Editor's Note: This article refers to a video interview shot at Interop 2010. To view ContactCenterSolutions's entire library of videos from Interop and other industry shows, demonstrations and interviews in our in-house studio, visit our Video News home page.
At Interop this year, ContactCenterSolutions had the opportunity to speak with a number of key industry players, including Milind Pansare, Senior Director of Product Marketing. Pansare visited the ContactCenterSolutions media booth for an interview captured in this video.
Pansare began the interview explaining Saba, a company considered to be a leader in the learning and people management space. It is a public company, founded in 1997 and is a $110 million company.
Pansare also noted the best thing about Saba is customers as they are amazing and passionate users of Saba. He noted that 51 of Fortune 100 are customers and the company claims 1500 customers in 170 countries and Saba products are available in 14 different languages.
Saba offers four different product lines. The company is a Gartner leader in the learning quadrant and a visionary and leader in people management software. Saba products are used in large companies for learning and the company is also big in collaboration.
Saba Centra is a web-based collaboration platform used by the enterprise and government agencies. The IRS, for instance, saved over $49 million using Saba for training last year. Overall, the IRS has realized a savings of $205 million over 9 years of using Saba.
When asked about social networking, Pansare said, "The nature of the organization is changing. You have multi-generational workers in the organization. And on the outside in your day-to-day life, you use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube; everything moves fast, it's on your cell phone and your iPad. You come to work and you have these old, blue screen environments."
Pansare went on to note that Saba has taken the lead in the HR space especially. New software allows companies to use Twitter-like interface within the enterprise to promote successes in the enterprise - such as performance reviews. Saba focuses on taking current technologies to make business processes better. The enterprise social platform allows for the sharing of resources so all can benefit from the information and the experience.
When asked why companies don't just use Facebook for social networks, Pansare highlighted that companies cannot enforce corporate policies within Facebook itself and cannot keep it within the firewall. Saba offerings separate the social information from the enterprise information.
Pansare also talked on the point of education about bringing social environment into the enterprise. He noted it is not just about the toolset; it is also about organizational change for a purchase and it must fit within current business processes.
For more on Saba and its innovative solutions, check out this video in full.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for ContactCenterSolutions and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan's articles, please visit her columnist page.
