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Employee Communications Applications: All Those Crazy Names
Jul 28, 2020
In formulating my next move in the communications industry, I decided to check out how the landscape of the Employee Communications Application market (as defined by Gartner in May of 2019) has changed since I sold APPrise Mobile. I searched “employee communications applications” in Google and wasn’t totally surprised by the number of vendors that now exist since employee communications as a tech opportunity is so massive. What surprised me were some of the crazy names that many of the vendors had chosen to call themselves.
When we named theEMPLOYEEapp in 2014, we figured it was pretty descriptive of what we were doing and, as a result, we wouldn’t have to spend much time explaining it to prospective customers. As one of the first to go to market with an employee communications mobile application, we were also fortunate that the name was still available. However, the results of my search revealed that other companies looking to address the challenge of getting information to, communicating and engaging the billions of workers around the World didn’t have the same concern that I had in selling something new to the enterprise and, to a certain extent, changing the behavior of people in the way in which they consume content at work.
The following “ECA” vendors caught my attention: mobile app companies called Happeo, Fliplet, Smarp and Bonfyre; intranet solutions Jostle, eXo and Unily; collaboration and messaging tools with the names Chanty, RedBooth and Brosix.
Huh??? Oh wait, I get it. Naming a company with a word that doesn’t exist in the dictionary immediately justifies a unicorn billion dollar valuation, right?
My point isn’t to bash creativity. Rather it is to highlight a few things:
First, the market for employee communications applications has exploded. There are now dozens of companies looking to take advantage of the huge opportunity of communicating with employees, an organization’s most important audience. For the next reason and as a communications professional myself, this is a great thing for our industry.
Second, “Communications”, as a business unit in the enterprise, is rising in importance and technology companies are finally working to address the challenges that we face in our work just like they have for decades for business units like HR, Sales and Finance. This is particularly true with regard to “deskless” workers who don’t have the benefit of easy access to computers, intranets and in many cases don’t have corporate emails. However, considering the COVID-19 pandemic and the new reality of an increasingly remote workplace, how is a business supposed to operate without someone responsible for communicating and engaging with employees? Communications professionals should have a seat at the table given the critical importance of the work they do (especially now) and this is something we have been arguing about for decades. Maybe we are close to succeeding.
And third, the ECA market is becoming more confused than ever and the crazy names don’t help. Between mobile apps, collaboration, chat and messaging solutions, intranets, email solutions and task/project management tools (all of which fall under the umbrella of ECA), if you examine the website of each vendor out there when searching “employee communications applications” (something that I have done), it is real tough to decide which one is most appropriate to solve a particular employee communications challenge. They all claim to do the same thing and to address it all. But I know from experience, this isn’t the case and is something organizations that are now looking for a new ECA or to evaluate their current ECA tech stack should consider before making any decisions.
I have many more views on this that I plan to share. In the meantime, it would be great to know what you think. Please share your comments and thoughts.
When we named theEMPLOYEEapp in 2014, we figured it was pretty descriptive of what we were doing and, as a result, we wouldn’t have to spend much time explaining it to prospective customers. As one of the first to go to market with an employee communications mobile application, we were also fortunate that the name was still available. However, the results of my search revealed that other companies looking to address the challenge of getting information to, communicating and engaging the billions of workers around the World didn’t have the same concern that I had in selling something new to the enterprise and, to a certain extent, changing the behavior of people in the way in which they consume content at work.
The following “ECA” vendors caught my attention: mobile app companies called Happeo, Fliplet, Smarp and Bonfyre; intranet solutions Jostle, eXo and Unily; collaboration and messaging tools with the names Chanty, RedBooth and Brosix.
Huh??? Oh wait, I get it. Naming a company with a word that doesn’t exist in the dictionary immediately justifies a unicorn billion dollar valuation, right?
