Social Networks-for-Enterprise specialist, Jive Software is to go public this morning (Tuesday 13th December, 2011) with an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that could value the company in excess of half a billion dollars. The company will trade on the NASDAQ as “JIVE”.
I love Jive, as I said in my blog last month, it embodies everything the Internet should be. Jive brings together social concepts and drives them deep into business processes. It levels the playing field so that CEOs and front-line workers can collaborate in a seamless, transparent and traceable way.
The scenarios I usually give to push home the serious benefits of bringing social into Enterprise are:
The Sales Tag-Team
Imagine an Outbound Sales Clerk is about to call a current, but latent, customer to discuss an upgrade or a new product. They open the customer account to retrieve the customer’s contact information. Meanwhile, another Sales Clerk, who is “watching” the customer’s account (because they have previously sold to the customer) is alerted that the account has been opened by the first clerk.
The second clerk contacts the first via instant messaging and, after establishing that they are about to contact them to try and sell something, recommends that they talk about dogs because the purchaser at the customer’s business is a serious dog lover, and once that rapport is built up they’ll buy anything!
The second clerk then gets notified half an hour later confirming a new Sales Order has been added to the account, and an instant message from the first clerk to thank them for their advice.
A second scenario:
The Collaborative Stock Pick
A warehouse worker is running through a picking list trying to fulfil an order. He manages to find 9 of the 10 “Widget X2000” items on the list but there aren’t any more in stock. He adds a note to the picking list on the computer saying they are out of the items. Immediately, the original Sales Clerk is notified of the shortfall, and contacts the customer. Using the live stock list, they settle for a “Widget X2500” and a bit of discount. Within 5 minutes of the warehouse worker adding the note, he is notified that an X2500 model will be fine to complete the order and the order is despatched.
Both of these stories are possible with Jive’s social networking software. And much, much more.
In last night’s early trading, the IPO price estimate of “$8-$10” was exceeded and the company sold 13.4 million shares at $12, instead of the 11.7 million shares they had expected to sell at $8-$10. That $12 price values the company in excess of $600m.
The NASDAQ Bell
This morning, Jive CEO, Tony Zingale, will ring the NASDAQ opening bell to celebrate the IPO.
Keep track of Jive’s first day of trading here, or by putting “JIVE” into the widget below: