CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
May 29, 2007
Company News
Open Text Online Customer Community Applies Social Networking to Business
Social networks, online communities, blogs and wikis, have taken the Internet by storm, giving savvy marketers powerful new ways to reach consumers. So what about companies that sell to businesses? Are they missing the boat on the social networking craze? Not necessarily, according to Open TextT Corporation, a leading provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software, which helps Global 2000 companies manage information. While the challenges are different, business-to-business firms are beginning to use online communities, blogs and similar technologies to help establish deeper customer connections that can boost the corporate bottom line.
Compared to social communities, such as Facebook or MySpace which target people in casual, social settings, business communities must reach people in the context of their professional lives, offering a wide range of information in a self-service setting that helps them in their jobs and careers. Open Text's customer community initiative, called Open Text Online (OTO), has helped Open Text better connect with its corporate customers, giving the large, global organizations that use Open Text's software a powerful new resource over and above the formal support and training programs.
"What our customers want more than anything is detailed, useful information they can take back to their business, and a genuine exchange of ideas, minus a heavy-duty sales pitch," said Open Text's Vice President of Customer Partnership Programs, Martin Sumner-Smith, who recently participated in a podcast (http://podcast.opentext.com/public/channel/rss/ot-ecm-news/item/12- OpenTextECMNews_OTO_final.mp3) on business-to-business customer communities and Open Text's approach. "Through Open Text Online, we have established customer communities which allow us to gain enormous insights and new ideas on how to improve our products and better meet the needs of our customers - all gained directly from an open, ongoing exchange with customers."
"Open Text's software is strategic to our business," said Jeff Brown, Business Analyst with BMO Financial Group and an OTO member. "The idea of a forum where we could access information, share ideas with our peers in other organizations, and learn about innovative things other Open Text customers are doing appealed to us. Enterprise software, by its nature, is very complex, so offering a forum like OTO which facilitates knowledge sharing isn't a 'nice to have', it's a necessity."
OTO already boasts close to 9,000 active members and many of Open Text's largest customers have as many as 50 to 100 members each in the community. Community members access a wide range of information, including customer case studies, product and strategy presentations, white papers, recorded webinars, and detailed information on how to effectively deploy technologies, such as enterprise records management software.
OTO is divided into three tracks, one for business and department managers and executives that use Livelink ECM, one for technical and development staff at customer sites, and one for partners. Open Text tracks what type of OTO information is most popular, helping to keep the site's content fresh and useful.
OTO was a highly strategic component which helped the company communicate with customers during Open Text's acquisition of Hummingbird in October, 2006. Following the acquisition, Open Text created a special site within OTO for Hummingbird customers, where they could exchange information, get questions answered, and find details on Open Text's strategy and product plans. The site opened another channel of communication to better understand customers' needs and concerns.
OTO uses Open Text's own Communities of Practice solution built on Livelink ECM, which provides a central workspace where users can establish communities, publish relevant news, share documents and participate in blogs. For more information about Livelink ECM - Communities of Practice, go to: http://www.opentext.com/2/sol-products/sol-pro-docmgmt-collaboration/pro-ll- communities-practice.htm.
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