Why Lightspeed365 is the best Origami Connect alternative
- John Scott
Intranets have now been around for thirty years, so the market for intranet software is now very mature. This means there are solutions to suit every budget and need, but it can feel a little overwhelming trying to figure out which product is the best fit for your organisation. In this post, we’re going to explore the merits of the Origami intranet product (previously called Origami Connect), and how Lightspeed365 provides a great Origami Connect alternative for organisations looking to get more from their SharePoint intranet.
The intranet software market is different to some other types of enterprise software because Microsoft SharePoint dominates intranet solutions. SharePoint is by far the most popular base technology for intranets. It is possible to use SharePoint Online straight out of the box to deliver your intranet, but often teams find it hard to set-up, costly to manage and that there are some major gaping holes in terms of functionality and features.
While some “in a box” intranet products are completely standalone, other solutions including Origami Connect and Lightspeed365 are designed to work alongside SharePoint. They increase the capabilities and ROI of your SharePoint intranet, usually by filling some of the gaps found in native SharePoint alone.
What is Origami (Origami Connect)?
Origami is a SharePoint add-on product that organisations with SharePoint intranets can use to extend the power of their SharePoint-based intranet. The product is provided by Sharemuch Holdings, a company registered in Canada.
What do Origami and Lightspeed365 have in common?
Origami and Lightspeed365 have some things in common:
- They are both products that enhance SharePoint intranets by extending the number of features (web parts) available, allowing you to work with all the existing SharePoint web parts and functionality.
- Both tick most of the security and compliance boxes relating to SharePoint intranets, with all data kept within your Microsoft 365 tenant.
- Both products are designed to plug the gaps in SharePoint and provide extra functionality and missing features, as well as support more flexibility around intranet design.
- Both Lightspeed365 and Origami are designed to provide a cost-effective approach that helps you to deliver an enterprise intranet at significantly less cost than a fuller intranet “in-a-box” product.
Seven reasons to consider Lightspeed365 as an alternative to Origami
However, there are several differences between the products and the companies behind them, and it is critically important to select the product that’s best for your requirements. Below we outline some of the differences between the products and why Lightspeed365 represents an excellent alternative to Origami, and for some teams may well be the preferred choice.
More tools for internal communicators
Internal communications teams are often the product owners of a SharePoint intranet. They are also frequently frustrated by the limitations of SharePoint out of the box in supporting flexible internal communications, so they turn to intranet products like Origami and Lightspeed365 to provide more features.
Both Origami and Lightspeed365 have a number of additional web parts for internal communicators that extend options for presenting news, for example. However, Lightspeed365 specialises in supporting internal comms teams, with a number of specific features that are consistently requested by communicators, including:
- Push communications: The ability to send push notifications to specific Teams channels including on mobile devices, an essential feature to support frontline communications.
- Branding tools: The branding customer enhances your intranet’s look and feel, allowing you more flexibility to deploy specific colours and fonts, so your intranet can be more on-brand.
- Subscriptions: The ability for users to subscribe to different news topics to create a more relevant and personalised intranet experience.
Note that these three popular intranet features are available in Origami at the time of writing.
Popular employee-focused web parts that make a big difference
A successful intranet is firmly focused on the needs of users, and both Lightspeed365 and Origami have a number of features that are particularly popular with employees. These features can make a big difference to your intranet experience and provide a good foundation for adoption.
Origami has a number of additional engagement features including a “kudos” web part to promote shout-outs and also another to support discussion boards. At Lightspeed365 we believe these can be delivered successfully through Microsoft Viva Engage, and then embedded easily into a SharePoint page, so we try to focus on employee-focused web parts which will not duplicate core functionality.
For example:
- Our highly popular Noticeboard feature allows employees to post classified adverts and announcements in a more fit-for-purpose format than Viva Engage.
- Our accessibility tools enable employees to configure their display options around text-size, colour and contrast, to support a more inclusive and accessible intranet.
