Today, hundreds of software companies claim to offer a platform or component that can make your business more “social”. Although the cost is low for many of these products, the risk is not. One of the largest risks in selecting a social tool is the question of who will potentially acquire this product in the future, as part of the inevitable consolidation of the market.
Just look at your portal or web content system from the early 2000s. Is it still supported by the same provider? We’d be willing to bet the answer is “No.” And the crowded field of social software providers is certain to get cherry-picked in a similar fashion. If your social tool is among those acquired by another software provider, you could find yourself facing costs you never anticipated. In fact, the cost to migrate information to your new platform might be more than the cost of the new solution itself. And if the social landscape replicates our past experience in the ECM landscape, this particular game of vendor musical chairs could hit right about the time your users are starting to rely on your chosen social tool as part of their day-to-day work processes.
Sometimes this type of vendor risk is unavoidable. But for many technology buying decisions, you can mitigate the risk by doing your homework: understand your own long-term requirements and the solutions you are evaluating, their functional capabilities, and determine the levels of product risks or vendor risks.
In this Doculabs Live 30-minute webinar, you will learn:
- Why is the social collaboration vendor landscape already so confusing?
- How can you effectively evaluate the potential supplier landscape (among hundreds of entrants)?
- How can I mitigate my product risk by evaluating my current portfolio?
And you’ll come away from the webinar knowing how to make an informed decision when you select a social software tool for your own organization.