Report version is V1.1 published early June 2021.

Appiness

This is a buyers’ guide to ‘workforce communication apps’ or employee apps. The employee app market is a mostly unexplored space, changing and growing far faster than other enterprise tech topics. You may have heard of Staffbase, SocialChorus, or Smarp, but we know of over 60 products in this complex, ever-changing market.

The ease of deployment is a major factor in the decision to improve digital working with an enterprise grade app. Unlike many other enterprise solutions, an app can be deployed very quickly, and so adoption becomes all about the roll-out strategy and the change communications. It’s easy to engage a vendor and procure an app too – even considering any unique security or legislative needs – and so HR, Operations, or the central digital team might decide the budget and take the lead. We’d hope and expect Internal Communications, Learning and Development, and IT to take a direct interest as well.

Beyond the engagement and communication benefits of reaching frontline staff, these apps extend the digital workplace into people’s pockets, enabling people who rarely sit down with a computer to get things done when and where they like. Employee apps are productivity apps, helping individuals and teams get their work done in a professional yet social environment.

We’ve brought over six year’s of research experience, having published our SharePoint intranet report since 2015. Through our consultation work with clients, we’ve come to understand communication requirements and experience expectations. Leading vendors through our scenarios and review process has given us an insight into their strategic approaches, strengths, and roadmaps.

As ClearBox Consulting focuses on the business side of the digital workplace and does not sell any products, we are able to give you genuinely independent evaluations.

As a comprehensive buyers’ guide, our 500-page report will reduce your research time and accelerate your decision-making process, assuring stakeholders that you’ve evaluated the market.

Being in the cloud and on mobile devices, deploying an app is as much about your engagement and comms strategy as about IT. We know it’s not only Internal Communications teams that choose an app as a key channel; HR and Operations Directors are keen to lead in transforming their digital approach, to reach site and field workers.

In every full review you will find a the ‘Product Focus’ chart. This chart indicates the style of product; not a score of how well it performs. As an analogy, wines can be “full bodied” or “fresh and fruity” in character, but there are still good bottles and bad bottles of each.

Our reviews are entirely vendor-neutral (nobody pays to be in the report; we don’t sell any products or accept referral fees). Evaluations are based on in-depth live demonstrations against the criteria we set and go through rigorous fact-checking.

Report version: 1.1 released early June 2021.