Challenges:

• A leading global technology company was looking to create an informal (social) learning environment for its global brand marketing teams
• The Company operates in 80+ countries around the world, has more than 3,000 marketing professionals, many thousands more employees indirectly involved with marketing, and a roster of marketing agencies
  
• The Company's marketing operations are changing rapidly, with the impact of search, social media, IPTV, mobile, iPad etc., and continuing efforts to consolidate brands globally
  
• The marketing teams work in a performance driven, time pressured environment with high volumes of campaigns that require a rapid response
  
• The industry is ultra competitive and dynamic, with constant new product innocations. The teams have to keep up with emerging market and technology trends and innovate frequently to remain competitive
• Marketers struggle to find the time and travel budgets to attend conference and training events, and therefore need flexible support tools that are available 24/7 and fit around other work and life commitments
• When coordinating with agencies resources and internal teams across regions, the company needed a tool to share rich media content easily and enable effective collaboration
• The Company wanted to find a partner who has a flexible and easy solutions, and which could integrate with the intranet but wasn't dependent on the enterprise IT plan
  

Solutions:

• K'nex-us 2.2 is an enterprise focused platform that delivers professional and user generated rich media content and makes content more collaborative, engaging and viral. It can be deployed on SharePoint or standaline
• The solution was chosen because the marketing teams needs are content driven i.e. a social network as such is not the primary requirement. Instead, content is the trigger for engagement and collaboration
• K'nex-us 2.2 gives users a personalized experience, highlighting only relevant content, events, people and collaborative opportunities
• Different communities have been created on the one platform, according to seniority, job specification and geography
• Senior managers are able to generate their own video content, using Flip videos specifically provided for this purpose
• An integrated Support Centre provides information on how to use the Flip and generate appropriate content easily
• Users quickly and simply upload video directly into K'nex-us 2.2 and distribute to relevant teams
• Colleagues access content according to thei preferences e.g. via video on a laptop, iPhone or iPad, podcasts through the iTunes store or by downloading traditional documents
• Colleagues rapidly find insights and people/networks of interest attached to relevant content
• Social search features including ratings ensure the most relevant and popular content is more easily accessible
• Tools allow the company to deliver content in new, shorter and more engaging formats including video and podcast
• Frequent webcasts now recorded and content is made available through the platform. Not only does this widen access, but collaboration around the content extends its valie
• A secure admin panel provides powerful and agile tools to support the marketing team. Features include quick upload and deployment of new content, manage and approve pre-production content, archive content, customize social features, moderate social activies around content and customize admin rights for different admin levels
• Comprehensive analytics make it simple to track and manage individual or team engagement
• The platform operates within the existing intranet environment, using single sign on and an open architecture to import and export data
• K'nex-us 2.2 was configured and customized for launch within a matter of weeks
  
• A low set up cost and initial investment made it easier to build the business case and introduce more innovative approaches to employee engagement and learning
  
• The ability to deploy fast and without complex integration enabled the marketing leadership team to accress the business needs quickly and efficiently
• The complete technology solution is provided by Knexus, with guaranteed delivery, storage and bandwidth capabilities to ensure a compelling user experience
  
  

• Dramatic time saving – team leaders have reduced time spent on explaining key insights, requirements and learning by 80%, moving from creating PowerPoint presentations to short videos
• Enhanced knowledge sharing – distribution of Flip videos with easy access to upload content, has led to a 56% increase in contributions of experience
• Business value of content – through recording content from events and extending its access, plus delivering content in easy access formats such as podcast, its estimated that the audience consuming new content has increased by 35%
• Informal, social learning – make learning informal and social is bolstering the skills and confidence of colleagues, leading o the more efficient use of agency resources
• Accelerating insights – in a business where better ideas means millions in additional earning, faster, improved understanding of new market developments and best practices across the organization, together with quicket access to internal experts is helping the team compete more effectively
• Improve employee productivity – accelerating on-boarding and supporting existing members to get up to speed with better access to knowledge and people with the know-how
• Substantial cost savings – the company has eliminated significant travel requirements and reduced its cost of learning and insights by more than 60% compared with traditional methods
• Leveraging exsiting investments – by better sharing existing projects and campaign outcomes within the business across geographies, marketing is reducing costs in terms of duplicating investment
• Reducing risk and capital expenditure – opting for a SaaS based solution like K'nex-us 2.2, our client avoided risks associated with a substantial upfront capital investment in a software solution. Instead, the client purchased the software as a service sized to immediate business needs, safe in the knowledge of enterprise scalability and that further investment will only take place due to success
• Competitive advantage – deploying a ready built solution with extensive custimization capabilities and enterprise scalability, our client responded quickly to identified business needs, equipping the business to outperform competitors
• Harnessing innovation – partnering with a niche partner committed to ongoing technology innovation around employee engagement and social learning, our client is positioned to benefit from ongoing innovation