Will SalesForce.com’s Acquisition Of Rypple Help Do Get It Done?
Today Salesforce.com announced their intent to acquire Rypple, the Toronto based developer of social performance management software which helps employees and managers improve individual/team/company performance by enabling continuous feedback instead of the relying on the ancient "year-end performance review" process.
While most of the initial industry reaction is focused on how Salesforce.com may now be a player in the Human Capital Management (HCM) space (see my colleague Yvette Cameron's excellent post) I'm going to instead discuss how this impacts:
Objectives/Tasks/Results
Two days ago (pre-acquisition era) Rypple announced a new feature named Social Goals. Social Goals enables people to share their objectives with their colleagues, track achievements and provide motivation. By working together teams can focus on goals and achieve better business results.
Making objectives social is a great move, but to achieve those objectives you normally need to complete a series of tasks. Now task/project management is an area that SalesForce is experimenting with via a new website named Do. Do describes itself as "Easily create and share tasks, projects and notes with your team so you always know what needs to get done, no matter where you are."
I envision the integration of Social Goals (objectives and measurements) and Do (project/task management) becoming a very powerful productivity tool for individuals and groups. I look forward to seeing where this goes in 2012.
Rypple Partnerships
Earlier this year Rypple and Jive Software announced a partnership where Rypple's features are integrated into the Jive Social Business platform. Since Salesforce.com is focusing heavily on the social space with Chatter, Radian6 and other features, I was curious where today's acquisition would leave the Jive/Rypple partnership. During a briefing with my colleagues and I at Constellation Research, I had the opportunity to ask John Wookey, Salesforce Executive VP of the new HCM business unit (which Rypple will become part of) about this. John assured us that Rypple will continue to build and enhance their integration with Jive and may still partner with additional vendors. Of course Rypple now has full access to integrate with Chatter, but it was nice to hear that they will not be limited to only working with it.
My Point Of View
Salesforce.com is on quite the spending spree. Earlier this year they acquired Radian6, Assistly and Model Metrics. These moves lead me to believe that Salesforce has a clear vision focusing on cloud-based social tools that enhance both employees and customer engagement.
The timing on this is good, as the "social software" market is quickly moving beyond generic use cases like "helping people collaborate" and starting to focus on specially improving critical business processes. In order to move Salesforce beyond just CRM use-cases, they need to offer customers the additional scenarios that HCM and project management provide.
While many will compare today's acquisition to the recent purchases of RightNow (by Oracle) and SuccessFactors (by SAP), I'm more interested in seeing where SalesForce goes with the Objective and Task management features that I mentioned above.
Finally, as a Torontonian I am thrilled to see Rypple's success and hope this sparks even more interest in local tech startups.
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While most of the initial industry reaction is focused on how Salesforce.com may now be a player in the Human Capital Management (HCM) space (see my colleague Yvette Cameron's excellent post) I'm going to instead discuss how this impacts:
- Salesforce.com's experimental productivity service Do.com
- Existing Rypple partnerships with other social software vendors
Objectives/Tasks/Results
Two days ago (pre-acquisition era) Rypple announced a new feature named Social Goals. Social Goals enables people to share their objectives with their colleagues, track achievements and provide motivation. By working together teams can focus on goals and achieve better business results.
Making objectives social is a great move, but to achieve those objectives you normally need to complete a series of tasks. Now task/project management is an area that SalesForce is experimenting with via a new website named Do. Do describes itself as "Easily create and share tasks, projects and notes with your team so you always know what needs to get done, no matter where you are."
I envision the integration of Social Goals (objectives and measurements) and Do (project/task management) becoming a very powerful productivity tool for individuals and groups. I look forward to seeing where this goes in 2012.
Rypple Partnerships
Earlier this year Rypple and Jive Software announced a partnership where Rypple's features are integrated into the Jive Social Business platform. Since Salesforce.com is focusing heavily on the social space with Chatter, Radian6 and other features, I was curious where today's acquisition would leave the Jive/Rypple partnership. During a briefing with my colleagues and I at Constellation Research, I had the opportunity to ask John Wookey, Salesforce Executive VP of the new HCM business unit (which Rypple will become part of) about this. John assured us that Rypple will continue to build and enhance their integration with Jive and may still partner with additional vendors. Of course Rypple now has full access to integrate with Chatter, but it was nice to hear that they will not be limited to only working with it.
My Point Of View
Salesforce.com is on quite the spending spree. Earlier this year they acquired Radian6, Assistly and Model Metrics. These moves lead me to believe that Salesforce has a clear vision focusing on cloud-based social tools that enhance both employees and customer engagement.
The timing on this is good, as the "social software" market is quickly moving beyond generic use cases like "helping people collaborate" and starting to focus on specially improving critical business processes. In order to move Salesforce beyond just CRM use-cases, they need to offer customers the additional scenarios that HCM and project management provide.
While many will compare today's acquisition to the recent purchases of RightNow (by Oracle) and SuccessFactors (by SAP), I'm more interested in seeing where SalesForce goes with the Objective and Task management features that I mentioned above.
Finally, as a Torontonian I am thrilled to see Rypple's success and hope this sparks even more interest in local tech startups.
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