The Return of Mzinga in Learning and Social Marketing

By Jim Lundy

We watch and analyze markets and two of those include Learning as part of Talent and Social HCM, as well as the rising category of Social Business. When you watch markets, it also involves watching technology providers One of the technology providers that participates in multiple Social Markets is Mzinga. In 2013, outside of Tech Titans, it is still somewhat rare to find a provider that is actually competing with Social offerings in multiple markets and that is one of the reasons for this blog post.

First, I’ve known two of the principals at Mzinga, Mike Merriman and Chairman Andrew Hallowell for years. Mike and I worked together at Gartner. They have been the catalysts in building what we are calling the new Mzinga.

Mzinga, Cloud and Social Learning

In Learning, Mzinga has been participating in Learning as long as Saba. In fact, Mzinga was the early pioneer in Cloud based Learning offerings. I’ve used the Mzinga offering as well, since they were the Learning platform that was in use at Gartner while I was there and it is still the LMS of record there. One of the things we always look for is how well customers are supported and this is an area that Mzinga does a solid job. We have seen some recent deals in which they were able to win, in part because of better support.

On Social Learning, Mzinga recognized this trend early and has been Social for longer than most. This shows up in the product, since Social is more of an embedded experience instead of a community bolt-on.

Content is the biggest part of the Learning game that many enterprises struggle with.  While many enterprises use Adobe for Content Authoring, many learning providers such as Mzinga offer very capable tools (note, SumTotal is another that offers their own authoring). In fact, Mzinga’s flagship Content Authoring product, Mzinga Publisher, is featured in our Content Authoring Hot Vendor Report.

Mzinga and Social Business

The other half of Mzinga is all about Social Business, which often starts with Customer Communities and expands into Social Marketing. Omni Social Engaged powers some of the largest brands in the world, but in many cases Mzinga can’t mention those names due to the competitive advantage their customers feel they have. We have reviewed their offering and while this blog post is not intended to be a review, what we have seen is that Mzinga Engaged is winning against many of the other better known brands.

One of the things that differentiates Mzinga is its Moderation services that help manage a major Brand’s Social Media reputation. Moderation is a capability that many enterprises should evaluate.

So, all in all, Mzinga is a brand to watch in both Learning and Social Marketing. They are competing and winning their share of deals and we expect that to continue. One of the reasons we see them doing well is that they actually go the extra mile for their customers.

 

Editors Note: Mzinga will be included in our forthcoming Aragon Research Globe Reports on Corporate Learning and Social Platforms.