Jive Software Steps Up Mobile Strategy

Enterprise collaboration as a software category has surpassed the boundaries of the label "Facebook for business" and has moved toward a belief that when social media is embedded in enterprise work flows, it can affect real change, says one executive.

"We still very much believe in Jive's mission, which is to fundamentally change how work gets done, and that not only means how employees communicate and collaborate, but how companies talk to their customers and partners," remarks Matt Tucker, cofounder and chief technology officer of cloud-based social business platform Jive Software, during an interview with CRM.

Founded in 2001, Jive, which began as a fledgling start-up, has culminated into a standalone community and collaboration technology force that now finds itself up against the likes of massive enterprise names in the space.

For instance, cloud leader Salesforce.com has launched a series of community-related products such as Chatter Communities for Partners and Customers, as well as Company Communities. Microsoft announced its acquisition of enterprise social platform Yammer last year, and SAP has been slowly padding out enterprise collaboration tool SAP Jam by way of its acquisition of human capital management solution SuccessFactors.

But as for Jive, it is actively pursuing a strategy to be a best-of-breed solution. "The part of the collaboration business that's growing is social business, and that's why we compete with everybody," Tucker comments. "People do want flexibility around what tools they use, especially in the world of cloud...we are the only vendor that out-of-the-box integrates with Salesforce.com, Chatter, SharePoint, Yammer, Microsoft Office [and] Outlook, and we're going to be integrating with Marketo and bringing all of those systems together."

One of Jive's major focuses is on bringing together all of a business user's systems of record, from DropBox and email to CRM and community platforms. Using the Jive Anywhere plug-in, companies can connect community conversations and content with any Web application or Web site. In a CRM sense, a salesperson can use Jive to connect discussions around sales opportunities with a group or broader community.

Jive is also placing heavy emphasis on mobile development, launching a native Jive for iPad app this week, and debuting Jive for iPhone 2.0. Jive reports experiencing a 435 percent increase in mobile traffic to its applications, driving development forward in this regard. Using the Jive mobile app designed for iPad, customers can seamlessly tap into data around what topics or content is trending in their enterprise and take action. Additionally, the launch of Jive Present for iPad and Android gives field sales teams mobile access to training and content. "We want to be a mission-critical app, and the way you do that is by getting deeply into the everyday work people are doing," Tucker adds.