I joined Jive, the team was assessing the potential of convening the Jive community for an in-person event. My initial reaction was excitement tinged with concern. After all, with travel budgets being slashed, 2009 appeared to be the year of the "non-conference".

But once I became a Jiver and delved more deeply into the company, I saw existing customers using Jive to push corporate performance to new limits, despite a brutal business climate. I also saw a jaw-dropping roster of new customers propelling our record growth and contributing valuable insights to the Social Business Software dialogue.

There's every reason to believe that Social Business Software is at a tipping point, which is why hosting this community conference this year makes absolute sense. It's our way of rewarding customers for their unwillingness to be complacent in the face of a precarious marketplace. The best way to thank you is to host a community conference designed to empower our customers to achieve even greater business outcomes.

That's why JiveWorld09 is anything but your run-of-the-mill conference. Sure, you'll hear from Jive, but only because we're focusing our presentations around arming you for success. But the main focus is on you and your fellow community members, who will share the stage with Jive equally if not moreso. Most important, JiveWorld09 is about creating and capitalizing on the energy that comes from being together with our customers. Learning, sharing, questioning, experimenting, discovering -- JiveWorld09 is where you'll do all of this and more -- together.

We recognize how much everyone is watching their budgets right now. We also recognize that you may need to "go the extra mile" for approval to attend. That's why we're pulling out all the stops to make participating not only worth it, but also affordable.

We selected a city (San Francisco) that's home to many Jive customers. It also features an abundance of low-cost air options with new carriers serving both San Francisco International Airport and Oakland International airport.
We selected an awesome property - the W Hotel San Francisco - and negotiated a great rate of only $195 a night.
The second day of the conference wraps up just after lunch, so those of you flying from the central or east coasts can travel home without incurring an additional hotel night.
We've also kept the conference fee low -- very low, we believe for the value you'll receive -- and are offering an unbelievable discount if you register by August 28.
Plus, if you're selected as either a speaker or an award winner, we'll waive the conference fee (hint hint, apply for either -- or both!).

We're looking at every aspect of the conference agenda to ensure you leave armed with the information you need to inject Social Business Software at a more strategic level into your business. The timing is perfect, especially as many companies are moving into the planning cycle for 2010 and updating strategic plans to to not only survive, but to thrive, in the years ahead. And we're confident you'll Thrive on Jive. To register now or learn more, visit the JiveWorld09 site.

I'd love your ideas on how to make our inaugural JiveWorld a tremendous success, and look forward to seeing you in San Francisco.