I believe they do so long as they are used in moderation -- they provide a platform for more widespread communication ... the key is to not become distracted by constantly viewing them ... they are an enablement tool ...

A tool like yammer should be a great support, but is still too cumbersome to use. As a result, I often see it overtaken by informal groups - mainly on WhatsApp. I don't think the 'silver bullet' has been identified to make these platforms so instinctively simple to use that they can compete with WhatsApp.

In principle, I think enterprise tools should be the norm to keep work related conversations inside the company, e.g. for reasons of content curation and protecting intellectual property.

Yammer could be an useful platforms to find and connect with colleagues in particular if working for big companies with offices located all over the world and thousands of employees. The risk if not well developed and supervised, is to have just another not used communication channel or have people wasting time using it for any purpose not related to business.

After working with different clients for their adoption of collaboration platforms, I believe that yes it increases productivity and also Fosters a sense of culture and community.
Social collaboration or technology is a part of our life today and enterprise collaboration is just an extension of the same.
Yes it’s a bit of a stretch in budget to plan to have such a platform at first but once you have it, it helps in breaking silos between two business units, faster recognition to make employees motivated, everyone and everything has global reach to the teams in different geographical locations and many more.
Although I do agree that for smaller enterprises it is nice to have.

Its a nice to have. With anything from global CEO updates to local OH&S issues, and everything in between, its a great platform for keeping up to date on business news.

I often work in very geographically dispersed mixed teams. Geographically dispersed meaning that members are from USA, EU and India. Mixed meaning from different business units, and even including externals (like myself). In these circumstances the tools definitely help to maintain an ongoing conversation and feeling of coherence on less critical topics. For Tangible business outcomes - then the tools are not critical. For intangible benefits however, very valuable. So I tend to agree that for a larger enterprise they are a must have, and I do see them used actively. For smaller and less dispersed enterprises, far less critical.

I do believe that Enterprise collaboration systems allow teams to work together on projects that would normally be tedious or inefficient, or require members to be in the same location.

It would appear that an advantage for Yammer is the facility to seamlessly integrate with the rest of your business operations in Office 365. For e.g. From a Yammer conversation, you can schedule a meeting in Outlook, pull documents out of OneDrive, and do a skype conversation

I'd agree with the 'nice to have', not essential so far. We have access to so many different platforms and tools, I've seen companies get distracted by the tools and not focus enough on using them in valuable ways.

For me the tools are useful when people understand how to collaborate and work effectively together. That might sound odd, but in many companies people are used to working in their local team doing their job, and are not so good at working on cross functional projects remotely. Doing the new and difficult stuff often means disagreements and conflict, and we are not very good at handling those online (just look at Twitter!). I've seen companies buy the platforms, promote them, but then get very low take up and very low quality usage.

As a relatively new user of Yammer in our organization, i was impressed with the connectivity unlocked between frontline staff and leaders across functions and around the world. However, i felt the need for better categorization or segmentation of the conversations to manage the conversations. A Sales Merchandiser in a small city in the US posting photos and conversations of an impactful display unit at a store is great. All of their team members congratulating them on a job well done is excellent. Having the feed chocked up with every other Sales Merchandiser around the world also wanting to spread their great work has its place, but not everyone needs to see it.

We have implemented our own business version of Jive where daily global updates are seen. Its a great tool for seeing what is happening around the world but limited to those who have access to internet systems

Thanks for your answers. I would like to spin the topic a bit. Are these platforms good to have or "Must" to have for an organization with different geolocations?

Having worked for many years in a multi-national org, with work responsibilities spread across the planet, I found these tools a huge enabler to effective communication. The beauty of the tools was the ability to use them while doing something else in the foreground ... whether that be a phone call, webcast, etc. I also liked to use them as a back channel communication when on a wider audience call.

In IBM, "Sametime" was the first line of communication for many years, only recently being replaced by Slack as a means to communicate not only person to person, but more importantly person to group.

I think they help up to extend. You can not achieve transformation in profit or performance with them, but they certainly help in collaboration and information sharing. That is a positive thing about these tools.