Lauren Klein, Social Leadership Community Strategist, Hitachi Data Systems

SuperNova Award Category

  • CoIT & The New C-Suite
  • Future of Work
  • Next Generation Customer Experience

The Company

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS)

HDS provides information technologies, services and solutions that help companies improve IT costs and agility, and innovate with information to make a difference in the world.

The Problem

Conservative. Cloistered. Even secretive. For years this has been the public perception of Hitachi Data Systems (HDS). It didn’t matter how much customers love our solutions – 80%of Fortune Global 100 companies rely on HDS. Nor did it matter how collaborative, nurturing and innovative our culture is on the inside – we’re a regular on many “best workplaces” lists, including FORTUNE Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2012. ). The fact remained that the industry saw only a traditional top-down company with one-way communication and few means of customer input.

The Solution

For HDS, the future of work meant a complete retooling of how we interact with our global ecosystem of customers and channel partners. We built a new online environment that demonstrates the essence of the HDS vision to “Innovate With Information.”– an environment that engages more than 14,000 customers and 1,200 partners 24/7 in ongoing peer-to-peer dialog. The mass interaction helped all of the participants make faster, more informed decisions because they had critical information at the very moment of need. An initiative known internally as HDS Project Nova resulted in Hitachi Data Systems Community, built on Jive and gamified with the Jive Gamification Module powered by Bunchball Nitro. Now, everything that once was hidden – information, internal resources, key people – is accessible to any member of HDS Community. Customers and partners get fast, candid feedback to questions, comments and suggestions, and everyone has unfettered access to materials and documentation that previously was available only through HDS resellers.

The Results

HDS Community launched June 10, 2013 and in its 1st six weeks, registered more than 1,400 members with virtually no promotion: just a handful of emails to legacy forum members and absolutely no advertising or other outreach. Membership is currently growing by 10% per  week. But there are other, more significant measures of success here. HDS Community has cultivated an environment of peer-to-peer support and transparent engagement throughout the ecosystem of employees, partners and customers. The community has transformed the HDS working culture.  This new approach encouraged a crucial tangible result: the launch of the first Global Account Pilot – a special, password-protected area within HDS Community where a customer can interact and engage with account managers, technical support engineers, and R&D executives on the issues they care about at that moment. Our 1st Global Account Pilot sub-community bolsters our position with a Fortune 100 financial services customer and we expect more of these sub-communities to emerge for other customers.

The Technology

An initiative known internally as HDS Project Nova resulted in Hitachi Data Systems Community, built on Jive and gamified with the Jive Gamification Module powered by Bunchball Nitro. Now, everything that once was hidden – information, internal resources, key people – is accessible to any member of HDS Community. Customers and partners get fast, candid feedback to questions, comments and suggestions, and everyone has unfettered access to materials and documentation that previously was available only through HDS resellers.

Metrics 

HDS Community launched June 10, 2013 and in its 1st six weeks, registered more than 1,400 members with virtually no promotion: just a handful of emails to legacy forum members and absolutely no advertising or other outreach. Membership is currently growing by 10% per  week. But there are other, more significant measures of success here. HDS Community has cultivated an environment of peer-to-peer support and transparent engagement throughout the ecosystem of employees, partners and customers. The community has transformed the HDS working culture.  This new approach encouraged a crucial tangible result: the launch of the first Global Account Pilot – a special, password-protected area within HDS Community where a customer can interact and engage with account managers, technical support engineers, and R&D executives on the issues they care about at that moment. Our 1st Global Account Pilot sub-community bolsters our position with a Fortune 100 financial services customer and we expect more of these sub-communities to emerge for other customers.

Disruptive Factor

In a word, gamification. The motivational and loyalty-building properties of game mechanics have engaged members by rewarding them for high-value behaviors, such as asking and answering questions, downloading and sharing content, and connecting with colleagues within the HDS ecosystem. This is crucial to establish this new way of working within the community  – a place where solutions to customer problems are crowdsourced, where the people who buy HDS products and services collaborate directly with the people who develop them. It’s a place where collective wisdom and knowledge grows daily, where members connect personally by sharing information as varied as favorite vacation spots and celebrity sightings. Perhaps most importantly, it’s a place where customers develop lasting engagement because they now feel they have a say and a stake in what’s next from HDS. In fact, we have several community members who are learning, discovering and connecting to such a degree that they’ve already completed all of our missions, earned all our badges, and maxed out all 6 of our participation levels.

Shining Moment

In a matter of weeks after the community’s launch, we noticed another result that, perhaps more than anything, defines success for HDS Community: The 2nd most popular area of HDS Community is the Innovation Center, where customers gain direct access to our R&D organization. For a company whose corporate vision is based on innovation by us and by our customers, this is a crucial point. In the Innovation Center, threads, discussions and polls give customers a greater understanding and a more current voice in our development process than ever before. In the Innovation Center, Michael Hay, vice president of product planning at HDS, regularly holds what he calls Office Hours. Customers can interact directly with him and not just understand our technology roadmap, but help create it.  Member involvement in the Innovation Center has prompted Hay to initiate an R&D fast track initiative that allows customers to shape future R&D activities, provide feedback on programming models and concepts like Open Innovation, and help define our approach to future innovation. When we look for evidence that the future of work at HDS is changing, the evidence is here.

About Hitachi

Hitachi Data Systems provides information technologies, services and solutions that help companies improve IT costs and agility, and innovate with information to make a difference in the world. Our customers gain compelling return on investment (ROI), unmatched return on assets (ROA), and demonstrable business impact.

·         We have approximately 6,000 employees worldwide.

·         We conduct business in more than 100 countries and regions.

·         Our products, services and solutions are trusted by the world's leading enterprises, including more than 70% of the Fortune 100 and more than 80% of the Fortune Global 100.