More than ten years ago, I found myself involved with a team working to identify an internal social platform for the world’s largest Danish shipping company.
The world of internal communication has moved considerably in that time - and I’ve worked with some great vendors in this space: Happeo, Smarp, Contact Monkey and others.
There are a lot of great internal comms platforms out there - and these days, having a great platform is only the starting point. That’s why I’m choosing to work with Sparrow Connected. This is not the only reason though.
In a field where many “species” are deeply involved in selecting and implementing internal comms platforms, Sparrow Connected is committed to focusing on supporting communication pros as customers and champions as well as end users.
Sparrow Connected also promotes the value of communication leadership. That’s why they support #WeLeadComms, a global program to recognize communication leaders who are making a difference to their organizations and communities.
The real competition is not the competition between internal communication platforms. It's between modern, effective, and pragmatic tools that empower employees and accelerate performance, and the mindset that keeps managers thinking “it’s not worth it” or “let’s make do with what we have” or “we’re too small for something like this.”
Vendors don’t help when they say, “we’re only interested in the enterprise market.” I have written several pieces on why modern internal communication tools can benefit companies with a few hundred employees just as profoundly as they can companies with tens of thousands.
Sparrow Connected sees its sweet spot as being between 500 and 20,000 employees, with a focus on getting the right messages to the right people. For me, that’s a pretty sweet spot.
Having followed the growth of the internal communication market for ten-plus years, platforms are being delivered with increasingly similar functionalities and comparable look and feel. Rather than differentiating themselves on features in three-five years' time, the real differentiation will be in the areas of strategy and support.
Sparrow Connected gets this, and the opportunity to work with their clients on how not only to best use the tools they are investing in, but on how to best achieve their goals and priorities overall - particularly by engaging the right people at the right time - is very exciting to me. The potential of the right strategy combining with great tools is more powerful than what tools alone can offer.
One thing that gets me about vendors is when they say “oh, we don’t compete on price.”
The reality of communication leaders is that they mainly work in worlds where costs and budgets matter.
Part of Sparrow Connected’s commitment to communication leaders is to make its offerings available to as many organizations as sustainably possible.
The Sparrow tool itself has some great characteristics. It works seamlessly with Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, yet doesn’t require a Microsoft platform to be deployed. This makes it useful for deskless employees, and for M&A situations where each party is on different platforms.
Whether you are looking to move out of start-up chaos, move beyond an overreliance on email, move away from an existing platform that is either too limited for your needs or is too excessive for your budget, it’d be good to talk.
It would also be good to talk if you are facing other issues with strategy, alignment, or better using your existing communication resources. Book a free 30-minute consultation at https://calendly.com/changingtheterms/30min.