Axero's Communifire is an Enterprise Social and Collaboration platform. Used internally, it connects employees, key customers and partners to pursue shared goals. Used to build an online community, it puts the emphasis on working together, not just meeting socially. The platform, designed to encourage the spread and expansion of ideas is suited for organizations that want their community to not only get connected but also feel they are getting things done.
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HCL Notes
Score 3.5 out of 10
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Notes from HCL (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in late 2018) is a collaboration platform based on the Lotus platform.
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Pricing
Axero
HCL Notes
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Axero
HCL Notes
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Axero tailors your investment to meet your unique needs. Custom pricing and volume discounting available. Contact Axero for details.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Axero
HCL Notes
Features
Axero
HCL Notes
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Axero
-
Ratings
HCL Notes
6.9
Ratings
11% below category average
Task Management
00 Ratings
7.00 Ratings
Gantt Charts
00 Ratings
6.00 Ratings
Scheduling
00 Ratings
8.00 Ratings
Workflow Automation
00 Ratings
5.00 Ratings
Mobile Access
00 Ratings
8.00 Ratings
Search
00 Ratings
6.00 Ratings
Visual planning tools
00 Ratings
8.00 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Axero
-
Ratings
HCL Notes
9.2
Ratings
15% above category average
Chat
00 Ratings
6.00 Ratings
Notifications
00 Ratings
9.00 Ratings
Discussions
00 Ratings
9.50 Ratings
Surveys
00 Ratings
9.10 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase
00 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting
00 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts
00 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook
00 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Specific scenarios where Communifire would be well suited to an organisation, would be companies that are people focused and committed to frequent and open communication channels from both the top-down and bottom-up. It also would suit organizations that are committed to providing the staff opportunities to collaborate, share and actively contribute to company initiatives and planning. If these aren't elements of your organization's culture, the system would still work for you or those companies who just want to push information out and have an effective intranet. Communifire would cater to these scenarios just as well and is more than capable of providing that type of simple solution.
I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.
Data sharing via small database format is valuable as they are quickly deployed, easily managed and distributed on backend email servers.
Integrated messaging allows quick communications between geographical sites reducing long distance costs.
Policy documents for registering new users, setting initial security levels, assigning default database access is managed easily with the admin client.
The simple user experience can be touted as a positive, but it is also a negative in some ways. Compared to other calendars, email and chat tools, IBM Notes looks like it is from the 90s.
We have constant issues with chat crashing. This is the main reason so many people in our organization chose to switch away from Notes.
There aren't a lot of integrations with IBM Notes and other applications we regularly use. Notes seems to have been left behind by many.
Our business depends upon this software to provide information on all aspects of our business. The future of business is a marriage between web site and customer interaction. This software will allow us to move in that direction.
Since companies started to moved their email systems to the Exchange platform and the cloud, we are unable to find any new projects with IBM Notes, the marketing share and software price is another issue, so we have to move to another platform.
This rating has a caveat - there is always room for improvement, and this team gets it. You always learn from customers how to do things better and easier, so it is a constant learning of how people use the site. Although the search engine is exceptional, most people do not use it as their first line of research. Much of the usability has to do with layout - and is not just a software usability item, so the rating is severely dependent up on the layout/options you choose for your usage. And their team will do anything in their power to get the results and layout you want. The areas that need improvement - and acknowledged by the team - are the administrative tools. There are a ton of options, and it takes a little to learn some of those. For most people, however, this won't be an issue, because the support team will always help you. This is always the case with more power. If there were fewer options it would no doubt be easier, but they give you the keys to all of the cars in the lot; so a little more to learn.
Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.
I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.
Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.
I evaluated a number of platforms. Here's the list: Mango Apps, Jive, Jostle, Zyncro, Bitrix 24, Exo platform, Huddle, Confluence, Hip Chat, Wrike, Hive. Some of the other platforms were really nice but Communifire was the platform that best meet our needs.
I've already answered this question in the previous questions however to sum it up IBM Notes stacks up VERY WELL! It has a LOT of really good business/enterprise features like enterprise-grade Dropbox-like storage, synced email/calendar/contacts, it supports a LOT of third-party add-ins, easy-to-use and friendly, very strong and robust, and most importantly it's a LOT more secure in my opinion than the competition.
Faster, more consistent onboarding. We host all training materials in an easy-to-access and easy-to-update space.
Better product knowledge = greater sales. We post training information about new products for immediate use by all team members.
Better communication within the store team translates to better customer service. Keeping part time team members up-to-date has always been a challenge. Now they are able to catch up quickly when they get to the store.
ROI for us has been extreme. In the late 1990's we automated dozens and dozens of paper-based processes and created workflows for activities that had never been formalized before. Additionally all those forms with their comments, etc. have been captured in a central place to serve as audit trails.
Whenever we need faster access to data (mail or otherwise), it's quick and easy to deploy a new Domino server somewhere, setup replication of appropriate databases, and get the local Notes clients pointed to those resources. So that to me is positive ROI because it represents time savings based on user need.
Tech. Support would claim a negative ROI in terms of supporting the Notes client, Notes updates, peculiar Notes issues, and users who complain about Notes. That is certainly true to a point. The Notes client is a much more complex piece of software than, say, Outlook. But we have to remember that Notes deployments are not just for Mail but many, many applications as well. In the end I'd say we might have 1 or 2 user complaints per month, typically around Calendar issues more than anything else.