Jive Summer Cloud Combines Social Streams

With so many enterprise applications incorporating social features, users are finding themselves with a slew of new communications streams to keep on top of. With the Summer Cloud release of its social business platform, Jive is looking to ease what is becoming an increasingly big pain point.

"A new challenge that companies are facing is so many systems that have communications components to them," Nathan Rawlins, Jive VP of product marketing, told InformationWeek. "Every app is adding a social stream, which is fine, but as a user you have to check 15 different systems when you log in. It becomes an issue of multiple inboxes."

Adding to its integration with Microsoft Exchange and Google Gmail -- and leveraging its acquisition earlier this year of StreamOne -- the Jive platform now integrates with Salesforce.com, Yammer and Evernote. By just downloading a browser plug-in, users can transparently see and interact with communications from all of these platforms in Jive.

[ Feeling socially inept? Read 5 Social Business Mistakes You're Making. ]

"It provides a completely frictionless way for people inside and outside a company to collaborate across different systems, without even knowing those systems exist," said Rawlins.

The Summer Cloud release of Jive also improves the platform's gamification capabilities, according to Rawlins.

An Advanced Gamification module, powered by Bunchball, allows users to create missions and offer rewards based on Jive activity. "You can tailor experiences to drive specific business activities," said Rawlins. "For example, you could encourage sales teams to answer each other's questions or compete with each other. We're using game mechanics to drive specific behavior, and to encourage engagement from early adoption to ongoing use."

Jive Summer Cloud offers several pre-built gaming options, and companies can build their own, according to Rawlins. Managers and end users alike can see accomplished missions, current points and new missions available, and reports can be run to track performance over time. These advanced gamification techniques can be used by external communities as well.

Jive Summer Cloud also includes new analytics capabilities, providing organizations with pre-built reports that highlight areas that can be improved in reaching specific business goals, such as sales performance to quota and making new customer service reps productive sooner, according to the company. Data is presented in clear financial context, and organizations can drill down into teams, geography and specific use cases.

Follow Deb Donston-Miller on Twitter at @debdonston.