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Smarp Briefs on the Latest Updates to Its Communications and Advocacy Solution
On June 17, 2021, Smarp briefed Info-Tech on the latest updates to its communications and advocacy platform. Based out of Helsinki, Smarp provides solutions for over 300 companies worldwide, with industry specializations in professional services, banking, and fintech.
Smarp enables targeted communication on a single platform, providing a tailored news feed to each employee to keep them informed about information that matters to them. Smarp pulls content from all employee channels to centralize and deliver communications at scale – either through integration with the employee’s most-used apps or as a mobile application. Content can be filtered by role, department, location, and language to enhance engagement. Indeed, content can be translated through Smarp to support a multilingual workforce.
While Smarps’ communications functionality has overlap with intranet solutions, Smarp distinguishes itself through additional advocacy capabilities. Through advocacy, employees can share content to their social media networks. Organizations can set certain limitations on how content is shared to maintain compliance with company guidelines, and advocacy can be gamified to encourage employees to drive new traffic and engagement.
These capabilities are grounded in Smarp’s AI-driven analytics and reporting platform, Workforce Insights. Organizations can apply advanced segmentation to understand how engaging its communications are; gather actionable insights from how its content is used; track posts, reads, comments, and likes; and determine how much traction employees’ shared posts are generating. Other reporting functionality includes alerts for critical communications developments (e.g. a sudden engagement spike) and evaluation for which employees are driving the most traffic and generating the most revenue from their advocacy.
Our Take
For organizations that have no mature platform or analytics suite for monitoring and providing communications to its employees, Smarp is a best-in-class solution. In particular, Smarp’s gamification options and enabling of employee advocacy are excellent means to both engage employees and drive business to the organization. When leveraged in this two-pronged way, Smarp has the potential to provide a high ROI. Indeed, Smarp has seen success with recognizable organizations across the world, from KPMG Sweden to Swarovski.
Organizations considering Smarp, though, should first be clear about the deliverable they would want to see. Smarp is not an intranet solution; if the scope of one’s requirements only center on targeted employee communication, Smarp may provide too many capabilities that risk not being fully leveraged. Moreover, technology by itself does not solve pain points; technology is only useful if it enhances well-established processes. To avoid poor selection and implementation of a communications and advocacy solution, the organization should first produce an engagement program strategy.
Source: McLean & Company, Develop an Engagement Program Strategy. Accessed July 5, 2021.