Firstup vs. OpenText Vibe

Firstup is a well-suited solution for companies that would like to spread brand awareness and get employees to be their number one ambassadors. Employees like to share/brag about the company they work for so why not use them as a driving force in spreading brand awareness!

Incentivized

1. How fast can I implement it fully for an organisation?
2. How many hours must I invest to get it up and running?
3. How does it compare to the competitors similar software?
4. Once up and running how much time and money will it cost me?

From the point of how it looks I would like to use it. As it is part of the Novell suite I would like to use it as I have already paid for it. So in conclusion with the help of Novell I might be able to implement it the way I want it but without extra cost.

• Intuitive, easy-to-use templates for posts, newsletters and email notifications.
• Consistent upgrades and innovation that keeps the tool current with other apps.
• Flexibility on how users can use the tool (i.e. comments, sharing photos, etc.) This decision is left to each organization, individually.

• You can create electronic forms with powerful workflows behind them. This allows for supervisor approval/rejection of forms. The workflows also allow for email alerts when certain stages are met.
• Built in social media tools. Each employee has a feed which other employees can follow.
• Allows employees to create teams in which they can chose members and rights.

Incentivized

• We'd love to see a calendar added that would show key upcoming dates.
• It would be awesome if the Message feature had a drop-down directory you could scroll through vs. requiring you to type a few letters before the potential names came up.

Incentivized

• Saving documents from word using the Novell vibe add in is slow and sometimes word will freeze before the document can be uploaded to vibe

We would never go back to a spreadsheet to manage our inventory! Since Vibe is essentially free for us there's no reason not to continue using it. We plan on rolling out more processes in other departments for the coming year. The biggest obstacle is change. People don't want to change doing things they have been doing for years. If the workflow saves time people will embrace it.

Incentivized

At this moment it still looks you need to do a lot to be able to use it and to be honest that time should be used for work not for configuring a communication tool for the business. Yes I understand that it takes time to learn something to use in the organisation , but with this tool I see the help desk having to answer a lot of questions on how to use it or once someone has done something how to undo it.

The implementation was good, it is the follow up that we need to do ourselves that takes time and effort.

I can't really answer this as the platform was already in place when I took my current role.

Incentivized

I think the closest well known product that stacks up to Vibe is Microsoft SharePoint. But I really can't make a true comparison because when I tried SharePoint, I didn't know quite know where to start which really dissuaded me from exploring further. With SharePoint, I hear and see that it can do a lot of things, but I feel like I have to be a coder of some sort in order to know what to do. And the templates available to start from is far from what I actually need in order to be productive in my industry. What my team migrated from was an open source platform called Projectfork. I really loved that platform, but it is easy to break. So in search from something stable, I stumbled across Vibe. It gave me the features I was accustomed to having plus the reporting, improved document versioning, easier flow of setting up users and permissions, and push notifications.

Incentivized

• We look at the earned media revenue tool that Firstup has, and we have earned media of over $4000 most months. Amazing!
• We have been recognized by peers, clients, and partner agents who say they always see our Hilldrup news pop up on social media!
• Marketing has been able to control the voice of the brand while amplifying the message to new audiences - amazing!

Incentivized

• Collaboration has increased.
• External access to Vibe has been positive.
• Managers have taken on more ownership of the system.
• The learning curve was difficult, and near vertical, at times due to Vibe being so different than what empoloyees were used to.

Incentivized