Yammer Case

Yammer was a leading Enterprise Social Network that was founded in 2008. It provided companies a private social network where employees could collaborate efficiently. In three and a half years, Yammer had gained widespread adoption.

David Sacks, the CEO, was in the process of planning Yammer's future as a standalone company. Then, Microsoft reached out to him to get together and talk about the company. The CEO and his co-founder agreed to meet with Microsoft to share their vision of bringing social platforms to the enterprise. Microsoft offered to buy Yammer for 1.2 billion dollars and integrate it into the MS Office division. With many reservations, Sacks accepted the offer.

The product was a web based social networking site for company employees. The prices varied according to membership. The basic version was free and the premium product was five dollars per user monthly. There was also a Premium Groups option for the price of seventy nine dollars a month per group monthly. Memberships were easy to distribute through online. The plan was to make it viral so employees can use it without it being installed by the company itself. The main advertising was mainly word of mouth, social networking, and external application and tools integration.

Customers

In 2012, Yammer had over five million users from two hundred thousand companies worldwide. The customer base were companies and non-business organizations. Some examples include Tyco Intl. and Red Robin. Tyco International split up into three independent companies. It needed a way to keep it's seventy thousand employees connected. Over twenty seven thousand of Tyco's employees used the service and it provided many benefits to the company.

Red Robin, a burger chain of more than 450 restaurants, launched "Yummerversity" for its employee training sessions. Yammer also helped the company launch and modify product lines. These companies had motivation to use this service, because the product brought in efficiency...