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DDB Mudra bags India Innovation Award 2013 for using MangoApps

May 1, 2013 By

DDB Mudra Group received an award under Enterprise Mobility category – for its efficient use of MangoApps as their Enterprise Social Network on India Innovation Day on 13 March 2013.

India Innovation Day 2013 is a joint initiative of NetApp & Network18 (India’s biggest Media conglomerate) which aims at mobilizing India’s leading CIOs, and CXOs to felicitate their innovation, determination and pursuit of business excellence using technology. The award was handed over to Sebastian Joseph, CTO by Milind Deora, Minister of State for Communications & Information Technology and Shipping, Government of India

DDB Mudra Group has been using MangoApps as their enterprise social network since 2011, before MangoApps, DDB Mudra Group, like most other companies, relied on email, suggestion boxes or special innovation teams/departments to help them bring unique products and services to the market. This process was very limiting, slow and didn’t take advantage of company’s collective brain. Most of the ideas were lost in the inboxes and suggestion boxes. Employees were discouraged from future submissions because they hardly ever saw a reaction or response to their idea.

After Mudra Group rolled out MangoApps, the ideas have been coming in faster from its 1100+ person workforce. Idea submissions and engagement has gone up over 1200 percent since switching to the MangoApps social platform. Commenting on this, Sebastian Joseph, chief technology officer, DDB Mudra Group, said, “Our mission is to create infectious ideas that influence behavior. In today’s social media world, we use creativity, to develop ideas, people want to play with, participate in and pass on. We call this ‘Social Creativity’, ideas that connect people with people, not just people with brands. Our enterprise social networking initiative helps address this. It is a great honor receiving the first India Innovation Award 2013.”

Click here to read the complete case study on how DDB Mudra Group ignites innovation with MangoApps.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Announcing SimpleShare by MangoApps – Easily Capture, Annotate and Share Files

April 1, 2013 By

Ever had a problem you were trying to tell someone about? Maybe it was a way to describe how to format a document, or it could have been showing the IT desk the errors you are seeing on your screen, or you simply wanted to share a document with a customer in a very simple manner. Now you can solve all of these problems and more with SimpleShare from MangoApps. Simple Share allows you to grab a full screen screen capture, or maybe just s single window, or just a small part of your screen and allow you to annotate and share it, simply. You can email, copy, upload to MangoApps, copy a link to share with anyone and more.

What is SimpleShare?

SimpleShare is a lightweight, locally installed Windows application tied directly to your MangoApps document repository that allows you to capture, annotate and share in 3 easy steps.

  1. Capture an image of what you see on your computer screen with SimpleShare – Simply select any window or region that you want to capture, mark up your screenshot with a text box, arrow, highlight or picture caption, and decide how you want to share it.
  2. Quick and Easy Sharing – It allows you to snag a capture and share in one simple step. You can even drag and drop existing pictures (and documents soon!) to a SimpleShare window to grab that same simple share-able link.  All of your uploads, emailed captures and even printed captures are stored online for you in a gallery to review and quick access to them anytime you may need it again.
  3. Share any file, not just Images – Drag and drop any type of file (not just images) into a SimpleShare window including an entire folder structure. Makes it easy to share any type of file, quickly and easily.

Here are some ways I use it all day, every day. Download your copy and get started sharing today!

Bug reporting for Quality Assurance and Development.

There is no simpler way to show my developers a bug I saw in our own QA of the software. Simple Share is used by everyone at MangoApps to capture bugs, from our sales department, to the developers themselves all the way up to our CTO and CEO. Using MangoApps with our QA bug reporting is the only secure, simple way to share screen captures.

 

Mock-ups and Ideas for Product Management

When we suggest a new feature, it’s simple to grab captures from wherever and put them together in Photoshop or even paint… Then take a screen shot of the mock-up to annotate and share with the team. Gets the point across much easier than trying to describe with word what I want it to look like. Sure I can tell you what it should do, but visual describes the concept faster.

 

Blogging. (Yes, even this one)

I used Simple share for every image you see here, feel free to click on any picture you see to see the public view of the image. Still not Google/Bing crawl-able for that sensitive stuff, but simple and easy for anyone to see it just clicking on a link. I can grab screen captures of anything on my screen, share it and post the Image URL in the Blog. Like this!

