Company: Dataiku
Company background: Dataiku is one of the world’s leading AI and machine learning platforms, supporting agility in organizations’ data efforts via collaborative, elastic, and responsible AI, all at enterprise scale.
Contact: Julie Hamel
Title: Director of User Advocacy
Team: Kerri Williams - Senior Manager ( Kerri ) , Community, Claudius Henrichs, Platforms Manager ( Claudius )
Related URLs: community.dataiku.com
Kudos Category: Rookie of the Year
1. Describe your company and your organization.
Dataiku is one of the world’s leading AI and machine learning platforms, supporting agility in organizations’ data efforts via collaborative, elastic, and responsible AI, all at enterprise scale. Hundreds of companies use Dataiku to underpin their essential business operations and ensure they stay relevant in a changing world.
The Community team falls under our User Advocacy (UA) department which focuses on enabling and empowering end-users throughout their product journey. UA resides within the broader Customer organization focused on customer experience and encompassing Customer Success, Academics, Data Science and Strategy Consulting.
2. Why did you choose to invest in Khoros and what was your experience before making the switch from a previous solution or investing in new technology.
Previous to our migration to the Khoros platform, we hosted a basic Q&A Support forum called ‘Answers’ on a homegrown solution. The site had limited functionality for SSO and user tracking, as well as minimal access to analytics, making user insights particularly difficult. This, coupled with a dated UI and basic posting functionality, meant that the site was not actively promoted across the organization beyond a link on our Support page.
When looking for a new platform, Khoros presented the teams at Dataiku with the best scalable option which included the features and functionality that we know will be needed as our company continues its rapid growth. The ability to customize (with the right expertise), the granular permissions capabilities including Group Hubs and sub-level categories, its native gamification and the ability to tap into a wealth of platform data both on site and through Bulk Data API to tie into our business systems were key elements in our decisions to move forward with Khoros technology.
We were also looking for a vendor we felt we could trust to provide a strong ongoing commitment to the partnership, and assist us on our path to success as our organization continues to grow at a rapid pace.
3. What were your goals when investing in Khoros technology and what successes have you already experienced because of the investment? Please include metrics, if possible.
Our objective in moving to the Khoros Platform was to evolve our previous Q&A forum into a branded, full-featured experience platform for all users. But in order to achieve this, we knew we’d need a detailed plan, clear success measures and a laser focus on the priorities that would help us achieve those goals.
Before
After
The new Dataiku Community soft launched on January 14, 2020, in the midst of our company-wide offsite in Malta.
This allowed the UA team the opportunity to speak to a captive, and usually globally dispersed employee base about the launch and its future plans for 2020.
The news was well-received and organizationally recognized that Community will play a vital role as Dataiku continues innovation that will allow us to reach a diverse audience of data practitioners, ultimately promoting inclusivity, collaboration and democratization of enterprise AI.
Prior to this soft launch, we also spent an extensive amount of time with a focus on internal feedback. Our internal alpha test lasted three weeks with more than 40 employees participating, producing more than 280 posts and 90+ line items of feedback for implementation.
Following this we also launched a week long private beta for select customers to preview the new community experience.
As a sign of appreciation for their assistance, we provided them with branded Community swag in the form of a small planter, as a thank you for helping us grow the Community.
In early February, we pulled out all the stops to promote the community, including blog posts, a press release, emails to our user and partner base as well as our first installment of our ‘Meet Ted’ video to familiarize users with the new community experience.
In terms of measuring success and results, during our first three months live, we focused on Khoros recommended best practices for measuring success in a newly launched community. These include targeting a 1000-1200 minute time to first reply, 75% of topics have received replies and aiming for an average 5 posts per board per day.
Currently, we have a response time of less than 1000mins and 83% of topics have received a reply. Beyond our immediate launch goals, we also developed our broader 2020 strategic plan, which include end-of-year (EOY) goals and objectives around the global programs that would assist us in achieving these launch goals and beyond.
Programs launched in the last 6 months include:
- Internal and External User Groups: Paris, New York, The Netherlands and London
- Online Events hub with 13 successful events hosted, and 200% of our goal of user touchpoints
- Community Conundrums: Our weekly data challenge for users to test their skills using Dataiku DSS
- Creation of a new home for our company podcast, Banana Data
- Monthly Community Newsletters for both internal and external audiences
- Private spaces for both the Partner Community and a group for our Academics team
- Integration with our online learning platform, Dataiku Academy
- User tracking and data integration into our business systems using our own product
Community User Tracking in Dataiku DSS
As a result of our investment with Khoros, not only in the technology itself, but by applying implementation best practices and focusing efforts on the programs needed to draw in new users, we have seen our Community user engagement grow 4x our previous platform - our highest week topping 10x the number of average posts on our Q&A forum, as well as more than 100k visits and 75k unique visitors since soft launch.
We strive to continue enhancing the community experience through monthly release of improvements, and plan to launch an Ambassadors program, customer awards and project gallery by the end of the year.
We look forward to continued growth and engagement of our user base in the coming years and are pleased to be partnering with Khoros to help us achieve this.
