Notes from HCL (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in late 2018) is a collaboration platform based on the Lotus platform.
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Miro
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Miro empowers cross-functional teams to flow from early discovery through final delivery on a shared, AI-first canvas. With the canvas as the prompt, Miro’s AI capabilities keep teams in the flow of work, and scale shifts in ways of working.
$0
Pricing
HCL Notes
Miro
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
1. Free - To discover what Miro can do. Always free
$0
2. Starter - Unlimited and private boards with essential features
$8
per month (billed annually) per user
3. Business - Scales collaboration with advanced features and security
$16
per month (billed annually) per user
4. Enterprise - For work across the entire organization, with support, security and control, to scale
contact sales
annual billing per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HCL Notes
Miro
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
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Monthly billing also available at $10 per month for the Starter plan, or $20 for the Business plan.
I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.
I remember a project where all our different teams were involved in it. I created a board with timelines, KPIs, and customer journey stages, and each team added their input live. We were all able to work together in real time, view the entire project, and leave comments without switching apps, which is why it worked fantastically for us. Everyone benefited from the hours of time it saved, and we made a good profit on that project, for which I was named employee of the month.
Data sharing via small database format is valuable as they are quickly deployed, easily managed and distributed on backend email servers.
Integrated messaging allows quick communications between geographical sites reducing long distance costs.
Policy documents for registering new users, setting initial security levels, assigning default database access is managed easily with the admin client.
The simple user experience can be touted as a positive, but it is also a negative in some ways. Compared to other calendars, email and chat tools, IBM Notes looks like it is from the 90s.
We have constant issues with chat crashing. This is the main reason so many people in our organization chose to switch away from Notes.
There aren't a lot of integrations with IBM Notes and other applications we regularly use. Notes seems to have been left behind by many.
When using the find functionality to locate an item in a Miro board, I do not like that it keeps my previous searched term. Other programs, like Excel, do this but they have it so that you can easily overwrite the previously-searched term.
It would be helpful if you could search by a particular frame, instead of the entire board. For our quarterly backlog review, we often have items that carry over, so there are duplicates on the board. Being able to search by a frame would make this easier.
Understanding who can access a board is not always clear to me.
Since companies started to moved their email systems to the Exchange platform and the cloud, we are unable to find any new projects with IBM Notes, the marketing share and software price is another issue, so we have to move to another platform.
I have advocate for the renew of Miro quite few times, however, it is not under my control as the decision is made in another team with their own budget. I would buy for my own entrepreneur projects (1-2 members) as I do know the value and work there 100%. So, I would pay out of my own pocket to get the value. However, If I wouldn't know the value it provides, it would be hard to decide with the current freemium features
Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.
The platform is flexible, easy to use, and simple because Miro is a great visualization tool that makes it easy to collaborate on creating charts. It helps in creating workflows and other designs easily and securely. It supports integrations with major cloud storage solutions and office suites. On top of that, it provides a decent free plan, which is sufficient for basic usage.
I only give a 9/10 because of the speed at which it loads. I have never experienced issues with Miro logging me out early, or some other technical issue causing the program to crash, or even it just loading in perpetuity without ever actually coming up (unlike other programs such as SFDC). It take a minute for all of my boards to come up after I click on it in my favorites, but besides that, it's all good.
Sometimes it gets quite slow and there is a correlation between this and the size of the board. Hence we are trying to segment the boards based on product stages or projects so that the size doesn't go big. When you go from discovery to delivery on a simple board, it will get large and difficult to load, even crash or go white screen
I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.
We have never reached out to or contacted support because Miro's platform has been incredibly intuitive and user-friendly. The comprehensive resources available, such as tutorials, documentation, and community forums, have provided all the guidance we needed. The seamless integration with our existing tools and the reliability of the platform have ensured that we rarely encounter issues that require external assistance. This self-sufficiency has allowed us to focus more on our projects and collaboration without interruptions. Overall, our experience with Miro has been smooth and efficient, eliminating the need for additional support
There was a series of webinars which Miro hosted with our organization that went over the basics, then progressively became more advanced with additional sections. The instructors were knowledgeable, and provided examples throughout the sessions, as well as answered peoples' questions. There was ample time and experience on the calls to cover a range of topics. The instructors were also very friendly and sociable, as well as honest. Of course Miro isn't a "God-tool" that does absolutely everything, but the instructors were aware and emphasized the strengths where Miro had them and sincerely accepted feedback.
Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.
Easy to learn, Miro has a series of videos on YouTube that effectively taught this program to my team members and me. The program is drag-and-drop and works excellently. People pick up on how to use it efficiently, and it's great for organizing ideas more freely. This product is more challenging for some older audiences who are not accustomed to using a touchpad, but for most, it was very easy to use.
I've already answered this question in the previous questions however to sum it up IBM Notes stacks up VERY WELL! It has a LOT of really good business/enterprise features like enterprise-grade Dropbox-like storage, synced email/calendar/contacts, it supports a LOT of third-party add-ins, easy-to-use and friendly, very strong and robust, and most importantly it's a LOT more secure in my opinion than the competition.
Miro is the more collaborative option, offering the ability for many individuals to work on the same item real-time. Though it does create some duplicate entry, we've found this added cost is minimal compared to the opportunity cost of lost collaboration.
Miro is great for scaling. In every department and subdivision across my entire organization, there is someone using it. From Sales to marketing, to manufacturing and operations; and even in legal and finance, there isn't a process or a department that is not using Miro, and if they aren't, they're missing out! Even at the highest to the lowest levels of the organization, it is essential for virtual collaboration.
ROI for us has been extreme. In the late 1990's we automated dozens and dozens of paper-based processes and created workflows for activities that had never been formalized before. Additionally all those forms with their comments, etc. have been captured in a central place to serve as audit trails.
Whenever we need faster access to data (mail or otherwise), it's quick and easy to deploy a new Domino server somewhere, setup replication of appropriate databases, and get the local Notes clients pointed to those resources. So that to me is positive ROI because it represents time savings based on user need.
Tech. Support would claim a negative ROI in terms of supporting the Notes client, Notes updates, peculiar Notes issues, and users who complain about Notes. That is certainly true to a point. The Notes client is a much more complex piece of software than, say, Outlook. But we have to remember that Notes deployments are not just for Mail but many, many applications as well. In the end I'd say we might have 1 or 2 user complaints per month, typically around Calendar issues more than anything else.