My point isn’t to bash creativity. Rather it is to highlight a few things:
First, the market for employee communications applications has exploded. There are now dozens of companies looking to take advantage of the huge opportunity of communicating with employees, an organization’s most important audience. For the next reason and as a communications professional myself, this is a great thing for our industry.
Second, “Communications”, as a business unit in the enterprise, is rising in importance and technology companies are finally working to address the challenges that we face in our work just like they have for decades for business units like HR, Sales and Finance. This is particularly true with regard to “deskless” workers who don’t have the benefit of easy access to computers, intranets and in many cases don’t have corporate emails. However, considering the COVID-19 pandemic and the new reality of an increasingly remote workplace, how is a business supposed to operate without someone responsible for communicating and engaging with employees? Communications professionals should have a seat at the table given the critical importance of the work they do (especially now) and this is something we have been arguing about for decades. Maybe we are close to succeeding.
And third, the ECA market is becoming more confused than ever and the crazy names don’t help. Between mobile apps, collaboration, chat and messaging solutions, intranets, email solutions and task/project management tools (all of which fall under the umbrella of ECA), if you examine the website of each vendor out there when searching “employee communications applications” (something that I have done), it is real tough to decide which one is most appropriate to solve a particular employee communications challenge. They all claim to do the same thing and to address it all. But I know from experience, this isn’t the case and is something organizations that are now looking for a new ECA or to evaluate their current ECA tech stack should consider before making any decisions.
I have many more views on this that I plan to share. In the meantime, it would be great to know what you think. Please share your comments and thoughts.
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Content is king. We all know that. Without good content that is interesting, fresh and relevant, it is human nature to ignore, right? At the same time, thinking about all of the content that needs to exist in an intranet can be overwhelming to think about. Why take on this responsibility and risk? Part 3 of The Communicator's Guide to Building a Corporate Intranet takes you through several basic steps to simplify the process of ensuring the right content for all employee constituents and to ensure the success of your new intranet. To read Part 3 in Reworked, click here .
Getting out of your comfort zone and being the go to source for understanding your organization and the communications needs of ALL employees . . .
Getting started with a new corporate Intranet does not have to be daunting . . . After having knee surgery earlier this year, I was lying on my bed slightly in pain but bored out of my mind. So, I started thinking about the work that I have been doing helping some of the great companies in the U.S. reimagine their corporate intranets. I decided to put pen to paper (well, I started typing on my laptop), and within a week, I had written a 7,000 word piece covering all that one (communications professionals that is) needs to do to go about concepting, building and then launching a new intranet. I approached Reworked about what I had written. It was definitely too long for a single article, so we transformed it into a 5 part series. In Part I, I make the case for communications professionals (in partnership with IT) to be the ones to champion and spearhead an intranet project given their expertise in dealing with content -- and of course, an intranet is all about content right? I then offer thoughts on how to make the case for moving forward with this project given that so many current intranets are decades old and in need of modernization. To read Part 1 in Reworked, click here .
Who are Employee Communications Management (ECM) Platforms intended to help? First and foremost, communications professionals! Second and foremost, employees! Everyone's a winner. To read more about ECMs, read my latest article in Reworked by clicking here .
With all of the M&A transactions that have taken place over the past few years in the burgeoning ECA tech market and the hundreds of millions of dollars pouring in from the capital markets, the time has come for tech solution providers to focus on the communications professionals charged with putting these tools to work. Enter Employee Communications Management platforms. Just like their brothers and sisters in sales (customer relationship management - CRM) and human resources (human capital management - HCM), ECM platforms offer a holistic, rather than siloed, approach to helping communications pros by providng them with a multi-channel way to getting information to, engaging and communicating with their employees in the way or ways employees prefer. Read more in CMSWire about how the ECA tech market is evolving into the ECM tech market.
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Proud that CMSWire selected our article on the state of the Employee Communications Applications market as one of its top 10 of 2021. Stay tuned to what we predict for 2022 . . .
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