Company: Esri
Company background: Esri is the global market leader in the geographic information system (GIS) industry offering the most powerful mapping and spatial analytics technology available.
Contact: Leslie Fountain
Title: Community Content Manager
Related URLs: https://community.esri.com
Kudos Category: Rookie of the Year
1. Describe your company and your organization.
Esri is the global market leader in the geographic information system (GIS) industry offering the most powerful mapping and spatial analytics technology available. Esri Community is where the global community of Esri staff, distributors, and Esri users find solutions, share ideas, and collaborate.
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.
Migrating to the Jive/JX platform in 2014 was one of several migrations and changes over the 25+ years of Esri's online community.
With the growth of our company brand, we soon outgrew Jive/JX in 2018 when the platform slowed to limited development and innovation opportunities that were more focused on bug fixes. As a result, three major challenges emerged as roadblocks to leveraging the value of our online community:
Breaking through stagnant engagement metrics was the end goal, however, our real work was rooted in changing our brand sentiment lost in the user experience and change management to the Jive/JX platform. Additionally, we needed to rebuild strategic business value for the community with internal stakeholders.
By focusing the work on these segmented issues, we rebuilt the foundation for community growth on the Khoros platform.
Choosing Khoros as a Partner
Esri is driven by innovation, and one of the key values we sought from a service provider was their plan and vision for innovation of community technology. Khoros demonstrated and delivered an exciting and progressive roadmap throughout our 2-year rigorous procurement process that convinced our selection panel that Khoros was the right partner for Esri.
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.
Before Launch - Goal 1: Create Desire for a New Community with Users and Internal Stakeholders
We sought out current feedback from our users and internal stakeholders to understand their concerns and outline ways to respond directly to their pain points. This significantly shaped our strategy to create a desire for the Khoros platform with a migration-fatigued audience.
In addition to Khoros' interviews with internal stakeholders, the Esri Community team:
Findings from this research enriched our change management plan and communications strategy. We created custom content and demos that addressed users' concerns, introduced Khoros as our platform provider, and promoted new features and functionality. In the end, we were able to re-engage stakeholders through:
Goal 1 Successes: Change Management Feedback
At Launch - Goal 2: Release a new user interface and redesign our brand identity in alignment with Esri
In partnership with Esri's Creative Lab and Khoros' design team, we designed and implemented a new user interface and brand that reflected Esri's corporate brand, including our logo, color scheme, UI elements, and typography. To support full alignment, we changed our name from GeoNet, The Esri Community to Esri Community.
Goal 2 Successes: User Interface and Design Feedback
From Users:
From Internal Stakeholders:
"Congrats on the release! It feels way snappier than the old site and looks great."
After Launch - Successes experienced because of the investment
After implementing new community design (interface, experience, and structure) and creating a buzz of excitement from our change management strategy, we saw the following outcomes in our engagement:
Our Thank You Video
The collective effort to pull off our migration called for a special note of appreciation that we sent to staff and superusers to summarize our efforts and their important influence on our community experience.
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