Yammer and SharePoint are both enterprise collaboration tools where you can share documents and opinions, collaborate simultaneously from any place at any time, post announcements, and always stay in contact with your colleagues and stakeholders. While you have the option to use both tools independently, major efficiency advantages can be experienced by combining these tools.
In this blog post I will explain how the combination of Yammer and SharePoint can boost your efficiency and effectiveness.
ONE PLATFORM
One of the greatest advantages of collaboration tools is the gain in efficiency and effectiveness. Even more advantages can be experienced when you align Yammer and SharePoint. Then you will use both tools as effectively as possible, while enjoying the efficiency gains from using them simultaneously. Before your organization can experience the advantages of combining Yammer and SharePoint into one platform, both tools should be implemented and adopted within your organization. As I have explained in a previous blog post, there are several manners to boost your Yammer adoption. Most importantly is that the organization is convinced about the benefits these tools have to the organization. Even independently, Yammer and SharePoint optimize efficiency and effectiveness in the communication and information streams for your organization.
How this can be achieved will be explained in the following paragraphs.
COMMUNICATE MORE EFFICIENTLY
On the one hand, Yammer is all about communication and discussion while SharePoint is document-centric. On the other hand, when you are able to combine both tools, you will have the best of both worlds.
When your organization has the knowledge and experience of Yammer and SharePoint, one can embed one tool into the other and create one platform for all your communication and documents. By using the Yammer Embed function you can integrate your group feed, my feed, and open graph object feed, within your SharePoint solution.
One of the main benefits by embedding Yammer is the ability to keep each other informed and communicate to all stakeholders in one click. If your Yammer feed is integrated into SharePoint, you will save time in communicating to others and thus increase your efficiency. Moreover, your messages will become more effective as all the group members will receive your message at once, compared to selecting your contacts by email. Are you trying to arrange a meeting to schedule using SharePoint? Set a date by using a poll in your Yammer group. Is the last quarterly report published on SharePoint? Inform the stakeholders via Yammer that they can read the report and leave their comments.
COLLABORATE MORE EFFECTIVELY
Double work, miscommunication, and missed deadlines. Those are only some problems that can be experienced within an organization due to ineffective collaboration. By using Yammer and SharePoint together, you will decrease the chance of occurrence of such an event. Hence, you will increase the effectiveness of your collaboration. Let’s visualize this with an example. You are in a project group but your members are collaborating from different locations. In this case, information and documents come from different locations where one member cannot just ‘walk over’ to the other office to discuss how to proceed. To enhance the document, you will therefore use SharePoint. Simultaneously you will use Yammer to discuss with the other members what should be amended to the document. This example shows that everyone is up-to-date about the current events, can provide input for the document, and only one document version is used. Consequently, the document will be prepared at once, while saving time as not every member has to revise the document.
BETTER EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION
Although all previous examples were concerned with the internal network of the company, the activities with the external network are also very important. Just as Yammer and SharePoint can be used for communication and collaboration internally, using the tools externally will add great value.
Let’s use another example to explain this statement. When you are in a production company that uses raw materials and sells final products to retailers. When your raw material supplier has a great delay which prevents you from producing, you would like to get in touch with the retailers. Therefore, Yammer can be used where the supplier can immediately communicate the delay to the purchasing and production department. Moreover, the departments will have immediate insight on SharePoint in all purchasing and sales contracts to estimate the impact of the delay. Consequently, the retailers will be informed about the delay as well. In this way, everyone is up-to-date about the events, and actions can be taken when necessary.
In conclusion, the combination of Yammer and SharePoint not only results in major advantages to your efficiency by enhancing your internal communication and cooperation. It will also create better relationships with your external network by keeping them informed, and cooperate more closely.