 

Filed Under: Product News & Release Notes

All New MangoApps Mobile released for iOS and Android

March 29, 2013 By

I wanted to let you know two of the BEST MangoApps Mobile apps are approved and ready to download in their respective app stores. iOS and Android have both had a complete makeover for functionality, speed and the fantastic new user interface. You can find what you are looking for and navigate faster than ever before with side navigation, tasks and files inside the projects, and the ability to view rich content like Wikis and Blogs on the go.

If you haven’t tried them already, please download the mobile apps to your device and don’t forget to leave feedback, we LOVE feedback!

Some of the new features you will like:

  • Introduced Side Navigation for
    • Dashboard items
    • Quick actions
  • Faster login and home screen experience
    • My feeds to be the first screen after login
    • Feed refresh
      • Refresh my feeds when the app gains focus
    • New compose bar
  • Improved memory consumption
    • Unread updates in a dropdown from Feeds home screen
    • Consistent unread count across platforms
  • Marking feed as read if opened from any list
  • Ability to open content rich pages
    • WIKIs
    • Blogs
    • Posts
    • View and download attachments
  • Image gallery and attachment flow revamp
    • Customized image gallery for faster loading
    • New image compression while upload
      • Change profile
      • Document upload
      • Compose screens
  • Tasks Revamp
    • Faster Task Loading
    • Project Tasks
      • Pool and Project Tasks
      • My Tasks
  • New App branding

Download and try them now!

iOS in iTunes and Android in the Play Store

 

iOS Screen Shots

  

Android Screen Shots

   

 

Filed Under: Product News & Release Notes

What’s New in MangoApps 7.6?

March 14, 2013 By

You will see improvements and updates across all of MangoApps and major changes bucketed in the following areas:

  1. UI/UX improvements
  2. User getting started wizard
  3. File Improvements
  4. Search
  5. Performance improvements
  6. Intranet & Department improvements
  7. Projects/Group improvements
  8. Admin improvements
  9. Plugins and Clients
    1. New Desktop Messenger 1.0 client
    2. MangoApps IOS & Android clients enhancements
    3. MangoApps Office Plugin enhancements
    4. MangoApps Simple Share enhancements

1. UI/UX improvements

  • Visually appealing grid view for people, projects, groups
  • Immediate access to more comments in the initial feeds view
  • More module shortcuts at the top based on screen resolution to give you quick access
  • Faster access to file details page, wiki details page
  • Support for mentioning multiple people in your updates
  • New feed style & image style options giving you more choice
  • Improved visibility for tools on project, group, wiki, post to enable actions to be taken quickly
  • With enhanced announcement look you can’t miss a company announcement
  • Accidently leaving a unsaved wiki will prompt you to save first
  • Quick access to universal compose box actions
  • Multiple platform mark as read consistent experience

2. User getting started wizard

  • Getting started wizard/help for network users & guest users when they first login to get them started on the platform quickly

3. File Improvements

  • Ability to get a link to any folder to share
  • Ability to control file notifications when you upload new files
  • Files are now maintained even when you delete corresponding feeds
  • Get improved visibility of checked-out files
  • New filter support for external shared files (Box, Dropbox, etc.)
  • Images have a full screen view for improved viewing


4. Search is faster and more direct

  • Most advanced search capabilities than any social software on the planet
  • Integrated with custom dimensions/meta data to give users the ability to find any information based fast
  • New search at a per project or group available

5. Performance improvements

  • Faster dashboard
  • More caching of data, images from CDN to load pages faster

 

 

6. Intranets & Department Improvements

  • Import departments from CSV
  • Import/Sync departments & members from active directory
  • Import members into a department from CSV
  • Export departments info as CSV
  • New department widget available to add on the main dashboard
  • Ability assign intranet admins to manage intranet & departments
  • RSS subscriptions available for intranet posts

7. Project & Group Improvements

  • Ability to control whether notifications are generated when members are invited or removed
  • Wiki differences available in email
  • Ability to export full project data or export member only information.
  • New tasks widget available to add on the main dashboard
  • Bulk add of tasks to support taking in start & end date as data
  • Wikis support additional fonts & sizes

8. Admin improvements

  • Ability to update a user’s email address.
  • Improved admin dashboard page to quick visibility into – Active users count, Guest user count, plan etc.,
  • Ability to assign managers, organization & departments to users
  • New Open APIs added

 

9. Plugins and Clients

MangoApps can be integrated in Microsoft Office, always connected in the background with desktop and with you everywhere with Mobile. Here are some of the great improvements in our clients and plugins.

