It’s now four months since salesforce.com announced the private beta launch of Chatter and many people have been experimenting with their new Cloud Collaboration tool, so how good is Chatter, really?
Chatter was hailed as revolutionary when it was unveiled at Dreamforce in November 2009.
Salesforce.com describe Chatter as a collaboration tool that allows you to stay on top of what’s happening in your company with real-time updates on people and groups, important documents, and your top deals and accounts.
After playing, experimenting and testing Chatter, it wouldn’t be unjustified to describe it as a game changer, through allowing you to connect with co-workers, projects and accounts in a way that increases productivity and inter-work efficiency.
Imagine being able to see what colleagues are working on, being able to answer their questions within Chatter without your inbox being bombarded with ‘request emails’, only reading and contributing your thoughts to relevant topics and all in a Facebook style with short updates and then follow-up comments (which also allows attachments.) This is the future of real-time collaboration and it comes in the shape of Chatter.
The initial concern was that it was another communication tool that would distract from tangible work; however anecdotal evidence and first-hand experience is that your inbox will begin to get quieter, whilst your productivity and input from colleagues will increase.
Marc Benioff said that: “We are in the era of Cloud 2, where social networking use has surpassed e-mail, Facebook and YouTube use have outpaced search, and new mobile devices like the iPad are creating entirely new ways to interact with information”.
You shouldn’t embrace Cloud 2 because it’s the new buzzword, you should embrace it because it will benefit your business.