Saba Customer Community- Deirdre's Week 2 Update

A post to update all on the exciting growth and innovation occurring on our implementation of Saba Live for our Customers:

Customer Community Update

This summer, Saba used our newest offering of the collaboration suite, Saba Live, to create an online space for Saba employees and customers. And here you are! The Saba Customer Community is a space for exchanging advice, best practices, and generating group learning and innovation. This is a quick update to let you know about recent developments and to let you know how you can get involved and take advantage of this developing resource!

My name is Deirdre Yee and I will be the Community Manager for the for the Saba Customer Community. I am excited to meet and work with you, and I already had some enlightening conversations with many of you at People 2010: Saba Summit. I don’t want that to stop just because we aren’t in the same physical space. I plan to use the innovative tools in Saba Live-groups, discussions, Centra sessions, Channels, and the Innovation Lab, to get suggestions, ideas, and feedback from you as we use the community together.

Growth

The Customer Community was everywhere you looked at People 2010: Saba Global Summit, last week. Presenters told customers, partners, and prospects that the community was there to continue the valuable discussions that we have every year at Summit. Everyone was invited to login and explore the various groups, channels, discussion forums, resources, and ideas that were being shared on the community in real-time. Throughout the week, I repeatedly met customers, partners, prospects, and Saba employees who had just heard all about our new fantastic collaboration tool. Almost every session I attended mentioned the community for further questions and discussions when time invariably ran out before ideas did.

Login Stations were set up in the hallway, and everywhere you looked, attendees adorned buttons announcing “I’m on Saba Live. Are you?” On the first morning of keynote speakers, Amar Dhaliwal, SVP of Product Operations, asked everyone to sign up for the Customer Community, and to use the platform to reach out to the fringe of their network-where the most valuable connections often occur.

Today, the Customer Community is growing at an amazing rate and the amount of activity and the diversity of the participants and materials is growing every day. Every measure of community activity has skyrocketed in the past week:

There are now more than 1000 community members, a huge jump from before the Summit. And the members are actively exploring the site:

Week of October 31st 2010	Week of November 9th 2010	Percent Change
397 Visits	1300 Visits	+227.46%
189 Unique Visitors	609 Unique Visitors	+187.83%
3906 Page Views	14,325 Page Views	+266.74%

We have also tracked the roles of individuals who are taking advantage of the site. The leading visitors and contributors work in the following fields:

• Education/Learning


• Product and Business Strategy and Development


• Consulting


• Information Technology


• Human Resources


• Sales

The buzz that was generated during Summit is bringing people to the community, this much we can see clearly. And once you sign up on the community, what kind of experience will you find?

Saba Live in Action

Groups are still being created, profiles are still being filled in, and everything is moving and changing at a constant basis. However, we can already see some of the unique advantages of using Saba Live to communicate with customers.

One great example is a recent interaction between Ronno Lee, Vice President of Saba Cloud Strategy and Operations and Justin Boone, a LMS Administrator at Country Financial.

Justin asked about something he had heard about in a session at the Summit: a possible future integration of Google Analytics with Saba Analytics for Cloud customers. He had a few specific questions, and wanted to know a timeline. Within five minutes, Ronno had responded, promising to get his engineering team in touch with Justin.

This was not a specific troubleshooting question that would be better aimed at support. Justin might not have known the best person to contact with his question. And yet, the Customer Community allowed for quick attention and the pool of knowledge to be expanded- anyone else who wonders about that can find the exchange and get even more out of their Saba software.

Another instance of Saba Live in Action Christonya Green, a Learning Technologies Analyst at S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc. and a number of other customers and Saba employees discussing the difference between Hosted and Cloud solutions.

You can also click here to see a lively back and forth when Janice Watrous-McCabe, a Senior Business Analyst at Allina and Andy Wooler, HR Technology Manager at Legal & General Group discuss best practices of competency use in Saba Learning.

Lastly, check out David Ewert from McDonalds giving Jason Stutt, a Senior Manager of Product Strategy at Saba, kudos for his quick help with Ignite Technologies integration.

Exciting stuff going on! I’ll close with a few tips for getting started on the community.

Getting Started at the Saba Customer Community

*This is your community, and I am eager to hear your suggestions for the general direction of the community. Go through the normal avenues for troubleshooting, of course, but I’d really appreciate some input for ideas for best use of the community. Got ideas? Want to get involved? If you would like to see a new discussion forum in one of our groups, or an entirely new group- we want to hear from you! Let me know!

*We urge you to join the Customer Community today, to complete your profile (with a picture!) and to start following people. Join groups! Just like all of Saba’s products, we believe people are the most valuable resource. Take advantage, and follow relevant colleagues, industry peers, and Saba employees. If you don’t follow anyone, or belong to any groups you won’t see any of the content getting shared and you won’t get to play your part in the conversation.

*Share everything! Other members of the community want to know about your experiences working with Saba products. Your anecdotal story of a global implementation could be invaluable insight for another customer. I once heard that a good policy for online communities is that every time you ask a question and receive some knowledge from the community, you be sure to post something to contribute to the collective knowledge of the group. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but if you were at People 2010: Saba Global Summit, think about all of the engaging customer presenters. All they were doing was sharing their stories and answering questions. Consider presenting your experience on the Saba Customer Community.