9.1 New Desktop Messenger 1.0 Client

  • New IM Client
  • Supports 1-0-1 & Project/Group/Opportunity chat
  • Supported on MacOS, Windows & Linux

9.2 MangoApps IOS and Android client enhancements

  • Full notifications support
  • New quick compose box
  • Improved tasks support including project pool tasks
  • Improved feeds UX with pull down refresh, new filters
  • Improved sidebar access to all modules & quick actions
  • Ability to read full wikis, posts & blogs. Also get access to files attached to them
  • Marking a feed read from one platform marks it as read from all platforms in real time
  • IOS has new side navigation
  • IOS has new image gallery for faster loading experience and multiple choice of image sizes to upload

9.3 MangoApps Office Plugin enhancements

  • Access your file on any of the following repositories directly inside office. Repositories include Box, Drop Box, Sky Drive, Google Drive, Office 365, Windows File Server &SharePoint
  • Ability to search for files in all the external repositories
  • Ability to directly open files from IE directly in office
  • Ability to directly save files on Windows File Server

9.4 MangoApps Simple Share enhancements

  • Ability to share any file (not just images)
  • Drag n Drop multiple files to share
  • Upload files local gallery for quick access & history
  • Integration with windows explorer
  • Checking for new software update

 

Filed Under: Product News & Release Notes

Enterprise Social Networking for Mid-Market Companies

March 11, 2013 By

Enterprise Social Networking is proving to be the most efficient method for workers to communicate internally.  Information flows at a rapid pace, files of any size are easily shared, and teams collaborate freely from any location and any device.  Users love the familiar social network look and feel, the ease of use, and the effortless ability to quickly find help, get answers, and get work done.

More that 90% of Fortune 500 companies will partially or fully implement enterprise social networking by the end of 2013, according to a recent Deloitte analysis published in the Wall Street Journal.   Enterprise social networking is solving the pain points of email, SharePoint, and other collaboration tools that have fallen short of expectations.

Top 3 ESN Requirements of Mid-Market Companies

Enterprise Social networkingMid-market companies have specific needs when it comes to deploying enterprise social networking.  These needs are often overlooked and not addressed by the offerings from large vendors.  To large vendors, mid-market companies are small fish.  However, smaller vendors see mid-market companies differently and some vendors, such as MangoApps, are focusing specifically on enterprise social networking for mid-market companies.

According to an IDC report detailing the market share of the Top Enterprise Social Software Vendors, the large vendors (IBM, Jive) only account for 22% of the total market share of Enterprise Social Networking.  Smaller vendors account for the vast majority of enterprise social networking deployments.

Mid-market companies have many of the same needs as Fortune 500 companies.  Here are the top 3 most common “deal breakers” for mid-market companies when selecting an enterprise social networking solution.

1.  Security:  Must Have Private Cloud & On-Premise Options

Highly sensitive conversations and files are shared over a company’s enterprise social network, therefore security is always the #1 criteria.  Mid-market companies are not always comfortable with multi-tenant cloud solutions.  They are requiring a higher level of security, and demanding at a minimum a single-tenant private cloud solution where servers are dedicated and reserved for their data only.

Many mid-market companies are requiring on-premise deployments, choosing to host the data internally, inside their company firewall.  The data and files are just too sensitive to allow in the cloud.  An on-premise deployment, gives the company full control over the security of their enterprise social network, it can even be fully disconnected from the Internet if desired.

2.  Customizations: Make it Fit Our Requirements Exactly

The turnkey enterprise social networking solutions are becoming better every day.  However, the needs of mid-market companies can be complex, and it’s rare to find a vendor that satisfies 100% of a company’s requirements out-of-the-box.  Most mid-market companies will need some amount of customizations to meet 100% of their needs.

Large enterprises are used to having vendors build custom solutions according to their specific needs.  However, most vendors expect mid-market companies to accept their solution as is, out-of-the-box.  The multi-tenant ESN vendors (Yammer, Chatter, etc.) offer the same product to all customers, that’s the nature of multi-tenant, therefore they are not able to provide specific customizations for individual clients.

