How to make your internal communication more valuable with the combination of Microsoft and Spencer

Many companies work with Microsoft products. Chances are yours is too. And if you are working with Office 365, you’re well aware that it offers many options to communicate. So, the question that probably comes to mind is: why should I need another solution for internal communication on top of Yammer, Teams or Sharepoint?

That is a legitimate question. And we are going to answer it by explaining 2 things:

• Everything that Spencer helps you achieve on top of what is available in Microsoft Office 365.
• The way in which Spencer leverages everything you’re already doing in a Microsoft environment.

Want to hear our answer rather than read about it? Schedule a meeting. We’ll gladly explain it to you face-to-face.

What is it that makes Spencer the most effective solution for your internal communication?

This is what Spencer is about:

• Turning internal communication into a habit by easily letting you integrate daily functionalities that are already at the center of your organization.
• Delivering personally relevant messages and getting everyone aligned with the company’s objectives.
• Optimizing your messages and knowing you’re getting them across.

Turning internal communication into a habit

With an enterprise social networking tool like Yammer, getting full adoption is challenging. What it boils down to is that you’re building a community that only brings value to the people who are willing to contribute. In most cases, those are the people who are already engaged and enjoy being active on social networks. But your hard-to-reach employees remain just that: hard to reach.

Although 52% of companies have internal social channels, 1 in 5 is thinking internal social tools should be killed.

‘State of the sector’ report – Gatehouse

The objective is to reach all of your employees. Regardless of whether they are working at a desk or in the field. Spencer has been built to reach everyone in your company and it has a track record of doing so.

Spencer manages to get adoption rates of 94% and higher.

The reason for this is that Spencer approaches internal communication from a totally different angle. It turns it into a habit that everyone gladly takes up. Because it lets you combine important daily functionalities for your employees (like e.g. reporting an incident, consulting your planning or requesting a day off) with organizational communication.

That is how you create a push and pull dynamic to drive reach, engagement and motivation. And that is how Spencer succeeds in increasing your operational effectiveness and employee engagement simultaneously.

Moreover, it is easy to give your operational staff, who has no company account, access by using their private phone number or personal email address. While everyone else simply logs in using their standard company user name and password (using SSO).

Delivering personally relevant messages (that sometimes need to stick)

Chat-based communication (like Slack or Teams) works very well between employees. But what is typical for that kind of communication is that it becomes overwhelmingly noisy very fast. And as anyone can send anything to anyone else or start groups and channels, it doesn’t take long for any message to get snowed under.

Employer-to-employee and employee-to-employee communication are 2 different things.

With employer-to-employee communication, you don’t want to add to the noise. You want your employees to get the messages that are relevant to them. On a personal level. To make sure they get through the day more easily.

And whenever you are communicating about your mission, your vision, your values or purpose, you want your message to resonate. That message needs to stick and stand out. At least until you know everyone has read it and understood it.

You also want to make sure that your message is shared as part of a trusted, branded experience. Not an experience that is determined to a large extent by the fact that the application you are using has been branded by its maker.

And today, more often than not, communication cannot wait for the IT-department to find the time to help you out. Sometimes, you have to be able to act and communicate instantly. That is why Spencer comes without learning curve. And with all the tools to easily solve everything yourself: create target audiences and publish content, emergency information, documents and links to the relevant audiences. Without having to wait on anyone else.

Knowing if people are listening and engaging. Or not.

When working with applications where anyone can fire off messages to anyone at any time, it is impossible to know if your message has been seen, read and understood. Starring a channel or repeatedly sending the same message, does not solve that problem.

The only thing that solves the problem, is when your application gives you insights. Into how to optimize your messages for your different target groups. Into what messages have been read by whom. And into the feedback you’re getting. That is exactly what Spencer does.

How does Spencer leverage everything you’re already doing with Microsoft?

When you are already working extensively with Microsoft, you want to make sure your efforts yield maximum results. That is why Spencer speaks the same language Microsoft does.

Spencer and Microsoft Azure

Spencer is cloud-based. It is hosted exclusively in the European data centers of Microsoft Azure. That makes it not only GDPR-compliant but also safe and secure.

Spencer also works with Microsoft to make sure we leverage the latest innovations to power our AI-driven internal communication platform. That is e.g. what makes Spencer an AI-driven internal communication platform that gives you insights into your audience and gives you recommendations on how to communicate with every target group. What that means is this: instead of taking years slowly getting to know your organization through trial and error, with Spencer it takes you about a week.

Spencer and Office 365

• Spencer allows for single sign-on.
• It connects to Office 365 for user data.
• It makes your Sharepoint document library available in Spencer. Your data governance remains with Office 365.
• Spencer connects to ‘My meetings’ so it can suggest a meeting room based on your agenda when you forgot to book one.

Get radically better internal communication by combining the best of Microsoft with Spencer

For every company, a lot depends on how well internal communication is received by the entire organization. That is why Spencer deserves a closer look. Because it turns your internal communication into a habit that everyone gladly takes up. Because it helps you in understanding how to communicate effectively with all different target groups within your organization in a week’s time. And because it leverages everything you’ve already accomplished with Microsoft.