Capitalizing on the social media revolution to blend commerce with community

Business impetus for Social Business Software

Electronic design engineers developing prototypes have migrated to the web to perform research and buy products. Premier Farnell saw this shift in marketplace behavior as a window of opportunity to accelerate business growth and drive market leadership. Now they had an opportunity to use the web to connect directly with engineers online to influence product decisions in the critical early design phases and, in the process, move "upstream" from buyers in purchasing departments. Premier Farnell also had recognized that electronic design engineers needed a tool for gathering specialized information as well as a platform to exchange ideas and views among themselves, independently evaluate vendor offerings, and talk with industry experts.

Solution focus and goals

Premier Farnell wanted a solution that could emphasize community while encouraging commerce—a solution that would meet the needs of design engineers as well feed into a number of the company's strategic business objectives for increasing revenues, acquiring new customers, and solidifying their industry leadership position.

Jive Social Business Software at work

Premier Farnell launched an innovative website, element14, which offers their 2 million customers an unmatched resource pool of unbiased content to reduce the time they spend on research; provide access to recommendations from peers as well as insight from experts; and give them a simple interface for selecting and purchasing components. Powered by Jive Social Business Software, the site serves as a one-stop, unbiased global online resource for design engineers around the world to research and buy products, collaborate, and confer in their own languages in an easy-to-use social networking environment.

Business value delivered

That element14 was a good business move for Premier Farnell is unassailable. As a combined online technology resource and Social Business Software platform, it is a brilliantly straightforward strategy to decommission the competition and accelerate the sales cycle. Industry response has been overwhelmingly positive. The company's strategic initiative, in short, has met the launch objectives for driving industry awareness, new user registrations, and visits and conversions to the company's transactional sites.

Results exceeded expectations with visits increasing month over month. Six months after launch, element14 had thousands of active members and significantly increased awareness from search engine optimization, which will continue to drive growth and awareness. In addition, discussion threads around products and technologies were increasing 50% month over month as engineers use the site to link to their peers.

The backstory

How Premier Farnell translated changing customer behavior into a business opportunity
Electronic design engineers are specialists and, with the rapidity with which technology changes, staying on the professional edge has become increasingly difficult. While many websites collate product information and industry news, navigating the content is a challenge for a specialist because the sites attempt to provide the broadest possible range of information. This often makes it difficult for design engineers to find the highly esoteric information they need.

Manufacturers attempt to fill the gap but cannot provide objective evaluation across competitive products. Scholars share information with well researched and validated whitepapers that are very deep dives rather than pragmatic primers design engineers need. Industry symposiums, exhibitions, and conferences help design engineers stay abreast of the latest industry developments—and provide perks in the form of networking as well. But the reality is that these events are commercial businesses, sponsored by vendors looking to maximize revenues.

"Today over 70% of our overall business is online," says Dianne Kibbey, Global eCommerce Director. "We've had year-on-year web growth of 24% over the past 3 years, and all of our distribution businesses have seen significant growth in their online sales. Asia Pacific and Europe has been leading the trend with over 50% of their business now transacted online. We expect North America will follow suit as well."

Leveraging Social Business Software to address market needs

The idea of a community for design engineers was developed well over a year before execution, remembers Dianne, and began as a series of questions:

• How could we link the design engineering community from a global perspective?
• What about providing a technology portal and e-community where engineers could collaborate, share, learn, and utilize new research tools?
• What if we could extend the portal with a Social Business Software platform to create a community that is the first place engineers go to in the morning for updates, news, and answers to questions—a place that would ultimately drive increased time on site, repeat visits, enhanced loyalty and ultimately advocacy?

Their vision for the new website was large: suppliers and industry experts would lend their expertise, the environment would be unbiased, and the depth of content would be unmatched on any other industry website. Electronic design engineers would be able to interact, collaborate, and talk to experts in their local languages. And the website would map design questions and content to product stock to simplify the purchase of components (and accelerate sales). It was a tall order. But Premier Farnell was determined to do it.

Partnering to create a business advantage

Partnering with industry suppliers and experts, they knew, would be key to ensuring that the online community achieved its maximum potential. Eight industry suppliers were eager to participate; it was an ideal platform from which to seed new technologies and products. The use of their products in early prototypes was a key piece of the suppliers' own strategy and could lead to large-quantity purchases when these products went into production. And it would be a valuable tool for suppliers to engage design engineers in conversation and gain customer insight into their own products. Academics and other experts were also enthusiastic—this was the broadest possible audience for their work. Suppliers, consultants, and academics were invited to participate in the community by posting comments, blogs, podcasts, and videos. They were encouraged to embed referral links to raise awareness about their individual profiles, academia, technology development, and business.

