opentext And The Importance Of Metrics

Nestled in Waterloo’s tech park, surrounded by beautiful nature lies one of Canada’s biggest software companies – opentext. It  started with three University students in 1991 – and has now transformed into a multibillion $ corporation with offices worldwide.

It is no surprise that opentext, a company driven by commitment to technological innovations, jumped on the social media train right after the invention of Facebook in 2004. And with the growing access to WIFI and social networking services, the social media landscape of opentext just became broader. A massive website, accounts with Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest – you name it, the company surely has a presence. None of those accounts created millions of followers, but considering that the social media approach is specifically about enterprise information and content management, opentext is doing quite well to get their message out.

When the company discovered the power of social media for promoting their services and products to the world, it didn’t take long to find out that it can also be used to motivate and engage employees. With the goal to make it as easy as possible to connect with team members, who potentially work in three different countries across the globe and need to solve problems quickly, even when one just started his day when it’s almost bedtime for the other, opentext encouraged employees to use traditional social media outlets before implementing internal equivalents.  

While opentext’s social media team conveys the company’s messages to external audiences, the corporate employee communicators look after the internal audience. This includes writing emails to announce company news, employee stories and the management of the company’s Intranet, internal blogs and of course, social media channels.

Emma Schmidt, who we have just met in the video where she gave us an inside on one of the company’s biggest annual event, is a communication specialist and works for the opentext’s headquarter employee communication department. She kindly agreed to an interview and explained which platforms employees can use, what functionalities they have, and how she measures social media traffic.

There is for example opentext’s own social media tool “Tempo Social”, which was developed in 2010 and allows employees to communicate, share and collaborate without compromising security or compliance requirements of the company.

“Yammer”, a social media tool from Microsoft, was implemented in 2017. It only works within a business network and is currently the most used tool within the company.  

“Everyone Social”, is an internal website that hosts content about and for employees with the added option to share content externally on public social media outlets.

For those who prefer a more visual way of communicating, opentext has “Global TV”. It presents facts from employees around the world, shares what’s happening in the other offices, promotes upcoming company events and activities, and transmits important meetings live. “Global TV” can be viewed on one of the many TVs in the serverys and on the computer.

Last but not least there is “Employee Connect”: a monthly newsletter that compiles all company news and events as well as little snippets of an employee’s life.

“People get inspired by personal experiences. It makes content relatable. When we see the faces from our colleagues from around the world we can relate to it and connect with them. I find this resonates with our followers on social media.” Emma Schmidt, Communication Specialist, opentext

With the exception of Global TV, all internal and external tools get carefully measured. How many views, likes, shares, impressions did an article or a campaign get? How many people did it reach and how much engagement has been created? Did it reach any influencers and if so, did they spread the word? What percentage of the overall conversation was focused on opentext compared to a competitor? All these metrics are necessary to measure whether the goal of a social media campaign has been achieved.

The social media team pulls the reporting data from several resources. Some analytics are directly provided by the individual platforms (ex. Twitter, wordpress or facebook analytics), for others a 3rd party enterprise-ready SRM (social relationship management) solution that empowers brands to leverage the power of social media across their organizations, pulls the information. All data results get captured into a massive online spreadsheet where social activities get analysed month to month. There is no room for wasting time on hit or miss type campaigns and without social media analytics there wouldn’t be a way to find out the difference between success and failure – did you accomplish the results you want?

“Customer journeys are made up of every point of contact a customer has with your brand. And now these journeys are Digital. Customers are leaving digital footprints. The transactions, videos, peer reviews on social media sites, blog posts, web forms, call center discussions, point-of-sale promotions, and devices people use on their purchasing journeys—these are your navigation points on the digital customer journey.” Mark Barrenechea, CEO, opentext

Using an SRM software is almost unavoidable if you want to gather real-time perception, without spending a fortune on market research and focus groups. It also has the advantage to make branding and messaging more effective due to its “listening” capacities.Yes, you heard that right. The software “hears” what is said about the company and can help with activities, such as customer relationship management, campaign monitoring or competitor analysis.

opentext is well aware of the rapid digital changes and developments and makes sure to stay on top of it. The data of the monthly social media analysis gives them actionable insights and can uncover market opportunities they don’t want to miss. A little conversation on Facebook can potentially go a very long way of success.

Lessons for Others

“Choose quality over quantity in your social media content. Keep it concise, short and sweet. That’s how I like to consume content and that’s what I like to put out in my campaigns”  Emma Schmidt, Communication Specialist, opentext

Today, having a social media presence alone is not enough, it is too crowded and competitive. It is also not enough to just aim for a high number of followers, likes and shares, as a business has to go much deeper than that. It is crucial to learn about your followers, how influential, and how engaged they are. Make sure you know your goal and track the results so that you can aim for the most effective strategy.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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