How Microsoft implemented Yammer (Part I)

It was two or three years ago. Since during this period I worked for a team developing Office 365 and Yammer, and at the same time I was geographically located in Russia, I saw how Yammer was mastered in the central company, and how it was implemented in the Russian branch. I will make a reservation in advance, my opinion is subjective, since this is just the opinion of one of the company's employees. If you want to learn the results of the adaptation of Yammer from an official source, read the articles " How three years of Yammer has changed Microsoft for the better " and " Adam Pisoni: Changing How much is the Messy Process ".

Pro purchase Yammer

If you decide to purchase Yammer, it will cost you about 1,800 rubles per year per user (or free of charge if you purchased any Office 365 package). It is cheaper than a morning cup of coffee, although, perhaps, not so nice. However, Microsoft itself cost much more. For Yammer was paid 1.2 billion dollars. At that time, Yammer had 8 million paid subscribers, so $ 150 was paid for one paid subscriber. This is comparable with the morning daily cup of coffee. It is said that the inclusion of Yammer in the portfolio gave Microsoft a new impetus in sales, but I want to draw attention to another aspect. At that time, Microsoft had a three-year development cycle, for example, Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010, and so on. And Yammer added a new function to its service twice a week, that is, two orders of magnitude faster. So I want to believe that Steve Ballmer bought primarily a cloud-based software development model and a new corporate culture.
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A few words about culture. If you read The Godfather, just read, and not watch the film, then you will see that this book is not about people, but about Martians, so unusual for us will be Sicilian culture. A similar impression was from the guys who came to the team from the very Yammer. Their way of thinking was perpendicular to the traditional microsoftware in almost everything. I already gave examples of this in our blog. Hopefully, part of this culture - openness and customer focus - did not disappear with the departure of former Yammer top managers.

About implementation.

I do not remember that Microsoft introduced in their products in any special way. It is believed that microsoftists have a need for new releases in the blood. If a person works at Microsoft, then he is already ready to use the whole new IT smart (well, except that some versions of Windows were introduced a bit peculiarly - “if you don’t install it at home, you’ll deal with Kevin Turner”). Moreover, technologically Yammer is implemented more easily than a carrot: you synchronize with Active Directory and start sending invitations to friends and friends of friends. Everything.

But here the question turned out to be cultural. Yammer is such an unusual product that the company had a special institute of customer success managers (customer success manager) who carried out organizational implementation with customers. It was to these managers that the implementation of Yammer at Microsoft itself was given at the mercy. Therefore, the introduction of the product in different geographical areas has been very uneven. For example, in Australia, the introduction of Yammer was under the personal control of the local general manager, so they themselves proved to be champions of implementation, and the fifth continent was in the forefront in the number of success stories.

What did the Americans do

The American initiative group did not regret themselves and tried to spend a month without email. To no email, no, no. At the end of the experiment, they said that the first week was difficult. But according to the results of the month, they accepted for themselves that only a tenth of the communications should be left in the email. The remaining 90% of the content can be placed in network groups, and moreover, there this correspondence was more effective.

Some executives began to publish reports on their travels. First in the network, then in the mail.

I really liked the idea of ​​the competence centers. It looks just like a regular network group, in which competent colleagues came together, who collectively gathered and maintained an up-to-date selection of materials, links, etc. It turned out that this is the most effective way.
search for information in the company. Although different centers of competence developed at different speeds. For example, the financial vertical quickly gathered a lot of information, and the energy group began to plan such a group only after two years.

Absolutely all sellers noted that customer interest in Microsoft has reached a new level. If before sellers could communicate on equal terms only with CIO or CIO-1, now they have quietly reached the level of HR directors and marketing directors. The number of meetings at the CxO level has increased significantly.

For the sake of completeness, it is worth noting that in the early stages there was an internal lack of understanding of the need for Yammer, see an example .

As an interim result, in international companies the best results of using Yammer are shown in the USA. Not only in Microsoft.

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In the second part I will write how Yammer was implemented in the Russian office.

Vladimir Ivanitsa Facebook | LinkedIn
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