What collaboration and sharing management tool would you recommend for an intranet platform? eXo, Jive?
Someone recently asked this question in an Alignable.com forum, and I had to respond because I feel like a lot of people don’t know anything else besides SharePoint and Microsoft products.
This is how I responded with a few extra comments sprinkled in:
It really depends on what you want to do. There are many pieces to the collaboration/intranet equation. It depends on what pieces or aspects you want to implement.
I use and manage SharePoint every day as part of the primary duties of my 9–5 job. It’s definitely a love-hate relationship. For many basic tasks or solutions that people require, you often have to get into custom development with SharePoint. This quickly gets beyond most users’ skills who just want to get there work done and collaborate.
I feel that with SharePoint, we end up focusing too much on the tool and not able to focus on work and communication. A lot of organizations falsely equate SharePoint with Knowledge Management.
There are several great alternatives to SharePoint out there. Some do more. Some do less. A lot of them focus on a few specific areas. One that I recommend that is fully loaded and comparable to SharePoint is Communifire, by Axero. It is super simple to use yet very comprehensive, and it is very inexpensive. Even if you have to pay someone to set it up (what I do ;-), it’s cheaper as far as overall cost and time compared to SharePoint.
These are just my opinions working in the Knowledge Management/Business Analysis field and after having used these tools for many years. Let me know if you want more information. And here are some more examples of great intranet platforms. Some work with G-Suite.
Communifire
Jostle
Honey
Simpplr
Happeo
LumApps
Jive
DEEP
Beekeeper
There are lots of options out there. I will be writing a much longer and more involved piece on these types of intranet tools and also on Rapid Application Development (RAD) solutions for small and medium-sized businesses that help with their business goals.
