eXpress on AM Live: "Using a corporate messenger is a matter of culture that needs to be cultivated"

On September 4, Alexey Lyamin, CTO and co-founder of eXpress, participated in the AM Live program titled "A Messenger Is No Longer Enough: What Should Businesses Choose in 2026?" During the live broadcast, experts from vendor companies and corporate messenger users discussed which Russian messengers and communication platforms are truly suitable for business; how to choose between SaaS and on-premise solutions, or between a full platform and a "pure" messenger; how to avoid migration failures; and how to convince employees to switch from personal chats to the corporate environment without sacrificing convenience.

At the start of the broadcast, while discussing the new paradigm of corporate communications development, Alexey Lyamin described the path eXpress is currently taking:

— We aim to transform eXpress from a mere messenger into a unified platform providing access to everything corporations need: messaging, calls, video conferencing, email, calendars, file storage, and other corporate systems. Compared to a product like Teams, eXpress has gone a step further by enabling authorized and authenticated access to any corporate application used within the client's infrastructure. We call this type of solution a 'super-app.'

When asked about the factors contributing to a successful user transition to a new corporate messenger, Alexey shared insights based on eXpress's experience:

— Most of our clients run comprehensive internal projects to promote the new tool, highlighting specific advantages to their internal stakeholders. If the new platform enables a user within the organization to do or access something that wasn't available to them before, that becomes a major selling point for the new solution. It is important to explain the value to the user.

Key takeaways from the experts at the end of the broadcast:

1. A corporate messenger is no longer just a work chat. Businesses need a managed environment featuring administration capabilities, access rights, history storage, integrations, and other tools for workplace communication.
2. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for every company. When choosing, it is important to consider your specific use cases: do you need only chats and calls, or a full-fledged platform with video conferencing, file sharing, task management, calendars, bots, and integrations?
3. Functionality is just one criterion. Security, ease of use for employees, deployment model, scalability, support, and cost are equally important.
4. Implementation doesn't end with simply installing the corporate messenger. If employees find the new tool inconvenient to use, work-related communication will continue to drift back to the personal chat apps they are used to.

You can watch the recording of the broadcast on Rutube and VK Video.