A non-profit Christian charity organization of approximately 1,000 employees spanning worldwide was seeking a solution for a number of SharePoint environments. With a diverse range of needs across more than 25 countries, Open Doors needed a solution that could deliver concise reporting about vital portal activity. The necessity for a system to measure was clear, and once they tested out CardioLog Analytics, the decision was evident; CardioLog Analytics was the only reporting solution that could deliver accurate and comprehensive reports on all aspects of portal activity.
The challenge:
Open Doors, a worldwide Christian charity organization has set its sights on reaching higher business goals through its SharePoint portal. In order to ensure that the organization was reaching the KPIs that they set forth, the need for a monitoring and reporting solution became more and more apparent. They were interested in an advanced analytics solution to know how they were performing, and without a proper system to measure, they had no idea how to properly assess the status of their internal organizational activity. Their SharePoint team leader, stated,
“We couldn’t stake how we were currently, and couldn’t look back 6 months later to try to formulate an improvement plan. We needed a full-scale solution that would allow us to monitor improvement, user adoption and the different ways users were using the portal, to then make sure we were in line with higher business goals.”
Open Doors was also interested in finding out if their SharePoint communities were being well used, as well as how. They needed a solution that could drill down to provide insights on the activities of individual teams, so that the owners could understand how teams were interacting within communities.
Social was also a high priority for Open Doors, as they added Sitrion Social to strengthen their portals’ communication efforts. As more layers were added to their SharePoint portal, it was obvious that monitoring, maintaining (especially during a migration), and finally improving adoption was an ongoing pursuit. Understanding the communication and collaboration levels worldwide was of high priority, as Open Doors is dispersed across the world and often times from remote locations.
The solution:
CardioLog Analytics was able to meet the needs of Open Doors, saving them time and efforts so that they could easily have vital insights on their SharePoint data at their fingertips. The solution was able to deliver reports quickly and efficiently, as opposed to their previous reporting solution which provided limited information and only had options for manual report creation. The fact that CardioLog Analytics could give such detailed and accurate information with a click of a button, improved their efforts dramatically. Their SharePoint team leaders were able to save time by running reports monthly on the same set of data. This was crucial for them in their efforts to compare SharePoint portal trends over time. The variety of reports was also very helpful for them, as they could easily customize reports according to their users’ needs and requirements.
Open Doors utilized individual users’ reports in order to target what individuals were doing in certain communities, including the activities of new users, what items of content these users were viewing, how they were interacting with the content, the ways in which they were interacting with other users and more.
They also thought about users who may have been missing out on important items in the portal and by creating reports like most popular content, they were able to keep promoting the items that were working well to ensure that all users would access them. Essentially, they were able to keep a clear focus, target users and content items that were performing well, or perhaps were lagging in order to create a real base level to understand the full status of their portal.
Unique users reports allowed them to understand who were the key users in their portal. In circumstances where there were pages with announcements or key documents, they were able to see who was viewing these announcements and key pieces of information.
When asked about CardioLog’s ease of use, their SharePoint team leader stated, “I found it really easy to use with some basic training. The fact that there are so many reports offered is really great, allowing us to customize it to our particular use and need, especially with so many communities in our portal. The ability to set up automated reports also made my life so much easier.”
Like many world-wide organizations, the Open Doors SharePoint story is an ongoing process with many challenges as well as successes. With the help of CardioLog Analytics, they’ve been able to gain a holistic perspective on all the inner-workings of their portal, to make intelligible business decisions, increase user productivity and spark collaboration within their communities.
