Groupon Engages Employees with Social Intranet Built by 7Summits

AT A GLANCE

ChallengesGroupon’s rapid early growth outpaced development of their business processes; siloed emails, spreadsheets and team-specific processes hindered communication and information sharing

Departments used different collaboration tools, which created an inability to work effectively on cross- team projects

With a broad global workforce, employees in different countries felt disconnected from each other and from the company’s overarching business goals

ResultsGroupon’s formal business processes became more efficient and effective as everything was systematized within a single tool

Skynet became Groupon’s system of use, consolidating various department tools into a single interface and fostering a more collaborative environment

Company culture and morale have improved as employees have embraced Skynet, using the tool to engage with each other on a daily basis

Client Success:“The power of Skynet has gone far beyond what we initially imagined it could be. Skynet started out as a collaboration tool and has grown into a true engagement tool, allowing employees to communicate just as seamlessly as they did in our early days in Chicago.”

ANDREW MISHALOVEGLOBAL SOCIAL BUSINESS STRATEGIST AT GROUPON

SituationGroupon is a local e-commerce marketplace and the leading daily deal site worldwide, connecting millions of subscribers around the world with merchants by offering goods and services at a discount. Originally launched in Chicago, Illinois, the company expanded rapidly, establishing a global presence in its first few years and becoming one of the fastest growing companies in Web history, according to Forbes, when it reached $1 billion in revenue in less than three years.

This rapid expansion naturally caused growing pains for the company, and business leaders recognized the need to update their business processes to keep pace with their expanding workforce. Although Groupon had offices all over the world, the company continued to rely on vestiges of their younger days: using email as the main mode of communication and static spreadsheets for housing business data. Teams from various departments and countries had their own directories and used their own tools for collaboration, which hindered inter-team communications. The need for a streamlined communication hub and official processes for sharing documents and corporate news had arisen seemingly overnight, and the company struggled with using tools and processes that mirrored those of a small startup.

To achieve the streamlined business processes and engagement improvements they desired, Groupon sought a social business tool that could consolidate all of their segregated tools into a central communications hub. The platform needed to act as a document repository, staff directory, HR benefits distribution tool and a channel for cross-company collaboration and communication. Groupon’s goal was to get all employees on the same page, working toward the same goals and receiving the same information.

When a first-generation solution failed to scale to Groupon’s immense growth, the company reached out to Jive’s hosted platform to develop a more effective application.

“Groupon wanted to connect with a company that would be able to modify and customize our Jive experience,” said Andrew Mishalove, Global Social Business Strategist at Groupon. “We needed to customize not only the functionality, but the look and feel of the tool – we wanted it to look like another Groupon tool.”

Jive recommended 7Summits as the ideal partner for the project, thanks to their expertise in developing strategies to help organizations implement company transformation and growth initiatives. After receiving additional positive recommendations from other Jive customers, Groupon was confident that 7Summits would be the strategic partner they needed for a successful Skynet activation.

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Global teams overcome growing pains with collaboration and communication platform7SUMMITS CASE STUDY: Groupon

INDUSTRY: Business-to-Consumer Commerce

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“7Summits offered a lot of great feedback and suggestions. Their team took the initiative to make sure we were deriving the right value from the tool. Rather than merely taking orders from us, they helped us to think about things differently and provided guidance, not only on customization but on the strategy behind our social business tool.”

ANDREW MISHALOVE, GLOBAL SOCIAL BUSINESS STRATEGIST, GROUPON

Solution7Summits engaged with Groupon right away to learn their business objectives, target audiences and requirements and develop a strategy to customize a social business solution within Jive. The 7Summits team attended early strategy sessions to gather insights into Groupon’s needs and offer innovative suggestions for strategic deployment.

“7Summits offered a lot of great feedback and suggestions,” said Mishalove. “Their team took the initiative to make sure we were deriving the right value from the tool. Rather than merely taking orders from us, they helped us to think about things differently and provided guidance, not only on customization but on the strategy behind our social business tool.”

The strategy driving the Jive customization and activation tapped into Groupon’s skill sets and tailored the user experience to match their brand. 7Summits worked closely with Groupon to define and implement the strategy behind Skynet’s deployment, remaining actively engaged with the project and embracing feedback from individuals at Groupon to confirm the tool closely aligned with their company culture.

“Groupon is a cutting-edge company with a distinct culture, and 7Summits wanted to ensure that Skynet would embody this culture and uphold their values,” said RJ Reimers, President of 7Summits. “Together, we shaped Jive to meet Groupon’s specific business needs while creating an engaging environment for their employees.”

7Summits kept the interface design simple and uncluttered, embracing a newspaper-inspired style for the tool’s homepage, which displays trending stories and information from across the company to all users. The community also integrates Groupon’s social activities into the interface, so employees can access a dashboard displaying all of the company’s social messaging in one place. Users can post a variety of content to the community, either for collaboration or storage, including documents, status updates, ideas, discussions, videos, polls, project overview pages and more.

7Summits also aided in the creation of business objectives and use cases, which helped guide the beta launch in mid-2012 and the eventual platform rollout to 48 countries. 7Summits’ continued support included refining Groupon’s user experience by incorporating employee feedback and helping to increase user adoption throughout the company.

An unexpected benefit of Skynet was the tool’s ability to facilitate its own implementation. The social platform enabled members of the Groupon implementation team to collaborate more easily with individuals from 7Summits, streamlining the deployment process. Once the tool was launched company-wide, users discovered new ways to use the tool to enhance communication, which further advanced the tool’s development.

“There were Groupon employees from various departments who embraced the tool early on and ended up supplementing the Skynet team’s knowledge and research,” said Mishalove. “Using the tool, we can answer each other’s questions and find experts to help with various aspects of the project. Leveraging the social graph is making us stronger and more efficient as a company.”

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ResultsEmployees throughout Groupon have reported feeling more engaged and connected with their coworkers around the globe since Skynet’s activation. The morale boost has improved retention and engagement across teams and fostered more meaningful communication between executives and employees. The tool encourages discussion and feedback so that communications from executives can be two-sided conversations. During company-wide meetings, for example, employees on the other side of the world can send questions and receive answers in real time through the social tool.

“The power of Skynet has gone far beyond what we initially imagined it could be,” said Mishalove. “Skynet started out as a collaboration tool and has grown into a true engagement tool, allowing employees to communicate just as seamlessly as they did in our early days in Chicago. The social interactions have gone viral.”

Skynet has become a home base for Groupon employees and an indispensable part of Groupon’s workflow. With more than 12,000 total users and nearly 100 percent adoption in most regions, many employees rely on it to complete daily operations. Thousands of users have posted content or liked, shared, rated, edited and commented on others’ content within the tool. Teams across the

company now share a single system of use and communicate best practices more easily. Documents are easy to locate, onboarding and training is streamlined and critical information is readily available to employees around the world. With all corporate messaging housed in the same tool, everyone has the information they need to support key business goals and uphold Groupon’s company culture.

The number of users who are actively participating in the system more than tripled in the year since the launch of Skynet 2.0 in April 2013, and Groupon looks forward to additional engagement as they work with 7Summits to make updates and enhancements to the tool. Plans for future releases include integrating additional business processes into the system and adding a sales leaderboard and metrics to motivate sales teams. Eventually, Groupon would like to work with 7Summits to incorporate gamification and potentially create an external community.

“7Summits has been a great strategic partner every step of the way,” said Mishalove. “They have executed flawlessly throughout this project, and we look forward to continuing to enhance the capabilities of our social business tool with 7Summits as our partner.”

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