The Rise of Purposeful Collaboration: From Simply Sharing to Getting Work Done

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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The Rise of Purposeful Collaboration

From Simply Sharing to Getting Work Done

Collaboration tools enable people to discover and interact with, the content, colleagues and communities, that can help them get their jobs done.

Culture, Technology and Business Practices are evolving to adapt to todayâ??s more social working environment.

The first era of enterprise social was about collaborating more effectively by working more transparently and increasing participating via â??social softwareâ?.

With Purposeful Collaboration, â??socialâ? is built directly into the tools and business processes people use to get their jobs done.

Why Your Future Depends on Engaging with Customers and Employees

In the age of social media, effective customer and employee engagement is becoming an increasingly important business initiative. Companies that effectively engage their customers experience greater customer loyalty and repeated patronage. Companies that effectively engage their employees can expect greater employee satisfaction and productivity. However, as the number of social channels continues to grow, engagement becomes increasingly difficult as constant bombardment of these channels often leads to alienation and fatigue. 

Enter the 9 C's of Engagement. Employ the 9 C's of Engagement to connect with your customers and employees in an increasingly saturated social environment.

In this interview at SXSW 2013, R "Ray" Wang explains how companies should be using the 9 C's of Engagement. 

Why Your Future Depends on Engaging with Customers and Employees

In the age of social media, effective customer and employee engagement is becoming an increasingly important business initiative. Companies that effectively engage their customers experience greater customer loyalty and repeated patronage. Companies that effectively engage their employees can expect greater employee satisfaction and productivity. However, as the number of social channels continues to grow, engagement becomes increasingly difficult as constant bombardment of these channels often leads to alienation and fatigue. 

Meeting Tim Berners Lee

What is Enterprise Social?

“Enterprise social … an important method for enhancing communication, coordination and collaboration for business purposes.” – Gartner

Bill’s Thoughts on Google Apps

What Would You Do If SharePoint Never Existed

SharePoint Doesn’t Suck. You Suck!

Event Report: Customers Very Happy At Ultimate Connections 2013 (#ulticonnect)

R "Ray" Wang

Principal Analyst and Founder
Constellation Research

R “Ray” Wang is the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and blogs at www.raywang.org. His ground-breaking best-selling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015. Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business, titled, Everybody Wants to Rule The World was released in July 2021. Wang is well-quoted and frequently interviewed by media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, and Bloomberg. Short Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research Inc. He…...

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Partnership Announcements Enhance Ultimate Software’s Offerings

Amidst a crowd of 1500 customers, partners, and attendees, Ultimate Software held their annual gathering from March 12th to March 15th, 2013 in Las Vegas.  Geared towards the medium sized to enterprise markets, Ultimate Software has steadily taken market share from ADP for payroll and expanded out into operational and strategic human capital management (HCM) capabilities.  New mobile access, generation 4 cloud architecture, and timeline features for employee’s highlight Ultimate’s growing ambitions and customer requirements.

At the event, Ultimate announced two strategic partnerships that bode well for customers and prospects facing an increasing level of customer complexity and growing need for global capabilities:

• Celergo partnership adds global payroll capabilities to internationalization efforts. Celergo’s founder and CEO, Michele Honomichi, and Adam Rogers announced on stage global payroll services support for 110 countries and the ability to process payroll in over 150 countries.  In addition, Ultimate’s Spring and Fall 2013 release of the flagship UltiPro includes support for 28 country specific localizations such as Australia, Brazil, China, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, and Thailand.  Other key features include, global compensation management, localized compliance for data and employee privacy rules, and additional language translations.
  
  Point of View (POV): Ultimate’s customers operate in 144 countries.  As organizations follow the growth overseas, the global payroll connector and Celergo partnership gives mid market and enterprise customers a competitive option as they expand their presence abroad and usage of UltiPro.  These proactive steps to address global capabilities now, provide a key differentiation among potential competitors and places Ultimate Software in a potential position of international expansion.

• Informatica partnership paves the way for future cloud partnerships.  At the conference, Informatica announced a self-service solution for HCM data connections.  Built on top of UltiPro Carrier Network (UCN), customers have access to over 100 packaged connectors to benefits carriers and third party solutions.
  
  (POV): Customers and prospects do not want to worry about integration of their employee records or people management solutions with medical, dental, vision, and other benefits providers.  In the long term, customers seek worry free integration platforms to third party applications, cloud ecosystems, and mobile ecosystems.  The partnership with Informatica solves the needs of complex integration scenarios.  However, Ultimate may want to consider offering a lower cost alternative for more point to point integration scenarios.

The Bottom Line: Focus On Customer Success Pays Off In Continued Growth

Ultimate has done a great job establishing themselves as the ‘people company’ in the cloud HCM space.  From the opening keynote to hallway conversations with customers, executives, and Ultimate employees, its focus on people is clearly a big part of the company’s long track record for success.  In every client interaction, it’s clear that Ultimate has built strong partnerships with customers.

Ultimate continues to dominate its payroll niche of  200 to 1000 and 1000+ employees.  This puts them above Intuit and below Ceridan and Workday in size of customers.  In fact, many of the customers have already expanded from HR, payroll, benefits and payments into recruitment, planning, on boarding, performance management, succession management, and time and attendance.  The next opportunity will include more strategic HCM, identity management, improved mobile access, and payment technologies.

Your POV

Are you an Ultimate customer? Do you plan to invest more or less with them in 2013?  What do you think about their strategy?   Are you ready for strategic HCM? Add your comments to the blog or send us a comment at R (at) SoftwareInsider (dot) org or R (at) ConstellationRG (dot) com

Please let us know if you need help with your apps strategy.  Sign up for a Constellation Academy Workshop or let us assist with:

• Assessing readiness
• Designing your strategy
• Assessing integration capability
• Vendor selection
• Connecting with other pioneers

Reprints

Reprints can be purchased through Constellation Research, Inc. To request official reprints in PDF format, please contact Sales .

Disclosure

Although we work closely with many mega software vendors, we want you to trust us. For the full disclosure policy, stay tuned for the full client list on the Constellation Research website.

* Not responsible for any factual errors or omissions.  However, happy to correct any errors upon email receipt.

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