Thursday, March 28, 2024
HomeAvePoint CEO's BlogCollaborate with Confidence & Leapfrog the Adoption Curve

Collaborate with Confidence & Leapfrog the Adoption Curve

AvePoint recently sponsored an IDC survey with Microsoft in Asia that found 80 percent of businesses in that region want to adopt enterprise social platforms including Microsoft SharePoint in the next 18 months, but are reticent to do so because of data leakage, security, and compliance concerns. This tells us that more than ever, despite the macro-economic slowdown, businesses recognize the fervent need to improve their innovation velocity and competitiveness in today’s hyper-connected information world. This means ensuring information is available to those who should have it and protected from those who should not is of paramount importance.

This brings up a seemingly simple question, then: How can we help enterprises leap frog the adoption curve and truly bring enterprise collaboration and social into the confines of the enterprise?

It’s a simple question but requires a nuanced answer. While this is already a given in the consumer space, enterprises are different from consumers in that they have much more liability when it comes to intellectual property (IP), public relations, and other legal concerns with regard to the exchange and flow of information. The differentiator now, as opposed to even just a few years ago, is that merely terming this collaboration initiative as a pipe dream is no longer sufficient. It’s no longer sufficient for knowledge workers, and it’s certainly not accepted by enterprises’ customers and clients.

Let’s be honest with ourselves – business users will always find ways to get their jobs done, regardless of what legal and compliance stakeholders desire. A real-world example includes compliance officers rejecting an ask to share data externally through SharePoint. Instead of taking no for an answer, workers decided to use the “free” Google Apps platform to share information – thus opening up the organization to a tremendous liability risk to its corporate IP.

This reality that keeps many compliance officers awake at night opens the door for AvePoint to provide the elixir through our traditional strength in infrastructure management and governance as well as our expanded integration story of compliance and risk management for enterprise collaboration platforms. We can provide that peace of mind risk averse yet growth seeking organizations desire today, the ability to truly embrace enterprise collaboration and social initiatives.

From my travels worldwide speaking with CEOs, CIOs, compliance, and risk officers, I clearly see the need to consolidate platforms, improve information worker efficiency, and empower stakeholders to have access to the right information anywhere and anytime. With that said, the enterprise must have visibility and control over who, what, and where that information is being shared – both inside the walls of an organization and outside to its customers and partners.

This tension is where AvePoint has its greatest strength – we can help customers refine their enterprise collaboration and social vision by utilizing all their various investments today (be it SharePoint, Exchange, Yammer, Box, Dropbox, Jive, and others) and stitch together a cohesive information collaboration story that offers strong security, compliance visibility, and enforcement capabilities that risk and compliance officers need. Our unique capability in cross-platform compliance and governance, in addition to our background in infrastructure management across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, help customers worldwide leap frog the SharePoint adoption curve and focus on improving worker efficiency.

In the coming months, we will continue to share real-world success stories on how AvePoint’s focus on collaboration with confidence helps enterprises smash barriers to productivity and unlock the next wave of innovation from their most important asset – their employees.

TJ
TJ
Dr. Tianyi Jiang (TJ) co-founded AvePoint in 2001 and has served as the organization's Chief Executive Officer since 2005. TJ is responsible for overall strategy and direction of AvePoint, which includes product innovation, investor relations, and business development. He is focused on delivering value to customers, partners, shareholders, and the AvePoint team, every day. A recipient of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in New Jersey in 2010, TJ received both B.S. and master’s in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University, and a Master of Philosophy and PhD in Data Mining from Department of Information Systems, Operations Management, and Statistics, Stern School of Business, New York University.

7 COMMENTS

  1. Instead of blogging can you please attempt to fix your company’s rampant turnover? We’ve had 5 different account managers in the past year..certainly not the level of “customer support” organizations expect when making 6 figure investments in enterprise software

  2. Rampant turnover comes from dissatisfied employees which in turn shows how they treat people. Buyers beware.

  3. Hello. Thank you for reading our blog. As a customer, your concern is of utmost importance to us and we would like to help in any way we can. Please reach out to your sales representative directly or email sales@avepoint.com so we may address any issues you have in a timely and efficient manner. (Franklin Teagle, AvePoint Community Manager)

  4. Franklin, at this point in time we don’t have any issues…THANKFULLY. My frustrations arise from the fact that I am constantly introduced to new “account managers” who then ask questions, which I have answered many times in the past, in an effort to sell more AvePoint products. As mentioned earlier, it is worrisome to see such a large investment, yield such inadequate account management.

  5. We apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced. I will be sure to pass your comments along to the appropriate parties. (Franklin Teagle, AvePoint Community Manager)

  6. First of all, thank you for reading my blog! We value our customers and take customer satisfaction very seriously.

    From your comments, it’s clear that you don’t have any issues with our products and our 24×7 technical support. Rather, your issue is with your sales account management. AvePoint is growing very rapidly, and as we continue to add new sales reps and customers, we do from time to time reassign customer management within the sales organization. This is part of our growing pains, and we encourage you to provide direct feedback to your sales rep or escalate issues to his or her manager, director, and even regional business VP. You can also directly email me at “tj AT avepoint.com” and I will make certain your specific issues are addressed.

    Thank you for your support of AvePoint! We value your business and strive to do our best to meet your expectations!

  7. Growing pains? I was under the belief AvePoint has been in existence since 2001, surely you guys should have figured it out in the past 12 years. I recently tried to contact my account rep and his manager, both of them are no longer with the company!! I then dialed your main line only to have the phone ring for 3 minutes without an answer. If the only recourse is to email you directly, then I will do that in the future. I only decided to post here so prospective buyers have an understanding of what they can expect.

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