Telligent Releases an Integrated Suite of Collaboration Tools with High Powered Metrics
by Bill Ives
Telligent is an enterprise collaboration and community software company that offers a social software suite for both public and internal-facing online communities. Recently, I spoke with Rob Howard CTO at Telligent, who is responsible for product development and strategy. I also dropped by their booth at the Enterprise 2.0 conference for a live demo. On June 23 they announced the availability of version 5.0 of Telligent Community (previously Community Server) and version 2.0 of Telligent Enterprise (previously Community Server Evolution).
In addition, Telligent previewed the newest version of Telligent Analytics¬ (previously Harvest Reporting Server) for Enterprise 2.0 conference attendees. With extensive reporting capabilities, Telligent Analytics 3.0 helps companies quantify engagement both inside and outside their online communities through a comprehensive 360-degree view of connections, conversations, and other user activities.
I was especially impressed with the comprehensive nature of the analytics. With the use of social media within the enterprise a wealth of useful information about what people are doing and saying to each other is captured. Generally we do not do enough to harvest this information and Telligent is taking a big step in this direction. They offer six different types of “buzz” metrics to let you know what is being said within the enterprise. These include: ask buzz, answer buzz, influencer buzz, originator buzz, monitor buzz, and comment buzz. This enables you to see how all employees on the system rank in terms of these six contribution factors.
The analytics can focus on groups or a whole community and has enhanced reporting capabilities that allow you to track trends over time. There is also a sentiment report on the nature of conversations. You can also use these tools to track what is going on outside the enterprise on the Web. You can look at activity around specific terms and the analytics will also bubble up additional terms that are getting a lot of buzz so you see the unanticipated.
The latest versions of Telligent╒s products also includes enhancements that address the issues that have impeded the adoption of community-driven collaboration technologies in the enterprise, such as integration with existing business applications, manageability, ease-of-use, measurability and ROI. Telligent allows enterprises to extend current IT investments with out-of-the-box integration for Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, SharePoint, LDAP, and more.
I have written a bit on the potential for new information silos within enterprise 2.0. Telligent recognizes this. Rob Howard said, “Telligent’s strategy is to provide a platform where social computing, enterprise technology and traditional communication come together to break down information silos and enhance measurability both inside and outside the organization.” We discussed how tools should be independent of information and that Telligent does not attempt to replace tools such as email but allows you to work with them better in an integrated manner. You can drag and drop content from sources like YouTube into Telligent and add widgets from tools like Twitter in the same manner.
As Tom Davenport recently wrote you need both old school and new school capabilities (see Mixing Old and New School Communication). Tom referred to this as 1.5 with a sense of humor and said it is greater than 2.0. Tom wrote that asking which is better Web 1.0 or Web 2.0 is actually a false dichotomy. They complement each other. I would agree. Enterprise 2.0 brings a new dimension but it does not replace many traditional enterprise apps anymore than TV replaced the radio or the telephone replaced in person conversation. Telligent has correctly recognized this and designed for integration.
Telligent Community also introduces a number of other new features including Twitter-like activity streams, searchable new-user profile attributes and simplified channel creation through drag-and-drop. In addition there are user interface components (widgets) that allow both site managers and end-users to create a more user-friendly experience; I like the micro-messaging activity stream. For enterprise use I think it makes more sense within the context of a platform like Telligent than as a standalone tool. Here is a sample screen for Telligent Community.
The additional new features of Telligent Enterprise include an expanded profile and search capability to identify and focus on influencers within an organization, as well as an historical knowledge base that captures all interactions on a specific project allowing information to flow through the organization independent of the tools used (e-mail, mobile phone, Web browser, etc.). Here is a sample screen for Telligent Enterprise shwing the activity stream.
Telligent describes its capabilities as enabling you to listen, engage, and measure. I would agree that these are all important and that Telligent addresses them quite nicely.
