Excellent Product! Fantastic Service! Cost Effective! Time Saver!

We spent a lot of time and effort into researching the best Mentoring Software company to partner with. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN], [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] and the whole team generously answered all of our questions and even took the time to schedule multiple demos as we were making the decision. The teams expertise and guidance were a valuable part of the successful launch of our Mentor Connect program. River is more than just a software company-they offer a truly unique experience for any company looking to utilize mentoring as a part of their teams development.

Pros

The software is very easy to use. The matching eliminated hours of time that would have otherwise been spent in matching Mentors and Mentees. We were able to customize the site, allowing us to choose what message we wanted to send to our users. Sign up was fast and easy and if I did have a questions, the River Team was always available to help. Highly recommend this partnership!

Cons

There are a number of options in reporting which are sometimes difficult to find. River did however, provide a manual that is easy to use and filled with detailed instructions so I was able to access the information I wanted.

Full featured mentoring platform with personalized support

The benefits of having a dedicated mentoring platform are flexibility, a strong end user experience especially for mentor circles (though I think it leans heavily in that direction and not as much for 1:1) and world class customer service from the top down

Pros

I love the support I get from the team at River. My company has a number of unique mentoring programs and I'm able to incorporate my account specialist into every aspect of the design and implementation process.

Cons

With more companies trying to quantify the value of mentoring, I think it's important that River work on both their reporting and survey tools to be more competitive with other companies that are in the same technology space. I've seen demos recently where their reporting capability makes it very easy to "tell the story" of mentoring, and that's not something I have at River right now.

We use it to develop mentoring relationships in a business environment to improve specific skills.

Developed mentoring relationships that are designed to improve specific skills such as becoming a team leader for example. I work for a company that employs over 35000 around the globe, and I have been able to create and maintain great relationships thanks directly to this software. This fact, in the end, improves productivity by maintaining a healthy work environment.

Pros

It is very user friendly, fun to browse around look at people's profiles and excellent customer service!

Cons

It is not cheap but the cost is absorbed by our company and it allows up to 1000 users. I can't think of anything negative to say and if your company decides to buy it, it is a great tool to connect workers in a big company and maintain a high level or morale.

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Pros

That this system matches mentors with mentees.

Cons

When mentors/advisors are emailed by mentees for a possible match, I think it should alert the administrators and send reminders.

River Software - a great company to partner with

Our experience with River software was one of working with a trusted partner. They were great to work with and delivered on every promise that they made. They also went out of their way to help our program succeed by investing in software development that enabled us to track real-time user experience (xAPI). Their depth of knowledge in mentoring -- both formal and peer, is unmatched and this evident in the configuration of the River platform. Anyone interested in developing a social learning program could do no better than to engage River Software.

Pros

Smart recommendations of content, people and groups based on competencies selected by the user.

Cons

Like any fully featured software program it can be a bit of challenge for end users to master.