Igloo has transformed its customizable intranet offering into a portfolio of 13 solutions, offered in three separate editions aimed at different market sizes, and supported by dedicated professional services.

Kitchener ON-based Igloo Software has announced a reworking of both its solutions portfolio and the way it is taken to market, with a new “Solutions as a Service” model that bundles in services, support and training.

“These are major steps forward for both Igloo and the industry as a whole,” said Mike Hicks, Igloo’s Vice President of Marketing. “It’s part of the transformation and ability to meet the evolving needs of the individual workplace. The intranets of old provided information that supported decisions already made, while the work happened outside it. Now there is a drive to use intranets as part of bringing people back into a central place where the work happens.”

Since 2008, Igloo has provided a cloud-based SaaS solution that includes intranets within a broad array of collaboration and other business apps.

“We had this one product – an intranet – and we would work with customers understanding their pain points and we would implement a variant of our one product to solve a business pain,” Hicks said. “We concluded however, that in this changing market, it would be more effective if we have a portfolio of prepackaged solutions. This enables the portfolio can be launched much quicker. Before, there was one product we could modify for you. Now the customer is in a much better position to adjust.”

Thirteen digital workplace solutions were announced, although Hicks said that more will be coming. The thirteen are:

•             Onboarding Center: Gets new employees up to speed in a fraction of the time of more traditional orientation processes.

•             Leadership Corner: Brings together leadership bios, blogs, social media activity, and media appearances in one place.  

•             Virtual Town Hall: Centralize all information around these town hall meetings.

•             Governance Center: Provides easy access to policies, procedures, and documentation, to ensure accountability, mitigate risk and protect the organization.

•             Newsroom: A one-stop destination for critical organization and industry news to make it easy for employees to remain informed and aligned.

•             Brand Portal: A centralized location for creative resources, identity guidelines, and brand experts to provides tools to ensure the organization’s brand is consistent and up-to-date.

 •            Social Zone: Provides a digital focal point for company events, clubs, and activities, including community classifieds, polls, photo walls, and microblogs.

 •            IT Help Desk: A self-service IT Help Desk that lets employees help themselves faster.

 •            Company Directory: A centralized directory that makes it easy to find the right person, team, or expertise.

•             Boardroom: Lets board members schedule events, and post policies and meeting minutes.

 •            Recognition Center: A one-stop solution to manage every aspect of an organization’s employee recognition program.

 •            Management Hub: A secure area for managers to connect, share best practices, and communicate privately about effective management styles, consistent messaging, and culture initiatives.

 •            Employee Handbook: Organizes all the information employees need to know about their workplace, presented in a chapter-like experience that emphasizes a company’s brand and culture.

“These are prepackaged solutions to solve very specific problems,” Hicks said. “Some of them, like the Newsroom, and Social Zone, are things that we provided in our earlier version, but they were not on a menu like now. Other elements, like Governance, Leadership Centre and Onboarding are entirely new, and came from conversations with customers about pain points.”

All of these Digital Workplace solutions will now be delivered leveraging this Solutions as a Service model. Each solution is available as part one of three Digital Workplace Editions, for SMB, midmarket and enterprise client requirements.

“Our definition of Solutions as a Service is around providing everything you need to be successful in a SaaS model – professional services including roadmap, training, KPIs, benchmark, and the expert advice, strategic guides and tactical implementation to evolve the digital workplace,” Hicks said. “It ensures the adoption of digital workplace initiatives will be as high as it can be. The packages with tiers also makes it easier for customers to see migration paths, to understand more advanced functionality as they grow.”

For instance, one of these services is Concierge, which provides customers with a designated Igloo expert who will act as an extension to their in-house staff and will be the single point of contact for all Digital Workplace program needs.

Hicks said that the new model should expand their market at all levels

“With this model, it’s now easier for smaller customers to understand this isn’t just for the big enterprises,” he said. “They can see how smaller and growing businesses can take advantage of digital workplace solutions we have, and that they can fit in their budget. For larger organizations, it gives them a bigger view about how they can start thinking about digital transformation.”

Hicks indicated that part of the reason Igloo made these changes was to support their channel growth efforts.

“Our initial focus on the channel was outside North America, but we are expanding our channel in North America and we believe this makes it more attractive to partners, because it makes it easier for them to sell and service, and to sell additional solutions on top,” he said. “We are recruiting for North American partners who have a focus on digital transformation or collaboration, as well as those with a vertical focus on healthcare, finance or high tech, which are our focus.”