Other vendors, such as MangoApps, are willing to offer customizations for mid-market companies, ensuring each client receives an enterprise social network that satisfies 100% of their needs.  Customizations are performed on single-tenant private cloud or on-premise deployments only (not available on multi-tenant cloud solutions).

3.  Fair Price:  Don’t Gouge Us

While price may be a non-factor with large enterprises, price is still important to mid-market companies.  Most mid-market companies still have a keen eye on reducing costs, and scrutinize every investment.

Mid-market companies are looking for enterprise social networking solutions which offer pricing flexibility, and protect them from buying more licenses than they need.  See “Why CIOs Should Demand Active User Licensing” for a pricing model which guarantees absolute efficiency, ensuring the customer they will never buy more licenses than they need.

MangoApps for Mid-Market Enterprise Social Networking

MangoApps specializes in serving the enterprise social networking needs of mid-market companies (50 – 5,000 employees).  MangoApps has proactively addressed all of the Top 3 requirements listed above.

MangoApps offers all deployment options (multi-tenant SaaS, single-tenant SaaS, and on-premise).  The MangoApps professional services team offers customizations and custom integrations for individual clients.

MangoApps has lead the charge in driving costs down for mid-market companies, by offering multiple licensing options including annual subscription, perpetual, and active user based licensing options.

Filed Under: Enterprise Social Software, Product News & Release Notes

Why CIO’s should Demand Active User Licensing

February 7, 2013 By

Active User software licensing refers to the concept of a customer only paying software licenses for those employees that actually use the software.  For those who don’t use it, you don’t pay.  Makes sense, right?  Then why is it almost no software vendor offers Active User Licensing?

Instead, software vendors typically charge a license fee for each user that has “access to” and the ability to use the software “if they wanted to”.  So if I’m a CIO and make a software product available to 5,000 users in my company, but only 2,000 actually login and use the software, how many licenses should I pay for?

Active User LicensingThe answer from 99% of software companies is you pay for 5,000 licenses, which means you have over-purchased 3,000 extra licenses you didn’t need.  You over-spent by 2.5x!  You only needed 2,000 licenses, but were forced to buy 5,000 as you had no way to predict which users would login to use the software, and which users would not.

Unfortunately, this is a very typical, and very real scenario.  Companies are unnecessarily burning money all over the world paying for software licenses they will never use.  It’s madness, and it must be stopped.

Active User Licensing Model Eliminates Over Buying

MangoApps is one software vendor offering a solution.  For customers deploying MangoApps’ social collaboration network on their own server(s), MangoApps offers an “Active User” licensing model.

With the active user model, the customer is not forced to predetermine who and how many users will need/use the software.  The software is made available to all employees.  Then, on a quarterly basis, the customer pays license fees based on the number of users who have actually logged in and used the software.  Clean, straight-forward, and incredibly efficient.

There’s no risk of buying more licenses than you need.  In fact, the Active User license model ensures a benefit that cannot be under-emphasized……you are guaranteed to buy exactly the number of licenses you need.  No more than you need, and no less than you need.  Active User is the definition of efficiency.

Does Your Software Vendor Offer Active User?

The Active User License Model requires additional work on the vendor’s behalf to implement, monitor and invoice, but that’s not the real reason vendors are slow to adopt it.  Most vendors avoid Active User as it slashes their license fees, and is a guaranteed 40%+ discount for the customer.

Take a look at all the software applications at your company.  How much could be saved if your company stopped paying licenses for users who didn’t even login last quarter?  For software applications deployed in-house on your own company servers, it’s time to demand an Active User License model from your software vendor.

 

Filed Under: Product, Social Software Industry News

Yammer Pricing Explained

January 28, 2013 By

Yammer pricing has become overly complicated since its acquisition by Microsoft.  If you’re confused by the changes, this post will help clarify things.

Yammer’s enterprise social network gained huge popularity in large part due to its so simple Yammer pricing.  Companies could try Yammer for free with unlimited users for as long as they wanted.  If they liked it, they could upgrade to a premium paid version, at a flat rate of $5/user/month.  Easy and straight forward.  Unfortunately, those days are over.

Yammer PricingMicrosoft bought Yammer in July 2012, and less than 4 months later Yammer released new overly complicated pricing, complete with asterisks and fine print that has left many trying to understand exactly what it all means.

