Reaping Business Rewards from Social Networking

Manhattan Associates provides software and professional services that help clients

ranging from American Eagle Outfitters to Walmart optimize their all-important

supply chains. The company’s expertise has a major impact on its customers’

efficiency and bottom lines—and now it’s using Yammer to do the same for its

own organization.

“We help companies with distribution complexity manage everything from

their warehouses to the trucks that ship inventory. That’s where we shine:

taking complexity and simplifying it,” explains Chief Financial Officer Dennis

Story. “That’s what I love about Yammer: It does the same for us.”

All international enterprises are complex organisms, but Manhattan Associates is

more complex than many. Not only does it have offices in nine countries, roughly

60 percent of its 2,200 employees are highly mobile, spending most of their time

at clients’ premises. “We want our software engineers to have good tools when

they’re at a customer’s site and need answers quickly,” Story says. “They don’t

have the time to search for a file or a document.

“Technology wasn’t solving our problems,” he continues. “The enterprise software

we were using was built for a static workforce, and our communications environment

was just perpetuating what we did in everyday life, which was work in silos. What

we needed was better communication and global knowledge management. We

were looking for collaboration not only across the globe, but across divisions. As a

company, we knew we’d be stronger if R&D and our professional services organization

were tightly linked.”

Success Story | TECHNOLOGY

Manhattan Associates marries Yammer’s social functionality with key business applications like SharePoint to drive productivity. Benefits:

> Collaboration that transcends organizational and geographical silos

> A mobile workforce that taps into corporate “tribal knowledge” anytime, anywhere

> Savvy knowledge management means client successes are replicated, significantly

boosting productivity, customer satisfaction—and the bottom line

Contact Sales: 1-888-926-7377 | contactsales@yammer-inc.com

Industry Technology

Employees 2,200

Founded 1990

Revenue $329.3 Million

Region North America

Dennis Story CFO

What excites me about Yammer is that it’s changing our culture and making it a whole lot easier to solve our clients’ complex problems. It has the greatest utility and usability of any application in our enterprise.”

Success Story | TECHNOLOGY

In late 2011, Manhattan Associates decided to see if social networking could

enhance its IT infrastructure and drive productivity. “I’d heard a lot about

Yammer, and a CFO is always a sucker for a low-cost alternative, so I signed

up for the freemium version,” Story says. “Within 30 days, 90 percent of our

employees had set up profiles and were using it. I call it ‘the revolution to

evolution:’ Yammer took off in such a viral way, my take-away is that there was

a lot of pent-up demand to collaborate.”

Staying Connected Anytime, Anywhere

Yammer is now the glue that connects not only Manhattan Associates’ globally

dispersed offices, but its highly mobile workforce. “We’re nomadic,” Story says.

“We go where the customers are, where the money is. Yammer feeds our mobility

footprint. It doesn’t encumber us; it allows us to be free.”

“I was out on the road forty weeks last year,” says Senior Consultant Zach

Zalowitz. “Sometimes it’s hard traveling, since there’s not always someone

available to give you the assistance you need to do your job well. With

Yammer, though, everyone I need to communicate with is just a click away.

Anywhere, anytime connectivity makes the world a smaller place.”

Connecting on Yammer isn’t just easier, it’s deeper. Says Story, “What I love about

Yammer is there’s no spam. It’s rich internal communication that pulls people out

of their silos. Plus, it’s persistent and searchable. The ability to bookmark something

that looks interesting and come back later really helps me be more efficient.”

For Ron Carolino, Principal Business Analyst, increased efficiency is also the name of the game. “We get the same questions

over and over in my department, and when they came in through email, we’d have to answer them each time,” he says. “Within

weeks of implementing Yammer, that was eliminated. That saves us a huge amount of time, so we can focus on documentation

and design—things really add value to the product and improve clients’ experiences.”

As Manhattan Associates has discovered, Yammer’s knowledge-management capabilities lead to a host of benefits, including a

better bottom line. “By capturing and sharing the solutions our reps come up with to address clients’ challenges, we’re far more

efficient,” Story says. “That means more billable than non-billable hours. Yammer increases margin and drives profit. That’s the

Holy Grail for any company: effectively harnessing knowledge in a really cost-efficient manner.

“Smart companies figure out how to provide a medium to employees so that the folks who have tribal knowledge share it

with others who are facing complex problems,” he adds. “Yammer has done that for us. There’s nothing more powerful than

a workforce that self selects the best ideas so they reach the top. Yammer has brought our network to life. It’s become part

of our company’s DNA.”

We’re using Yammer to go toe to toe with competitors. It makes us leaner and better at what we do by giving us a place to share knowledge and collaborate. The more we do that, the better we get—as individuals and as a company.

Zach Zalowitz Senior Consultant

Success Story | TECHNOLOGY

THE RESULTS

> Nearly universal adoption. Employees don’t just use Yammer, they embrace

it. In the first month, 90 percent signed up; today 98 percent of the workforce

is on board.

> An end to silos. Yammer transcends organizational and geographical

boundaries, so R&D knows what’s going on with professional services, and

workers in the Atlanta HQ are attuned to the Tokyo and Bangalore offices.

> An empowered mobile workforce. Half of the company’s staff is mobile,

and with Yammer, they can tap into the corporate network to get the

answers they need.

> Effective knowledge management. Questions are answered quickly and

solutions shared so they can be replicated.

> A better bottom line. By bringing social functionality to Manhattan Associates’

IT infrastructure, Yammer drives productivity—which increases everything from

customer satisfaction to billable hours.

For more information about Manhattan: www.manh.com For more information about Yammer: www.yammer.com

ABOUT YAMMER

Yammer is a leading Enterprise Social Networking platform used by over 200,000 organizations worldwide—

including 85% of the Fortune 500—to foster team collaboration, empower employees, and drive business

transformation. Yammer’s freemium business model lets customers see the value of Yammer before upgrading

to the premium offering. Founded in 2008, Yammer is now part of the Microsoft Office Division.

SharePoint is Manhattan Associates document-management tool of choice.

“We rely on SharePoint,” says Senior Operations Analyst Susan Croteau. “It has crucial features like version control. Now that it’s integrated with Yammer, we can message somebody on the fly, or throw a question out to a group—all without leaving SharePoint. Plus, global search allows us to search both Yammer and SharePoint, which really broadens our knowledge base.”

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