Microsoft to Merge Office 365, Yammer Sales Teams

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has been taking the integration of Yammer into Office 365 slowly since it acquired the social media platform designed for enterprises provider last summer, but it looks like Redmond is ready to push things ahead at a quicker pace. Microsoft announced on its blog that it plans to roll the Yammer sales team of about 100 reps into the Office 365 sales team.

This follows on the heels of the March 1 announcement that Microsoft was beginning to offer Office 365 and Yammer together as part of Enterprise Agreements. This latest move comes as little surprise, as there has been talk about Yammer being rolled into Office 365 since the acquisition came to light. However, Microsoft made the smart move in making it a slow transition so as not to alienate existing Yammer customers.

But apparently the time is right to make a stronger push and begin to seek out additional opportunities in the enterprise social media space. According to Microsoft, Yammer sales grew 259 percent year-over-year in the third quarter and gained 312 new customers. Things are looking up for Yammer, and so it makes sense for Microsoft to finally begin to deploy Yammer’s capabilities into Office 365 and really step up its sales.

And it’s quite the increase in potential sales traffic. Yammer has approximately 100 sales team members, whereas Office 365’s team members number in the thousands. Pretty soon, it could be that a gain of 312 new customers will look like a drop in the bucket.

It’s also clear Microsoft is putting further emphasis on social. The company plans to continue making investments in Yammer’s sales, engineering, customer engagement and marketing.

Microsoft laid out a product roadmap that outlined how Yammer would co-exist with Office 365 in March, and it continues to talk about the importance of the “social enterprise.”