The Questions 

Does the Yammer paid plan require a 2-year commitment now? Is there no more option for a monthly pay plan?  Do some Yammer pricing plans now require my company to have a Microsoft EA agreement?  What’s that and does it really require 250+ users?  What if I’m not a MSFT EA customer? Or what if my organization has less than 250 users?  Why are there 4 pricing plans displayed, but only 2 are actually available now?

Note to large software vendors:  When your licensing/pricing is so complicated it creates the need for an ecosystem of new consulting companies to help customers understand your licensing model, it may be a signal your pricing is too confusing.  (If you need help understanding MSFT EA licensing, MSFT Advisors is one of these consulting companies).

Yammer Pricing – The Answers

The good news is Yammer’s free plan remains relatively unchanged.  The bad news is almost everything else about Yammer pricing has changed.

If you want to upgrade to Yammer’s paid plan, be prepared to sign a 2-year agreement.  Yammer customers are reporting the low advertised price is not available without a long-term commitment, usually 2-years.  It’s unclear if there is any offer, even at a higher price, available to customers preferring a monthly pay option.

If you are a large organization and have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement in place, there will be two new Yammer price plans coming in March 2013.  However, if your organization is not a MSFT EA customer (requires MSFT EA contract and minimum 250 employees) the new plans do not appear to be available to you.

The Take Away

If you are a MSFT EA client, don’t mind longer term commitments, and your organization’s security policies allow multi-tenant shared cloud applications, Yammer may be an option for your organization.

However, Yammer is likely not a fit for you, if ANY of the below apply to your organization:

  • Prefer a single-tenant private cloud Enterprise Social Network (ESN)
  • Prefer an on-premise Enterprise Social Network
  • Require specific customizations for your ESN
  • Prefer Month-to-Month agreement with no commitments
  • Prefer a Perpetual Licensing option
  • Require custom integrations of existing business systems
  • Prefer a data center outside the USA
  • Less than 250 employees
  • Not a MSFT EA client

Other Options

If Yammer pricing, or lack of on-premise and private cloud deployment options are causing you to look elsewhere for your Enterprise Social Network, you are not alone.  MangoApps, a Gartner “2012 Cool Vendor” in Social Software and Collaboration, is filling the void.

MangoApps offers SMB and mid-market companies a robust Enterprise Social Network without any restrictions.  Customers have a choice of deployment options, including traditional SaaS, private cloud, or on-premise.  Customers can choose monthly pay, annual pay, or perpetual licenses.  There’s no minimum user requirements, and pricing is aggressive and super simple.  There’s also a Free Basic Plan allowing unlimited users.

For the next 60 days, MangoApps is offering free upgrades to their single-tenant fully managed private cloud deployment option.  Customers can choose their data center location, ensuring better performance and keeping their data close to home (data centers in N. America, S. America, Europe, Asia, & Australia).  MangoApps will waive the private cloud setup, installation, and training fees, making it super easy and affordable for customers to experience the advanced benefits of a private cloud installation.  Offer valid until March 31, 2013 for organizations of 100+ users.

 

Filed Under: Enterprise Social Software, Product, Social Software Industry News

Wondering about the ROI of an Enterprise Social Software?

January 15, 2013 By

According to Gartner many companies are making buying decisions on enterprise social software based on vision and strategy (intangible value) rather than traditional accounting based ROI calculations (tangible value). Equally executives of most companies want these investments expressed as tangible value.

  • Would you calculate ROI of your laptop or phone?
  • Would you calculate ROI of the coffee machine at office?
  • Would you calculate ROI of your E-Mail system?

With no doubts we agree that there is an ROI of your laptop or the coffee machine at office. There is an ROI of anything that provides value. Then why have organizations implemented enterprise social software without knowing the ROI? Well, you can calculate the ROI of enterprise social software but how one would calculate the ROI is not always obvious.

enterprise social software

How do you calculate the ROI of Enterprise Social Software?

We could say that ROI for enterprise social software cannot be calculated, but you can track things. We can also say that the ROI of enterprise social software is that you can employee engagement & improve productivity, or that social software ROI is that it can reduce communication costs. Nobody knows exactly upfront how much money you will save or if you will be able to create or increase a cognitive surplus in the organization by implementing social technologies. Only when things are done you know what the actual result was and you have a clear view on the benefits. Though, it is certain that social technologies are going to be adopted in some way, shape or form no matter what company or market you are working in & will be in every enterprise in the upcoming 5 years.

