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© 2015 Jive Software, Inc. All rights reserved | Jive Confidential

Case Study

Nuance CommunicationsCase Study

Nuance Communications designs intelligent

systems for people and businesses,

combining natural language understanding

and better analytics to offer radically

simplified experiences. Headquartered in

Burlington, Mass., Nuance has over 12,000

employees in 39 countries.

Seamless Migration to Jive Cloud Puts Nuance Social Intranet on the Cutting Edge Nuance Communications’ Jive-powered social intranet was already a

big success when the company decided to take the next step, migrating

its Jive-hosted instance to Jive Cloud. The result was a seamless

transition that preserved existing community content and structure while

delivering the productivity-enhancing features of the latest Jive release

and automatic upgrades to all future releases going forward.

Jive Social Intranet: Mission-Critical with Measurable Impact Nuance launched its Jive-based social intranet, dubbed “The Voice,”

in February 2012. It was a huge improvement over its predecessor,

which suffered from all the drawbacks of traditional static intranets,

including out-of-date information, poor search capabilities and low

overall usage. The Voice became became the go-to destination

for employees to get onboarded, connect with colleagues, find

expertise, share knowledge, work together on projects and access

key content from Corporate Communications, HR, IT, Finance and

various lines of business.

Leveraging Jive’s rich interactive and collaborative features, The

Voice changed the way employees communicate and quickly

2© 2015 Jive Software, Inc. All rights reserved | Jive Confidential

Case Study

became mission-critical for Nuance, used by nearly 100% of its

6,000 corporate employees. “It had a giant impact,” says Kim Nelson,

community manager at Nuance. “It broke down silos, enabled better

alignment and bridged the gaps between our various divisions.

Across the board, our teams depend on it to get their jobs done.”

Because of its ease, familiarity and high usage, Jive even became the

main way employees connected to other enterprise systems. “It’s our

navigational hub,” says Nelson.

Stepping Up to the Cloud: Next-Generation Features & Automatic Upgrades

Successful as Nuance’s Jive-based community was, the company

wanted more. They were interested in the powerful next-generation

features being introduced with each new version of Jive. For

example, Jive’s External Groups capability, rolled out in August

2012, allows internal employees to collaborate in Jive directly with

people outside the firewall–such as partners and contractors–with

complete control over privacy and visibility. This was high on the wish

list of Nuance’s R&D group, who needed to work closely with major

partners such as IBM and were still collaborating mostly via email or

other disconnected shared services.

A move to Jive Cloud would mean immediate access to External

Groups and every other new Jive feature, with ongoing quarterly

updates delivered automatically without any IT effort or cost for

Nuance. “We also liked the fact that Jive’s Microsoft Office and Outlook

connectors are provided to cloud users at no extra charge, providing

more tools to increase employee productivity,” adds Nelson.

Seamless Migration Without Compromises

Of course, there were questions to be answered: Could Nuance

move all of its existing community data and content, maintaining

groups and spaces, past interactions and documents in a way that

offered a seamless experience for users? Could they replicate the

“We’ve had great success

on Jive’s cloud platform

since our migration, with

thousands of employees

connecting, sharing and

getting work done every

day. We couldn’t be more

excited about Jive’s

quarterly cloud releases

and the new collaboration

tools that our employees

will have to excel at

their jobs and be more

productive, however and

wherever they work.”

Kim Nelson

Community Manager

Nuance

3© 2015 Jive Software, Inc. All rights reserved | Jive Confidential

Case Study

customizations they’d implemented, including

their branded look-and-feel, themed home page,

navigational elements and various plug-ins and

widgets? Would performance, security and reliability

be as good in the cloud as it had been in the hosted

instance? “We couldn’t accept any compromises in

those areas,” Nelson says.

After a detailed evaluation and testing, Nuance felt

confident that the answer to all of those questions

was “yes.” Preparations went smoothly and the

company was ready to go live with the new cloud-

based instance on the target date of May 31, 2013.

“I pulled an all-nighter the night before, checking

to make sure everything was working,” says Nelson.

She gives high marks to Jive’s Professional Services

team, which assisted with the migration. “They did

everything needed to help us get over the finish line

successfully,” she says.

The switch was flipped on schedule, and employees

who logged in on the morning of June 1 were

greeted with a new, improved Voice community.

“It really went without a hitch,” says Nelson. “The

structure of the community was the same, so users

were able to continue working as though nothing

had happened – except that they had all these great

new tools that they were able to use immediately.”

The new capabilities included:

• External Groups. Now, Nuance employees can work closely with outside collaborators in shared groups. One such group allows the R&D team to work side-by-side with partners such as IBM far more effectively. Another enables Nuance marketers to share and discuss the latest brand assets, messages and strategy with their outside contractors and

agencies. “It’s so much easier,” says Nelson. “We never had one consolidated place for this before and had to resort to email.”

• Jive Purposeful Places. Jive templates allow users to quickly create collaborative groups tailored to different use cases and projects in IT, marketing, sales, HR and other areas. The templates can easily be customized and shared, such as one Nuance created for account planning. It allows teams to instantly launch an account planning group, and populate it with all the participants, content and tools they need to start collaborating immediately.

• Fast spotlight search. Users can quickly locate people, content and groups, and access recently/frequewtent with a click.

• Personalized activity streams. Each employee can track the specific processes, people and projects essential to their job in their own customized feeds.

• New Jive !Apps. Installed with just a click, Jive !Apps let users extend the basic functionality of the Jive platform, embedding new dynamic content and capabilities in documents, discussions and activity streams.

• A streamlined interface that makes everything easier and faster.

• “Getting Started” tips that quickly introduce new users to Jive and its features.

Nelson also likes the Jive for Microsoft

integrations, which enable users to access

community functions, take advantage of

Jive social capabilities and stay in sync with

teammates while working in Office and Outlook.

“We have a lot of people using these apps,

especially Office, where it had been really hard

to collaborate effectively,” she says. “People

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had to send drafts around via email and it was

a pain to keep track of versions. Now, Jive for

Office keeps all drafts up to date and consistent,

whether people are working in Jive or Office.”

Positive Feedback, Immediate Impact While getting a massive functional upgrade,

Nuance has also been able to preserve The Voice’s

unique character and look-and-feel. “We still get

lots of easy customizations, like the point-and-

click theming, so I don’t see that as a limitation,”

Nelson explains. And Jive Cloud provides the same

best-in-class security, privacy, performance and

reliability as Jive-hosted deployment (in fact, both

run on the same Jive-owned data center).

“The overall feedback since the migration has

been fantastic,” Nelson says of Nuance’s Jive

Cloud experience. “Our users tell me it’s now

business critical for them and say it’s easier to use

with the new functionality they’ve been asking for.

Executives – from our CIO to our head of Corporate

Communications and VP of Brand and Creative –

all tell me they’ve heard nothing but good things

about the migration from their teams.”

The impact on efficiency, productivity and user

engagement was immediate, she adds, calling it

“absolutely the right decision.” The best part, she

says, is the instant access to all future Jive releases

with quarterly automatic upgrades at no cost and

minimal effort on Nuance’s part. “We already had

one with Jive’s Summer 2013 release,” she says. “It

was absolutely seamless.”