"We described the opportunity to our suppliers and partners in this way," says Dianne. "As we [Premier Farnell] continue to establish ourselves as the design engineer's distributor of choice, you [our partners and suppliers] also have the opportunity to align yourselves with the changing dynamics in the industry—changes that have only been made possible by embracing the power of Web 2.0 and online collaboration."

The search for a solution

Once the initiative had been framed, it was time to find a solution. Premier Farnell quickly dismissed building the site themselves. "We are a high service distributor," says Dianne Kibbey, "and we need to focus on our core competencies." Instead they decided to put all the top vendors through a rigorous evaluation process, which focused on three key evaluation parameters: community solution focus, platform flexibility, and extensibility as well as the ability to get their platform off the ground quickly.

Jive was the winner based on their best-in-class community functionality and product roadmap for continued enhancements. They outpaced the competition with their capabilities and clear expertise with many well-known communities. The ability to get up and running quickly was also unique to Jive.

element14: commerce and community

Powered by Jive Social Business Software, element14 bridges the information divide in the electronics industry with unique content and gives community members social networking tools to take them through all the key phases of electronic design: early stage research, gathering feedback from peers and experts, assembling prototype kits, and after-design support.

From day one, element14 was infused with a critical mix of over 10,000 pieces of content including Spice models, block diagrams, product selection guides, technology primers, webcasts, Technology First development kits, application notes, and podcasts on technology topics. The site provided a global design forum for collaboration, access to free design tools, and the ability to sign up to road test new technologies from leading manufacturers.

The openness of the Jive platform facilitated a complex, multi-level integration with Premier Farnell's global product catalog from one global site. Design engineers perusing element14 see a Related Content / Databox link, which allows them to locate the products they need to complete a design. Simply highlighting a product referenced on site content— an application note, for example—will link to a product stock number that the engineer can then add to a personal parts list. Subsequently, the parts list can be sent to a shopping cart or emailed to a buyer. The smooth flow from product research to product purchase was of value both to the engineer and to Premier Farnell.

The website took the industry by storm.

Jive and element14 at work

As of this writing, the element14 community has established over 100 specialized groups and collected and posted ready-made design solutions drawn from all the leading manufacturers as well as community members. Groups are rapidly forming around deep areas of technology and design, such as embedded and LEDs. Other groups are building community around special interests, such as Cambridge University's eco-racing team. Suppliers have launched new product lines and technologies on the site and have experts available to discuss new products through the "Ask an Expert" feature. Overall engagement is high: members are now taking a manufacturer's data and using it directly in a schematic design, confirming which parts were active, maintaining a parts list at the site, and purchasing parts when they were ready.

Companies who employed the design engineers worked through the privacy issue quickly. "What they tell us," says Dianne, "is that they realize that their design engineers are going to use our site, and it is up to them to manage privacy issues through internal policies. This is a real breakthrough for us."

Key performance metrics

Within four months of launch, Premier Farnell had 4,000 registered users and 19,000 visitors. The key performance metrics they use to measure success include visits, return visits, registrations, and customer engagement/participation. Premier Farnell also measures the click-throughs from element14 to their transaction sites and how many convert (buy products). To date, those metrics are 6% and 3%, respectively, very good numbers, particularly for the conversion rate, reports the Premier Farnell team. From an engagement perspective, there continues to be an upward trend in the time that customers are spending on the site (from 6-7 minutes to 17 minutes per session) along with the number of new discussion threads (increasing at a rate of 50% month over month).

Next steps

Within months after launch, Premier Farnell began to establish new goals for element14. From a feature perspective, they have just released mobile and iPhone support and are in the process of enhancing the site to provide users with a comprehensive workstation to further enhance the site's customization and personalization capabilities. To support their branding and customer acquisition goals, the company plans to accelerate their engagement with different academic institutions. In addition, the site has recently launched a new engineering careers section to aid in networking as well as skills and personal development.

With element14, Premier Farnell definitely has a hit. They're making a calculated business shift from just providing product to providing design information, tools, and collaboration capabilities as well. This strategy has the potential for changing the face of their industry and how design engineers work. And they're leading the way.

Learn More About Jive

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