While some of the above statements might make you chuckle and others might seem like they are true, but they don’t really help you in business meetings with peers and executives who want real business answers. Why would you dive into something that cannot be measured? And without a way to obtain benchmarks, how could you tell when something works? How could you track the progress and gather the right metrics or do more of the right things? How could you articulate the business case for enterprise social software?

In business you are responsible for some expected outcomes, as well as for determining the strategy for driving those outcomes. This is true for enterprise social software as well.

To be successful with enterprise social software you HAVE to determine why you are doing it. What strategic goals and objectives are you trying to reach? Often such initiatives fail since businesses are not sure how to align their business goals with the initiatives.

The metrics you need to evaluate the success of enterprise social software are specific to your organization. Each organization has specific, measurable goals and objectives they have to hit. Typical examples of business goals are:

  • Increase employee engagement.
  • Increase productivity.
  • Increase sales.
  • Increase ideas generated in the company.
  • Increase collaboration with partners & customers.
  • Reduce e-mails.
  • Decrease new employee on-boarding time.
  • Decrease duplicated tasks.
  • Decrease software tools & support cost
  • Faster access to knowledge.
  • Faster access to internal experts.
  • Reduce communication costs.
  • Reduce travel costs.

You can apply the SMART Methodology (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, & Timed) to your enterprise social software goals.

DISCOVERING THE HIDDEN TREASURE

With the industry costs averaging $3 to $15 per user per month, and with no hardware & low management costs, even small increases in key performance indicators driven by enterprise social software platforms produce significant ROI.

Harvard Business Review states that “If implementing enterprise social software can increase employee engagement by as little as 0.1%, based on Best Buy’s correlation between engagement & operating income that would result in an ROI of greater than 800%”

Enterprise systems have lived its life. Let’s go beyond them. A recent result of a study performed by McKinsey provides some interesting insights for organizations who’ve implemented such software;

  •          77% gain faster access to information
  •          60% reduce their communication costs
  •          52% gain enhanced access to internal experts
  •          44% cut their travel costs
  •          41% experience increased employee satisfaction

 

 

Filed Under: Best Practices, Enterprise Social Software, Social Software Industry News Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

What’s New in MangoApps 7.5?

January 4, 2013 By

Although you will see improvements and updates across all of MangoApps, major changes are bucketed in the following areas:

  1. User Customization and Improvements
    • New UI enhancements, widgets & customization capabilities
    • Project & Group collaboration improvements
    • File Management improvements
  2. User getting started and page tours
  3. Language translation support
  4. Admin Customization and Improvements
  5. Support for Windows File Server
  6. SalesForce opportunities
  7. UI Support for wider screen resolutions
  8. Mobile App Improvements
  9. Windows Connector Improvements

1. User Customization and Improvements

1.1 New UI enhancements, widgets & customization capabilities

  • Ability to add/remove/re-order/configure widgets on dashboard sidebar
  • Ability to add/remove/re-order main title bar
  • Improved type ahead with pictures for colleagues/projects/groups
  • Ability to pin projects, groups, opportunities and get quick access to your pinned items via pre-defined filters
    • Right hand sidebar widgets for quick access.
    • Faster & Improved My To Do list widget

1.2 Project & Group collaboration improvements

1.3 File Management improvements

  • Ability to drag & drop multiple files from your local desktop into the compose box
  • Ability to get an aggregate view of all external repository files share in MangoApps (SharePoint, Box, Dropbox, SkyDrive, Office 365, GoogleDrive)

2. User getting started and page tours

  • New page tours on dashboard pages
  • People directory module brought out as a top level module for quick access

3. Language translation support

  • New Language Translation Engine allows end users to translate MangoApps into any language of their choice
    • Support for doing inline translations to any language of choice.
    • Ability to vote up or down translations submitted by others.
    • Available in both shared cloud & private/on-premise deployment options

4. Admin Customization and Improvements

  • Project & Group collaboration improvements
  • New UI widgets & customization capabilities
  • Business & Enterprise plan self-serve upgrade interface
    • Self serve interface to upgrade from Basic to Business or Enterprise plan directly from the main dashboard
    • Enterprise plan reduced from $10 to $8. Effective to all existing enterprise customers also from next billing cycle

5. Support for Windows File Server

  • Windows File Server now supported as a file repository of choice (Enterprise+ plans)

