Companies/organisations with lots of IT-connected staff

[768]

I'm aware of some software that works quite well for getting people in touch with each other in an organisation with 1000s of staff. The staff work on different sites, some work from home, some work shifts, etc and there are a lot of specialties so anything which breaks down communication barriers a little can go a long way. Apologies, it's a bit vague.

However, it's completely bespoke and unable to be used elsewhere. Which is where I'm thinking there might be a chance to get a product out there that fulfills the same function.

I have a working core platform, it needs significant on site integration and probably some development work initially which would vary depending on the customer, so now I need a prospective customer. The NHS is probably an ideal fit, but I'm finding progress is at best slow there.

I'm looking through lists of larger employers and most seem unsuitable; I can't see the value in retail environments, or for airlines. Financial services or defence contractors might be a possibility, but paranoia tells me they'll have a stack of bored devs who'll nick the idea before I've gone anywhere with it.

Can anyone suggest other places that might be suitable?

[juice]

Sounds a bit like Jabber to me ?

[768]

It's complimentary to jabber, but there's some overlap.

[SHutchinson]

Have you just invented Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams?

[essayer]

SHutchinson said:

Have you just invented Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams?

or JIVE

[Foliage]

you've invented email?

on a more serious note, how is it going to make/save money for the company? that's how you sell it.

Edited by Foliage on Thursday 13th April 16:12

[randlemarcus]

No, its 768 Wave

[Mezger]

Slack? Skype for B, Cisco Spark, etc etc This space is very commoditised so would need to be very special indeed...

[768]

Again, complimentary to Skype for Business and to a lesser degree Jive, but it is different (the organisation that has one of these also has Jabber, Skype for Business and Jive too).

Foliage said:

you've invented email?

Telephone, the postal service, etc.

Foliage said:

on a more serious note, how is it going to make/save money for the company? that's how you sell it.

Yeah, that's the next step after figuring out who to doorstep. It seems difficult to me to quantify, do Jive or Skype for Business tell you how much money they'll save you?

[randlemarcus]

768 said:

Yeah, that's the next step after figuring out who to doorstep. It seems difficult to me to quantify, do Jive or Skype for Business tell you how much money they'll save you?

All the fixed line telecoms costs, minus the licence costs

[768]

It's not actually a comms tool itself, there's no user-generated content in it, so it's not competing directly with the above.

[768]

randlemarcus said:

768 said:

Yeah, that's the next step after figuring out who to doorstep. It seems difficult to me to quantify, do Jive or Skype for Business tell you how much money they'll save you?

All the fixed line telecoms costs, minus the licence costs

Fair point, although for the two organisations I know it's used in it's not replaced fixed lines.

Also doesn't work for Jive unless it's replacing some existing system.

[SHutchinson]

768 said:

randlemarcus said:

768 said:

Yeah, that's the next step after figuring out who to doorstep. It seems difficult to me to quantify, do Jive or Skype for Business tell you how much money they'll save you?

All the fixed line telecoms costs, minus the licence costs

Fair point, although for the two organisations I know it's used in it's not replaced fixed lines.

Also doesn't work for Jive unless it's replacing some existing system.

Then they haven't fully utilised SfB then.

[768]

Does that make a difference?

[SHutchinson]

Only if you want to save the costs of your fixed line telecoms. If you don't, it makes no difference at all.

[768]

I don't.

[randlemarcus]

Then what money are you looking to quantify savings for then? Replacement for Skype? Lovely, but they probably bought an E3 licence, and unless you are replacing mail and SharePoint they just saved erm, nothing, and lost presence and IM from Outlook.

[768]

It's not a replacement for any existing software as far as I can work out, it does something different. So any savings would be in time, although there are peripheral use cases that offer other benefits.

This thread seems to have drifted into product validation for a product I haven't actually described. I'm really just looking for ideas of who to approach.

[48k]

768 said:

I'm looking through lists of larger employers and most seem unsuitable; I can't see the value in retail environments, or for airlines. Financial services or defence contractors might be a possibility, but paranoia tells me they'll have a stack of bored devs who'll nick the idea before I've gone anywhere with it.

In my experience you can forget financial services - any FS organisation which hadn't sorted its remote working/business continuity/disaster recovery arrangements before 9/11 soon rectified that. The systems I've seen in use are quite sophisticated - clients for desktop and mobile, integrated with the VC systems in conference rooms, secure/encrypted connections. HD video etc etc

I'd also suggest that anything which "needs significant on site integration" is going to present you with a significant hurdle to overcome particularly if you're trying to approach an organisation which already has something in place.

[768]

I don't think any organisation does have something in place. It's not video conferencing either.