- The App launcher is popular with employees as it gives them a useful daily work tool for accessing company apps and services
Deeper integration with the rest of the digital workplace
A SharePoint intranet provides excellent opportunities to integrate Microsoft 365 tools into the experience to drive value and adoption, creating a more integrated digital workplace. The features that come out of the box with SharePoint already support this, for example with Viva Engage web parts, but there are some limitations around flexibility. Lightspeed365 has two powerful features that provide deeper integration with a M365-powered digital workplace:
- The Microsoft Viva Connections dashboard provides an opportunity to create a focused integrated dashboard, focused on task completion. Lightspeed365 comes with ready-built integrations and corresponding cards to give you a huge head start and minimise IT involvement.
- Microsoft Teams integration allows you to access your intranet from a branded app that sits in your Microsoft Teams toolbar, offering easy employee access. The fact that the app can be branded makes a significant difference, above and beyond what is available with Viva Connections out of the box.
Note that Origami does not feature either of these features that support a more integrated digital workplace experience.
Intranet management tools
We’ve been working in close partnership with intranet teams for over two decades and the same pain points around managing intranets come up again and again. One major area where Lightspeed365 and Origami differ is that we have a number of dedicated tools which enable easier management and continual improvement of the intranet.
- Site provisioning: This incredibly useful feature allows you to triage requests, create approval workflow and automatically provision SharePoint sites – as well as Teams and Viva Engage groups – to avoid site sprawl and effectively manage your intranet.
- Admin centre: This feature enables you to fully manage all your Lightspeed365 features from a user-friendly dashboard that is embedded right within the intranet, but only visible to admins.
- Intranet tour: This popular web part introduces the intranet to new users with a custom walk-through of features or introduces employees about updates – doing some of the heavy lifting to help promote the use of the intranet to new hires, as well as supporting overall adoption and continuous improvement.
Feedback: This feature helps collect user feedback to support improvement – unlike the three web parts mentioned above, a similar feature is available in Origami too.
Focus on findability and search
One of the key roles of an intranet is to help employees find that they need to get things done and stay informed. SharePoint and Microsoft search capabilities are advanced, but not perfect. Both Lightspeed365 and Origami recognise this and add some more capabilities to improve the search experience, with slightly different but overlapping capabilities. For example, Lightspeed365 has an advanced People Search web part that provides type-ahead capabilities to find colleagues from your employee directory.
Lightspeed365 also has a popular Floating Search web part that allows you to place a scoped search (with the parameters of the search defined) anywhere on any page, providing a prominent place to start searches from. Origami also has a similar web part to provide a more flexible search experience.
Backed by intranet knowhow and expertise
Selecting the right intranet product is not always just about meeting functional requirements. It is also essential to have the right vendor too. One of the strengths of Lightspeed365 is that is that it is created by Content Formula, an independent UK-based digital agency that has fully focused on the SharePoint and intranet space for nearly two decades.
With a long-term stable leadership team with deep business and technical knowledge, Lightspeed365 has been crafted by genuine intranet and SharePoint experts. We’ve lived and breathed SharePoint intranets for a LONG time and this is reflected in the product design and features, that are ruthlessly optimised around employee needs, user experience and reducing the pain associated with managing a SharePoint intranet.
Our stand-out track record with SharePoint intranets is also reflected in the appearance of Lightspeed365 as a leader in the ClearBox Intranet and Employee Experience Report, recognised by many as the definitive guide to intranet software. At the time of writing Origami has yet to feature in the ClearBox guide.
Implementation support and additional professional services
Every organisation and its employees have different needs – that’s why no two intranets are quite the same. The flexibility of SharePoint and the additional features (web parts) that come with a product like Lightspeed365 or Origami make a real difference. However, we know that there are often also additional challenges that can often be required with an intranet project:
- A slight tweaking of a web part that needs custom development
- Technical and administrative challenges that require in-depth knowledge of SharePoint
- Support on migrating content from an existing legacy system
- Unexpected last-minute challenges and hurdles
- And more!
One of the strengths of Lightspeed365 is that we can provide additional implementation and professional services backed by decades of real-world intranet experience and deep technical knowledge, to implement the world-class intranet that your employees and stakeholders want to see. The global experience of Content Formula – the owners and creators of Lightspeed365 – in the SharePoint intranet space is recognised within the industry and professional intranet community.
Organise a free demo
The intranet software market is mature with a lot of choice, and that’s great news for intranet teams. If you are looking at a product like Origami then you should definitely check out Lightspeed365, which in our view, has several advantages. Why not organise a demo and experience Lightspeed365 for yourself?
