The Evolution of Empuls from Enterprise : Xoxoday's employee engagement product

Every great product has a widely successful predecessor that played a vital role in its creation. Xoxoday Enterprise (E 1.0) was that forerunner to Xoxoday Empuls (E 2.0) - our employee engagement and motivation product.

Scores of our very valuable customers found great worth in Xoxoday Enterprise - during its time. In this process, our team got to intently work with our customers to understand and solve their employee engagement challenges.

Over years, we documented the patterns of these challenges across our clientele.  We identified core underlying gaps and re-built our engagement product to solve them. This ensued in extensive product development efforts - that resulted in our all new employee engagement and motivation product - Xoxoday Empuls.

It is important to highlight what has changed and how - from Enterprise to Empuls - and given below is a feature wise snapshot of this narrative. ( Scroll to the bottom to view a table of this Empuls - Enterprise comparison.)

Feature comparison of the two versions of Xoxoday's employee engagement and motivation products

Communication Features

Communities & Groups

The Communities & Groups feature is the central element to the whole of Empuls as well as Enterprise. But there are drastic differences in the user experience and functionalities of this feature between the two platforms:

Xoxoday Empuls

• Users can create groups based on teams, departments, interests, projects, etc for effective communication, celebrations, task management and collaboration. 
• They can share and manage work and information (using features like user tagging), and have social interactions with likes, comments, etc - as efficiently as in popular social media.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• The platform only allows the creation of a single group across the organisation (generally called the �??Town hall�??).
• Enterprise offered only limited features for social communication.
  

Feeds & Announcements

The �??Feeds & Announcements' features has undergone changes that makes users interact many-to-many seamlessly.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Has all feeds visible at the group level but the group admin has the option to provide user access  controls rights to post, view or comment the feeds. 
• Users can send and  share recognition with not only value cards and greetings, but also give awards and badges using hashtags.
• The product offers profanity filters for admins and �??report abuse�?? features for users.
• Users can post, announce, like, comment, edit, share and delete the feeds.
• They can share announcements to specific people or teams or even to the entire organisation.
• Empuls offers rich file management with access controls.
• Users can attach documents, files, GIFs, images, video, audio, links, hashtags, e-cards, value-badges and more, to the feed.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Users could share recognition with value cards and greetings,
• They could not report abuse.
• Users could post, like and comment - but were not able to share feeds externally.
• They could, but, share announcements to all of the town hall.

Chat/ Voice bot

One-to-one and one-to-many chats and AI based help chat bots are made possible in Empuls.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Chat one to one or in a group.                       
• Chatbot to answer any questions related to the product, any features or workflows.
• AI enabled bot for intelligent actions on the platform.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• No one-on-one chats.
• No chat bot.

Greetings, Celebrations & Value Cards

Every greeting, celebration and value adherence is highlight while using Empuls,

Xoxoday Empuls

• Greet instantly with configurable greeting e-card options.
• Celebrate life events like marriage, new joinee, retirement, baby shower, work anniversary and more.
• Custom celebrations, events, and festivals can be configured and automated DIY.
• Recognize values and behaviours exhibited.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Limited greetings options. All need custom setup

Notifications & To-do

With a multitude of functionalities, there always could be a handful of things to do on the platform. Interesting and intelligent nudges in Empuls helps users complete one task at a time, satisfactorily.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Receive notifications on email/mobile app/web browser for all actions like comments, celebrations, mentions, tags, surveys, feedbacks recognition, announcements, events & rewards.
• A filtered to-do action list to remind you of pending actions.  

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Only email notifications

Search 

Universal search in Empuls gives an extra capability of information management - enabling users to quickly access and organise conversations.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Easy global search for content, groups, users, messages, documents, files, audio/video, employees, mentions and tags etc.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Only limited user search
  

Empowerment Features

There was a dire need for HR Managers to give voice to employee opinion and empower without the chaos that the existing solutions created. Empuls addressed this by efficiently tying employee empowerment with their communication and motivation.

Reward funds management

Budgets are the best way to empower managers to drive their team�??s motivation. Empuls helps HR managers manage, allocate and automate this process.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Manage reward budgets and funds.
• Share funds with different teams.
• Manage funds with reports and access controls

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Budget has limited functions

Engagement Pulse Surveys

There is no HR personnel that does not cringe at the mention of employee surveys. Traditional survey mechanisms are painstaking, inefficient and worst of all - lag indicators of employee sentiment. Empuls has a built-in pulse devised that research backed from experts at SHRM.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Pulse surveys to measure employee engagement.  
• Fill rate, nudges and reminders.
• Actionable insights through tables and graphs. 
• Benchmarking with respective industry data. 
• Build with top behavioural scientists and experts.
• Configure frequency, cadence, audience, and intervals.
• Actionables for key insights from the surveys through rewards, recognition, communication and other features.
• Access to top independent consultants and consulting firms for execution. 

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Feature not available. Only basic survey

Anonymous Feedback

Having anonymity in feedback is important for its genuinity. This is especially true while collecting negative ones  - that really help to diagnose the gaps in the HR  policies.

 Xoxoday Empuls

• Collect or give anonymous feedback on different dimensions. 
• Measure sentiments and feedback cohorts.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Feature not available.
  

Custom survey templates

Empuls takes away all the overheads involved in tediously creating survey templates - with standard survey templates for almost all generic HR needs.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Ready-to-use templates on employee onboarding, L&D, Hiring, Exit, Diversity & Inclusion, and other similar employee lifecycle events.
• Draw insights from reports.
• Templates build with top consulting firms in each area of expertise.
• Build or use your own templates if required.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Feature not available.
  

