The success of a Yammer deployment. Through all the obstacles the truth was in the tool.

1. 10,000
MILES TO
YAMMER
(YᾸM’ӘR) - TO TALK VOLUBLY AND LOUDLY

2. 10,000 MILES TO
YAMMER
• A culture of functional silos
• How an accident turned into a game
changer
• Steering the conversation
• Gaining acceptance
• KaBoom!!

3. A BRIEF HISTORY
• Aristocrat Technologies is a Poker Machine manufacturer of
more than 50 years
• Founded by a dentistry chair manufacturers son in a garage in
Australia
• Global employee count is approx: 2200 employees
• Global locations: 12 + locations with many regional offices
containing many remote workers

4. A CULTURE OF
FUNCTIONAL SILOS
• We all deal with silos. Why is yours special?
• We operate globally
• There are 60 years of acquisitions
• This resulted in many operating models and many
applications/systems
• These silos have deliverables with little to no visibility of
others
• The regions are very competitive
• There is generally a lack of enthusiasm to support greater
organisational changes due to regionalisation
• Impacts to overall business strategy
• Messages became convoluted

5. HOW AN ACCIDENT BECAME
A GAME CHANGER
• My role at Aristocrat – The IT Account Manager
• I look after three major business functions
• Build stronger relationships between business functions and IT
• Use this insight to identify and offer better services and solutions
• But there was gap…
• I needed a more holistic view
• Social Media seemed to have the niche for communication
• Cloud sourcing, enthusiasm to share, global reach
• Enterprise 2.0 had the capacity to address the need
• The organisation was asking the question “To Facebook
or not to Facebook?”
• And the gates opened…

6. HOW AN ACCIDENT BECAME
A GAME CHANGER
• There are a number of options in this space
• Jive SBS - Jive Software, SharePoint 2010 – Microsoft, NewsGator –
SharePoint 2010 integration, OraTweet – Oracle, Lotus SameTime
Advanced – IBM, SocialText Signals, SocialCast, Co-op
• Originally I was a big fan of Jive SBS
• This fit a more IT centric model with a centrally deployed solution
• There were a number of features that fit the longer term business
strategy and addressed our short term needs
• I met with other users who raved about uptake and success
• It was $$ with a potentially large OCM issue
• I then tried Yammer
• It was free…initially
• It had a smaller feature set
• It was more social
• It was SaaS
• It had an invite your colleagues feature

7. ENTER…

8. HOW AN ACCIDENT BECAME
A GAME CHANGER
• We had something viral
• Our free network grew by 100 people in 1 day and just
kept going. After 4 days we had 250 people.
• People were excited to have a social platform
• They kept inviting more colleagues
• BUT, the free version was not a global platform for us
• Now, how do avoid killing it with bureaucracy?

9. STEERING THE
CONVERSATION
• In order to proceed with Yammer a business case was
created
• Needless to say there were a lot of questions
• ROI and a lack there of it financially
• Will this be a time waster
• How will it be regulated
• Security of the network
• Is it just a fad? Will it die?
• So how does a business case like this survive?

10. STEERING THE
CONVERSATION
• Kept the conversation simple
• It’s like Facebook for the organisation
• It’s breaking down the existing silos in the business
• It has the capability to gage, model and promote our
behaviours
• It builds a stronger global corporate community
• Senior management has a channel to engage an active
audience
• It has the capability to disseminate information in a viral
way
• You can on-board new staff
• It’s a knowledge base
• It’s private and secure

11. GAINING
ACCEPTANCE
• Worked with senior management to sponsor the project
• It was an employee opportunity
• Empowerment was key
• Gained further acceptance through asking other senior
managers to use the network and spread the word
• Elevator pitched the CEO (literally)
• He joined in a matter of hours
• He is now one of the biggest advocates for the use of
Yammer as a global employee communications tool

12. GAINING
ACCEPTANCE
• I never accepted “no” as a logical response
• Negativity was curbed with communications strategies
around the value proposition
• It was all about culture!
• It’s down to the individuals to make it work
• There was only one rule…
• “If you cant say it in front of your boss or the CEO, don’t
say it on Yammer”
• The proof was right in front of everyone, on the network

13. KABOOM!!
• Official global launch was on Feb 1, 2011
• Of our 2200 employees 1261 are members of the network
• This grows each day
• 3.9 million hits on yammer to date (Australia only)
• We have had 292 unique posters (contributors) to the
network (13% of the organisation)
• Peaks of 45 unique posts in a day
• Some threads have received up to 74 responses with up
to 28 participants
• We have had 4048 unique responses to those posts
• Peaks of 134 messages in a day
• Facebook only had a million more hits in that period

14. QUESTIONS?