Overcomes User Resistance to SharePoint Adoption; Advances the Social Enterprise  

London (UK) – June 29, 2011 – Social email software provider harmon.ie® today announced the UK launch of harmon.ie  for SharePoint,  the first platform to combine business collaboration tools and social enterprise networks into a sidebar within Microsoft® Outlook® or Lotus Notes®.  Designed to remove barriers to user adoption of Microsoft SharePoint® or Google Docs as well as to bring a critical social component to document creation, harmon.ie creates ‘social email’ by enabling users to collaborate with colleagues and external contacts without changing work habits or leaving the email interface where they spend much of their workday. Global enterprises such as ABB, Continental AG, and BearingPoint GmbH have adopted harmon.ie to drive collaboration initiatives, typically increasing end user SharePoint adoption from 30 percent to as high as 80 percent in a few months.

 

 harmon.ie reduces information overload and digital distractions by allowing business users to perform multiple work tasks from a single window without toggling between applications. harmon.ie:

 

·         Gets EVERY business user collaborating because documents are automatically uploaded into SharePoint or Google Docs from outgoing email messages, avoiding a nine-step process. This ensures that documents are centrally stored for reliable access to the latest version, and eliminates document chaos created by exchanging multiple versions by email.  

·         Simplifies retrieval of SharePoint and Google Docs documents with a simple drag-and-drop process that eliminates the need to go to the Web interface to open, edit or email a file.

·         Makes it easy to track documents and view document-related activities from an activity stream displayed within the harmon.ie email sidebar.

·         Enables people to connect with colleagues from the activity stream via unified communications (Lync™/OCS, Lotus Sametime® and Cisco UC), eliminating the need to change windows to initiate phone, chat, video or email discussions.

·         Lets people update their enterprise social network profiles and status directly from email. 

 

These features advance enterprise collaboration and social initiatives by connecting people and documents via ‘social documents,’ eliminating the complex navigation that typically discourages widespread use of collaboration tools.

 

“Enterprises recognize that the way we work today hampers efficient document authoring and editing, and therefore overall business agility. Business users working on a contract should be able to check the status of a document draft, initiate a phone call, or chat with the person editing the document from one window,” said Yaacov Cohen, co-founder and CEO of harmon.ie. “harmon.ie 3.0 brings all of these processes into the email interface for improved efficiency and team interaction.”

According to Gartner analyst Matt Cain, “A large return awaits organization that can exploit social constructs inside the in-box ... Organizations that encourage social and email integration are likely to be more nimble and experience higher degrees of user satisfaction.” 1

Advancing the Social Enterprise

The harmon.ie strategy of aggregating collaboration tools, social channels and email addresses the cumbersome work environment created by desktop window clutter that inhibits the adoption of new Enterprise 2.0 applications.

 

The need to repeatedly click, cut and paste between windows of multiple standalone applications interrupts workflow and causes distractions that drain worker productivity. One recent industry survey found that distractions waste at least one hour a day or £3277.50 per person annually, costing more than £3.2 million per year for businesses with 1,000 employees. The same distractions were also shown to negatively impact work output, work quality and client relationships.

 

Newer collaboration and social tools exacerbate the problem by adding extra steps as well as requiring users to modify their work routines in order to use them. Another survey shows that 66% of end users refuse to use SharePoint for daily document exchange because of the need to navigate through at least nine different windows to complete SharePoint tasks. In addition, according to Forrester Research, only 8% of end users working in companies that have implemented enterprise social networks use those social software tools. These user adoption gaps stem largely from the multiple steps and window navigation involved in completing tasks.

 

harmon.ie’s ability to overcome these stumbling blocks has attracted 400,000 paid users in enterprises around the globe as well as another 400,000 freemium downloads. 

 

“harmon.ie is a great app that’s bringing everyone on board our global collaboration program by transforming the email client into a social and collaboration workspace,”  said Thomas David Jones, group project manager at ABB, a Fortune Global 250 company and a leader in power and automation technologies that operates in around 100 countries and employs about 124,000 people.

 

"With harmon.ie bridging the gap between email and SharePoint, Continental is enabling seamless document collaboration that is critical to help us break the cycle of ‘knowledge monopolies’ and leverage the collective intelligence of all 80,000 information workers,” said Juergen Hagg, head of department, global applications & solutions for global automotive supplier Continental AG.

 

“Even in the first month after deploying harmon.ie, we saw immediate improvements in document sharing and other collaboration activities. It’s taking the pain out of SharePoint use,  and that’s a vital step in facilitating project work and ensuring documents and correspondence are available for long-term use,” said Anke Riesner, IT director for BearingPoint, a management and technology consulting company with end users in 14 countries.

 

Availability

harmon.ie for SharePoint 3.0 – Outlook Edition will be released in late July 2011.  A beta version is available immediately.

 

harmon.ie for SharePoint supports Microsoft Office 365 as well as other Microsoft cloud offerings including Microsoft SharePoint Online, hosted solutions for SharePoint 2010, Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows® SharePoint Services (WSS).

 

Complete price list for the EU

http://harmon.ie/SharePoint/Product/PriceList

 

harmon.ie for Google Docs is currently available at no charge and can be downloaded from http://harmon.ie/GoogleDocs/FreeDownload .

 

 

 

About harmon.ie 

harmon.ie (pronounced ‘harmony’) is a provider of social email software that brings document collaboration to every business user by transforming the email client into a collaboration and social workspace. Thousands of businesses already use harmon.ie social email to vastly increase user adoption of Microsoft SharePoint or Google Docs for document sharing, collaboration, and social networking. Formerly known as Mainsoft, the company has been building cross-platform enterprise software since 1993. For more information, visit http://harmon.ie.

 

1  Matt Cain, “Email Maturity Model:  Optimizing the Investment” (Gartner Research, April 27, 2011)

All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

 

Links to JPEGs of social email and how people can o connect with colleagues from the activity stream:

 

http://www.eskenzipr.com/files/harmon.ie_3_colleagues_view.jpg

 

http://www.eskenzipr.com/files/harmon.ie_activity_stream.jpg

 

http://www.eskenzipr.com/files/harmon_ie_3_version_history.jpg

 

ENDS

 

Press Contact:

Regine Hartmann

44 207 183 2834

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