Aussie firms deploy corporate social network tibbr

news Software giant Tibco has revealed that two sizable Australian companies, accounting group HLB Mann Judd and real estate agency Compton Green, have deployed its internal corporate social networking platform tibbr to streamline their internal communications.

Dubbed ‘the social network for work’, tibbr is an internal corporate social networking platform which shares a great deal with both other platforms such as Yammer as well as consumer social networking sites such as Facebook. It allows workers to set up profiles and share information with each other, tapping into the expertise of colleagues and better sharing information.

In a statement issued this month, Tibco said tibbr enabled HLB Mann Judd and Compton Green to move away from legacy technologies to a collaborative, secure cloud platform where employees had a single place for their work activities.

According to the vendor, as a leading mid-tier accounting firm, HLB Mann Judd was seeking a solution to increase collegiality across its multiple business lines by moving away from email and multiple intranets to standardize on a single, company-wide platform for collaboration.

Alongside its expansion, HLB Mann Judd was undergoing a strategic external branding exercise, requiring transparency on the initiative across the employee base. tibbr was selected, the vendor said, because it enabled users to share knowledge and files easily regardless of location or device; it could be customised to match the HLB brand look and feel; and lastly due to the “trusted advisor role” that Tibco had established with key stakeholders in the project.

“As we continue to expand, we needed to align strategic planning and external branding, so we were in search of a tool to enable collaboration and better communication across our association,” said Jacqui Walford, director of marketing and business development, HLB Mann Judd. “With tibbr, we now have a space for continuous and organized knowledge sharing, and more immediate and easy access to information and documents, creating a culture transparency that wasn’t possible before.”

Compton Green is the largest independent real estate agency in western Melbourne. With a growing workforce of young sales associates who often work remotely in the field, it needed a modern and very simple way to more efficiently execute on projects and collaborate on activities surrounding the marketing and sale of properties. Compton Green selected tibbr for its intuitive mobile applications and subject-based approach, according to the vendor, which ensures the right information, is delivered to the right person at the right time

“We’re a fast-growing business with a highly expanding mobile workforce, and we needed a tool that would connect our team and help foster real-time conversations despite where our co-workers may be,” said Adrian Butera, director, Compton Green. “tibbr provides a single destination for our team to carry out daily work activities and collaborate on them with each other.”

Hype around corporate social networking platforms has died down substantially over the past several years. However, a number of Australian companies are still using or seeking to deploy such solutions.

For example, in August 2012 South Australia’s Department of Premier and Cabinet started examining new enterprise social networking solutions, just two years after implementing a solution which it branded as delivering it significant benefits. Similarly, in that same month, the New South Wales Police Force flagged plans to deploy a sizable internal social networking platform, as it moved ahead with plans to better serve the information needs of its 17,000 police officers and 4,000 civilian administration staff.

opinion/analysis
Good to see this kind of platform still being deployed in Australia. I think corporate social networking very much hit Gartner’s ‘trough of disillusionment’ (see the analyst firm’s Hype Cycle paradigm here) over the past several years, and hype over this class of technologies died virtually overnight. However, I think we’re very much now into the slope of enlightenment with this corporate social networking, and I think in around two years we’ll likely be in the plateau of productivity stage where their use is normal and expected in certain settings.

Image credit: Tibco