Which platform best suits your organization? Are you opting for a new social intranet, an extension of your current intranet with social functionalities or are you moving towards a digital workplace? The offer is large, so we regularly take a close look at a platform. This time: Speakap.
The story of Speakap
During their studies, Erwin van der Vlist and Patrick van der Mijl worked as team leaders at the supermarket. They soon noticed that communication between headquarters and store employees was not always effective and efficient. With the rise of the smartphone, they understood that it had to be different and that internal communication should seamlessly connect with your target audience. This is how Speakap was born.
This was in 2009. The company now has more than three hundred customers, including MediaMarkt, Rituals and the Dutch Railways. Speakap has seven locations around the world, with its headquarters in Amsterdam.
Distinctive features
Speakap is not a social intranet or digital workplace, but a communication platform for the non-desk employee, for example in retail and hospitality. These colleagues do not or hardly sit at a desk or at the computer, but they do have direct customer contact. They are the business card of the company and this is therefore an important group – if not the most important – to have work in line with the organizational strategy and keep well informed of the most current information.
What is the non-desk employee actively looking for? Exactly; his or her work schedule. The idea is that with Speakap – downloadable as an app or accessible via the browser – the employee always has the current work schedule in his pocket. Functionalities such as news (including push), a personalized timeline and direct messaging complete the platform. Through an Advanced open API, Speakap can link with existing organizational systems such as the intranet, document management system or E-learning omgeving.De
The design of Speakap is simple and is very reminiscent of Facebook because of the timeline and private messages. The idea behind this is to embrace the workings of social media that employees are already familiar with and offer a business alternative to this. By granting certain rights, administrators determine who can share information, and with which colleagues. This is what they call controlled social at Speakap.
Speakap connects to the active directory for user and rights management, just like almost all other internal social platforms. This means that new colleagues are automatically added and everyone is automatically removed from duty. Employees are divided into the appropriate groups based on location, department or function, so that each employee only sees information from the relevant groups for him or her. External parties can also have (temporary) access krijgen.
Cost
Speakap works with a licensing structure. You pay per user per month, with discounts starting at 500 employees. By default, Speakap is delivered in line with the organizational house style (logo, brand colors) and with all functionalities. For a surcharge, Speakap delivers the app completely white label for Android and iOS: without a brand license and fully designed in the organization’s own corporate identity. This is valuable for companies with a strong brand identity, because employees do not see that their Rituals app running on Speakap. This Premium plan also allows for SSO integration and active folder structure.
Our view
Speakap is not a social intranet or digital workplace, but is a complement to those channels. The app focuses on a number of functionalities – push messaging, direct messaging and schedule integrations – and thus also on a specific type of organization. Especially with changing work schedules, employees benefit from the fast reporting that Speakap offers. Employees simply install the tool on their phone, where the organization can give the app its own branding and name. All information can also be consulted via the browser.
In our opinion, Speakap is therefore especially worth investigating for organizations with many employees who do not have a workplace and do have customer contact, such as in retail, logistics and hospitality.
Want to know more?
Previously,we took a look under the hood at Jive, Iris Intranet, Viadesk, Valo Intranet and A&M impact. Wondering which platform best suits the needs of your organization? Please contact us.
