CHICAGO, Dec. 22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The first Grid℠ report for social collaboration software, announced today by business software review site G2 Crowd, ranks 14 products to help purchasers in their selections.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141222/165901

The Winter 2015 report is based on more than 325 reviews from business professionals.

The Grid℠, which is created from G2 Crowd's software review engine, factors in customer satisfaction reported by users and vendor market presence determined from social and public data to rank products.

Social collaboration software provides a private social platform for employees to connect and collaborate with others at a team or enterprise level. The software gives employees the ability to discover and connect with other co-workers, manage tasks and assignments, instant message, form teams, and collaborate on documents with others at the company. The software may offer or integrate with third-party tools to provide functionality for project management, phone or video communication, and file sharing.

To qualify as a Leader, a product must receive a high customer satisfaction score and have substantial market presence. Chatter, Lync, VMware Socialcast and Podio were named Leaders. High Performers have high customer satisfaction scores with a smaller market presence than Leaders. Wrike, Slack, Flowdock, Central Desktop and Confluence were named High Performers. Chatter earned the highest overall customer satisfaction score.

Across all social collaboration tools, reviewers reported the product they use meets their requirements at an average rate of 82%, and on average reviewers said they were 80% likely to recommend the product they use.

Some highlights from the social collaboration platform reviews on G2 Crowd:

"Salesforce broke new ground with [Chatter], and truly offers some awesome features that allow socializing in a brand new way around business processes. The integration with e-mail is especially useful. The file sharing capabilities that come along with it are also quite robust and effective."
- David Wright, Developer at Siemens

"[Lync] is an easy, highly effective communication tool that makes inter-office communication much easier and efficient. I use it daily to communicate with people of all levels, whether it be to check in with my project manager to get clarity on next steps of our analysis or to coordinate happy hour plans with fellow colleagues."
- Hallie Hastings, Valuation Analyst at Duff & Phelps

"[VMware] Socialcast has an easy, familiar and intuitive interface - our 700+ employees had little trouble adapting to the system with only a basic introduction."
- Charles Williamson, Marketing Executive at Landmark Bank

"Podio provides a platform where collaboration with colleagues is easy and efficient...We worked with individuals from all backgrounds and they were all able to pick up the platform with ease. The deliverables area really helped us keep focused on archiving the key steps in creating the end goals, and everyone felt involved."
- Matt Hudson, Web Development Coordinator at Teesside University

"Slack is intuitive and sleek and they have one the most front footed [development] teams ever who respond VERY fast to feedback and product improvement ideas."
- Andrzej Moyseowicz, Innovation Partner and Founder at freemavens

"I love that Wrike integrates with all my devices, with a variety of [communication] methods ...allowing me to constantly stay up-to-date on open and completed projects. I can assign tasks on the go with a quick email, using Wrike's intuitive short-code system, including images or email attachments."
- Joshua Van Horsen, Marketing Manager at Drury Hotels

"Flowdock is an easy way to communicate with my colleagues. Whether it be to get a company-wide message across or simply privately message a specific individual without having to make multiple emails."
- Vincent Ladisa, Office Administrator at SteelBrick

"The support that Central Desktop provides is great. Our staff has been impressed with the service and power that is available through the system. The users...find it easy to use and really love the convenience of versioning and keeping email threads all in one place."
- Michael Mury, Program Manager and Managing Editor, American Chemical Society

"Confluence is able to handle things like tagging users, awesome formatting with an easy syntax, and can be used to hold documents of many different types. The interface is relatively easy to use and read."
- Dane Hillard, Web Application Developer at ITHAKA

Of the more than 75 software vendors listed in G2 Crowd's social collaboration platform category, the 14 ranked products each received 10 or more ratings to qualify for inclusion on the Grid℠.

Satisfaction rankings are generated from the user reviews, and market presence is calculated from vendor size, market share, and social impact. Based on a combination of these scores, each software solution is categorized as a Leader, High Performer, Contender, or Niche.

Premium research access can be purchased on the site for $599. This offers the original data for filtering and weighting, as well as individual profiles of each platform with the most helpful positive and negative social collaboration software reviews, detailed company information, user satisfaction ratings, feature scores and customer metrics. Future refreshes of the Grid℠ will provide updated rankings based on the latest reviews and social data.

Be sure to check out the new Grid℠ for the best social collaboration tools and subscribe to the premium research.

About G2 Crowd, Inc.

G2 Crowd is a leading business software review platform that leverages its more than 20,000 user reviews to drive better purchasing decisions. Technology buyers, investors, and analysts use the site to compare and select the best software based on peer reviews and synthesized social data. Co-founded by the founder and former executives from SaaS leader BigMachines and backed by more than $4.5 million in capital, G2 Crowd aims to bring authenticity and transparency to business technology research. For more information, go to G2Crowd.com.

 

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/g2-crowd-announces-winter-2015-rankings-of-the-best-social-collaboration-tools-based-on-user-reviews-300013427.html

SOURCE G2 Crowd

Copyright 2014 PR Newswire