Motivation Features

Our strongest feature pillar, motivation,  is further enhanced and made quick, functional and extremely user friendly with intuitive UIs and workflows.

Values and Behaviour Recognition

Recognition is one of the two most important parts of motivation and Empuls ensures every recognition is given its true worth.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Configure values and behaviours as per the organization. 
• Appreciate/Recognize/Award/Reward people for showing good values and behaviours.
• Intelligence and reports with different dimensions.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Feature available
  

Nomination Workflows

Creating and managing the rewarding process has been made super-simple with workflow wizards and automations.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Different rule engines for award nominations can be configured as per your organizational needs.
• Configurations are self serve and DIY. 
• Any permutation or combination is possible to build these nomination rules like inter-department, inter-location, inter-teams, reporting structures, approval structures etc.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Very limited workflows. All workflows need custom coding.
  

Complex Rewarding Types

This feature came entirely out of our vast discussions with our client HR POCs - to understand the different cases of reward processes. We designed an extremely simple interface that can address even the most complex of rewarding scenarios that our clients experience.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Simple to any kind of complexity can be handled in rewards.
• Commonly used reward templates like Peer to Peer, Team, Spot, Jury, Value based, Milestones, Service, Monetary, Non-monetary awards are available.
• Any new template can be custom made as per company requirements directly from the platform.
• Approval workflows can be configured directly from the platform. 
• Option to reward in bulk or individually.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Every new reward needs custom configurations
  

Occasion & Festival Gifts

Occasion and festival gifts have been simplified and automated with Empuls - making HR Manager never miss an event important for employees.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Run unlimited campaigns for various occasions and festivals with elegant e-cards, templates & funds.
• Common examples are Birthdays, Anniversary, Mother's Day, New Year, Diwali, Christmas and many more. 
• Scheduler for deferred gifting.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Limited templates only.

Gamification

Empuls is designed on Gamification - every activity on the platform can be gamified to suit the organisational priorities.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Gamify using leaderboards, milestones, awards and badges.
• Advanced rule engines can be built for gamification based on company requirements.
• Campaigns based on fitness, health, performance, targets can be easily managed with game elements and reports

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Basic leaderboard features. 
  

Award Certificate

Empuls offers to create elegant DIY certificates to address any requirement of the HR Managers or the Managers.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Attach certificates for any reward.
• Certificates can be customized as per company brand guidelines DIY. 

Xoxoday Enterprise

• DIY of certificate not available
  

Technology

The robust technology that Empuls is built on, is the backbone of all the functionalities of it.

Export & Import data

Data in Empuls is much more extensive, accessible and intelligible.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Export or import CSV or xls files for users, rewards, gifts etc directly or through third party systems like HRMS, SFTP etc.
  

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Available in basic formats
  

Reporting and Analytics

Empuls helps HR Managers make sense of the extensive data that the system generates - using intelligent reporting and analytics.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Reports on feeds, groups, engagement, gifts, rewards, influencers, funds, surveys, conversations etc.
• Different views, graphs and filters.
• System generated nudges based on data intelligence.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Basic reports only

Custom Configurations

Every organisation's business and culture priorities are different and Empuls gives complete flexibility to admins to finetune the system to suit their exact requirement.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Email Templatization for custom branding. 
• Configurable access controls.
• DIY Whitelabelling of colors, landing page, logo etc.
• Customer reward workflows.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Available but custom configuration needed at every new requirement.
  

Third party integrations

Empuls completes itself to being truly SaaS by seamlessly integrating with a majority of enterprise systems.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Integrate with HRMS, HRIS, SSO, SFTP, SAML, Slack, Facebook, Microsoft Teams, Yammer.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Available with HRMS, SFTP, SAML only
  

DIY & Self Serve Enabled

Admins are given complete abilities to configure the system at their will.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Free trial, Fully DIY, Set up guides, Resources.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• No free trial, no DIY

Developer APIs & Marketplace Apps

Xoxoday Empuls

• Ready Developer APIs and relevant marketplace apps.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• No APIS and apps
  

Mobile App & Web

To address different usage conditions of the employees and the managers, Empuls also comes with a fully-functional app.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Android, iOS & web access.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• App features are limited

Login

Integrations also extend into having easy sign in options for users in Empuls.

Xoxoday Empuls

• SAML,SSO, ADFS, Okta, One login and more integrations.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• SSO, SAML

International languages

To have global usability and scalability, Empuls even supports different languages.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Capabilities for all major languages like French, German, Spanish, Italian, Hindi, Arabic, Bahasa, Russian etc.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Only English
  

Security

Security is a critical mandate while having a SaaS offering, because organisations world-wide trust the platform with very important and confidential data. Xoxoday ensures complete security for our customer data by taking keen measures.

Xoxoday Empuls

• Audit logs.
• GDPR, ISO 27001 compliant.
• Local deployment and Hybrid cloud facility.

Xoxoday Enterprise

• Hybrid deployment not available
  

UI/UX

The complete look and feel of Empuls makes users perceive it to be easy to work with and simple to learn about. The color pallette, font, UX design of Empul- is inviting and modern.

Xoxoday Empuls

• High quality UI/UX

Xoxoday Enterprise

• UI/UX is little complex and old

Table of Comparison

Only a walk through of the product could make understand this changeover and immense value Empuls could add to your organisational culture. 

Do feel free to contact us for a demo.