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Brocade Communications Systems develops extraordinary networking solutions that enable today's complex, data-intensive businesses to optimize information connectivity and maximize the business value of their data. Today most of the world's data flows through Brocade equipment and data center networks built on Brocade technology. Based in Silicon Valley, Brocade designs, manufactures, and sells networking solutions and management applications for local, metro, and wide area networks as well as storage area networks.
Reinventing yourself—almost overnight—with Social Business Software
Business trigger: new business model
Brocade started out in the networking industry leveraging their core expertise in storage and selling their products through OEMs. This meant that Brocade had a single, direct route for their sales, support, and marketing functions and an indirect go-to-market strategy that didn't include much engagement with the customer marketplace. That changed when the company acquired a networking company called Foundry, which sold their products through a direct sales force. With this acquisition, Brocade went from being a provider of storage networking products to a provider of end-to-end networking solutions (Ethernet-IP-Storage) with multiple routes to market.
Solution focus: get closer to the customer
Developing a direct sales force and becoming an end-to-end network provider was a huge transition for the company, one that required a significant transformation in their go-to-market strategy and internal business processes. The questions they asked themselves were, "How do we scale our sales, support, and marketing organizations? How do we do more with the same infrastructure while providing the excellent customer service direct sales requires?"
"Not so long ago, this is a transformation that would have taken months, perhaps years. In today's social media environment, you can do it in days. And it's a win-win because customers want to engage with you as much as you want to engage with them."
John O'Donoghue,
Director of Internet Business Solutions, Brocade
Externally, the standard expectation was that a solutions provider would have an online social presence. Internally, an online customer community would have a number of benefits. It would give functional organizations a venue to market new products, facilitate self-support, and discuss certification processes. An online community would also serve as an invaluable tool for internal personnel to gain additional insight into customer issues and needs. Additionally, the community would provide a forum for Brocade customers to connect with Brocade thought leaders, reinforcing Brocade's leadership position in the marketplace.
Search for a solution: let's ask our peers
Brocade had been using forum software but knew they needed a much more robust Social Business Software solution to meet their strategic goals for transformation. They were looking for a specific set of initial functionality that they could roll out to customers but they also wanted scalability: the ability to grow as they needed at a pace they could set themselves, in other words to "crawl, walk, and then run." Many of their customers and partners were using Jive Social Business Software. Brocade gave Jive a call.
Why Jive?
Jive met Brocade's needs across all the fronts they were assessing: small footprint, good user functionality, and ease of use. Jives progressive product road map impressed them as well. With their purchase of a Jive community platform, Brocade was buying into both the future of Social Business Software and the future of Jive Software. Their faith in both was justified: two years after the selection process, Social Business Software has gained traction as the next must-have technology, and Jive has established itself as the number-one-rated provider.
"We needed a vendor that could meet certain criteria out of the box, including ease of use, but we also wanted to be wowed by the vendor's roadmap."
Venkatesh Subramanian,
Social Network and Communications Manager, Brocade
Driving change, one organization at a time
Brocade took a measured approach to deploying its external community. The Brocade Internet Business Solutions team was very clear that the key to success was keeping content "fresh"— after all, that's why users were coming to the community. And the key to keeping content fresh, they knew, was building business ownership internally. The team's initial focus was to carefully drive adoption one organization at a time, working with each functional business group to take ownership and commit to refreshing content. Their goal was to create small wins to give business users the confidence to take the steps required to adapt to their new market perspective.
Measuring success, one customer at a time
Over the course of the first two years of deployment, Brocade has seen constant up and to the right metrics for adding new business groups who own specific online customer communities. This has kept the site content fresh and relevant and engaging for members. The number of registered members has been growing as well: Brocade experienced year over year growth in registered users in the first two years.
Business value delivered
The Brocade Community has delivered concrete business value to Brocade as a whole, helping Brocade present one face to the customer and reinforcing the company's industry and thought leadership.
John O'Donoghue, Director of Internet Business Solutions, puts it this way: "In the old world, getting closer to your customers was a slow process involving offline surveys and a laborious collection of stats. In the new paradigm, we can leverage technology to get more input in real time from our customers using Social Business Software. This makes us more agile as a company, helps us keep costs down, and definitely makes us more scalable in our interactions with customers, prospects, and partners."
"Jive is very closely tied to our web go-to-market strategy."
Laura Manzanilla,
Senior Manager Customer Interaction and Usability Group, Brocade
Next steps
As they were executing their vision for their web-enabled go-to-market strategy, Brocade saw gaps in the ability to manage the knowledge they were growing on the customer community. The marketing team that sponsored the external community quickly identified a need for an internal social networking and collaboration solution that was fully aligned with their web-enabled go-to-market strategy.
"Fortunately, we had started with Jive," said Venkatesh Subramanian, in reference to the fact that Jive Software is the only vendor to offer, and integrate, both internal and external communities. Plans are being drawn to use Jive for further, incremental business value in a number of functional organizations, including:
- Support: to provide a next-generation self-support environment, bringing people together around content and specific topics
- Product marketing: to provide an invaluable tool for gaining insight into customer issues and needs
- Marketing: to provide a new channel for thought leadership and other marketing initiatives
Learn More About Jive
Jive Social Business Software brings the best features of social networking, collaboration software, community software, and social media monitoring to your enterprise.
Download our Customer Service Resource Kit and learn more about customer and support communities
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