Jon Axtman, Director, Web Engagement, Microsoft Dynamics
Category
  • Future of Work
The Project

With thousands of customers and millions of users, Microsoft Dynamics is a leading provider of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) tools. We run an online community for our customers, partners, prospects and enthusiasts to get product support, share best practices and engage with their peers. You can see videos showing how the community works here: https://community.dynamics.com/content/help.aspx

The Technology

Telligent Community

Metrics Matter

By the numbers, we have experienced organic and steady adoption and growth, indicating that our customers and partners are eagerly adopting the community: 320,000 visits/month; 210,000 unique users; 23% unique users come back to the community more than once per month. In addition, we have more than 76,000 registered members and are adding at a rate of 3-3.5% per month, which is crucial because members are the only ones who can add content (though any visitor can read and gain insights from the community).  

Disruptive Factor

In terms of the competitive landscape, our competitors do not offer the level of support, training, knowledge sharing and engagement that we offer in our public community. We view this as a critical business objective in order to recoup costs to put back into R&D (which are saved from support) and to lower operational costs.

For customers, it provides inexpensive support and an ongoing learning environment with highly trusted and knowledgeable peers. Customers also appreciate gaining a non-Microsoft view of things from other community participants - having an unfiltered, unbiased opinion is big for a prospect/customer and enables them to learn from one another rather than hear it only from Microsoft. Now, customers and prospects have a chorus of voices supporting and enabling them to do their jobs better.     

Shining Moment

The community is a force multiplier because Microsoft traditionally drives out its own content/assets used by customers/partners to better market/understand/support the product. Now, we don't have to source all that intellectual property, but instead we get to crowdsource support, best practices and insights from leading people in the industry (inclusive of customers, partners and employees) and serve it up in diverse formats- videos, blogs, forums, wikis and more.

 

ABOUT Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics solutions empower your people to be more productive and your systems to last longer and scale as your business grows, while enabling you to derive the insights necessary to respond quickly in an ever-changing world of business.