6. SalesForce Opportunities

  • Integrate MangoApps Opportunities with Salesforce
  • Create, Track and Share Salesforce Opportunities with any Colleague in MangoApps
  • Keep track of all files, conversations and customer’s info in one interface
    • Available on all paid plans
    • Available on iPhone, iPad and Android

7. UI Support for wider screen resolutions

  • Fluid UI to support multiple screen resolutions (980/1300/1400/1600/1900px)
    • Supported for all leading browsers on Windows & MAC
  • Full screen mode for viewing project/group posts (similar to wikis)
  • Support for IE 10 browser

8. Mobile App Improvements

Better control & improvements on your iOS and Android devices with push notifications. Improved feeds on Android client.

8.1 MangoApps iOS

  • Faster client with improved login experience
  • Ability to Invite colleagues in your phone address book
  • Improved reliability of APNS push notifications

8.2 MangoApps Android

  • Richer feed experience with large display of images in feeds
  • Ability to Invite colleagues in your phone address book
  • Support for the more efficient, reliable and larger payload (4K) based GCM push notifications
  • Multiple GCM/C2DM filters to choose & control the type of notifications you wish to receive

9. Windows Connector Improvements

9.1 MangoApps Office Connect

9.2 MangoApps Outlook Connect

9.3 SimpleShare by MangoApps

  • Improved inline editing and redesigned text box
  • Ability to drag & drop local images to MangoApps
Filed Under: News, Product News & Release Notes

The ROI on Social Networking Tools for Business Collaboration

December 9, 2012 By

The ROI on Social Networking Tools has been hotly debated over the past 12 months.  C-Level executives want to know if the benefits are real (meaning a quantifiable ROI on Social networking tools for business collaboration), or is “social” just the current buzzword of the day.

McKinsey & Company, one of the most respected management consulting firms in America, decided to settle this debate by conducting a full investigation into the merits and ROI on Social Networking Tools at Workplace.  McKinsey interviewed executives at 4,200 companies all over the world.  The findings were released earlier this year, and to say the results were shocking is an understatement.

The ROI on Social Networking Tools

Social Networking Tools and Technologies Create Over $1 Trillion in Value

Overall, McKinsey estimates between $900 Billion and $1.3 Trillion in business value can be unlocked through the use of social networking tools and technologies.  That’s TRILLION with a T!  To put it in perspective, you’d have to save $1 Million/day for 1 million days in a row (2,740 years) to equal one trillion in value creation.  The benefits seem to be real indeed.  Even if McKinsey’s estimate is off by 50%, that still leaves about $500 Billion in value creation. As the tool costs are negligible (see Best Enterprise Social Software Vendors) , all this value creation is directly attributable as ROI on Social Networking.

Enterprise Social Networks Raise Worker Productivity 20%-25%

More specifically, McKinsey estimates two-thirds of the value created by social networking tools and technologies lies in improving communications and collaboration within and across enterprises.  The ROI on Enterprise Social Networks comes in the form of more productive, more connected, and more informed workers. McKinsey believes knowledge workers are 20%-25% more productive once social networking tools and technologies  are implemented within the organization.

Another staggering finding from the McKinsey study was that the average knowledge worker spends 28 hours each week writing emails, searching for information, and collaborating internally.  That’s 70% of their time!

Imagine what workers could achieve if they had access to more efficient tools which allowed them to effortlessly communicate, collaborate, and immediately find information.  How many extra hours could a company get out of workers each week?  The 25% increase in productivity is starting to sound awfully conservative.

ROI On Social Networking – The Evidence is Overwhelming

72% of companies are now using some form of social technology.  And of those using social technologies, 90% report they are realizing business benefits. Realizing the gains and achieving an ROI on Enterprise Social Networks will require significant transformations in management practices and organizational behavior.

Social within the enterprise has the potential to be this decade’s sweeping change with the most impact on how business gets done.  Email is not going away, but our reliance on email for everything (communication, collaboration, file sharing, etc.) is sure to change rapidly over the next few years as Enterprise Social Networks continue to prove their value.

Read the full McKinsey report: “The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity through Social Technologies”.

With MangoApps freemium model,  now you easily join over 6,000 other companies using MangoApps to more efficiently communicate and collaborate with co-workers, partners, and key customers and see the ROI on Social Networking Tools for FREE.

 

Filed Under: Enterprise Social Software, Social Software Industry News
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