From the beginning, the main factor for a successful expansion was to find a software platform that meet all requirements of a modern web 2.0 portal. After a six-years of building it them selves, and a two year search HR.com found the perfect solution called SITEFORUM - not in Silicon Valley or Bangalore, India - but in the German town Erfurt.
With a comprehensive set of tools, SITEFORUM enables HR.com to obtain a wholistic view of their members, including what content they are reading, what polls they participated in, when the last time a sales rep talked to them, what emails they are opening and forwarding and what products they are buying.
Approximately 150,000 members are actively exchanging best practises, contributing content and sharing contacts / networks all enabled by SITEFORUM. "our core business was not developing technology but building community, content and networks. We needed to partner with a technology firm whose core competency was building technology to support communities. It became evident, that we need a powerful and flexible software platform to manage and further expand our portal and keep us up to date with the latest Web 2.0 trends like social networking, blogging, and viral networking. explains Debbie McGrath, founder and CEO of HR.com.
Content Management, Web 2.0 Technology as well as Customer Relationship Management
The requirements of HR.com on the software platform were not limited to graphical web design and content management. Today's web portal visitors expect a wide variety of mainly interactive features called "web 2.0".
"The web 2.0 functions of HR.com include the opportunity to create and manage a member profile, join online communities on different HR issues as well as participate in webcasts, member polls, rate content, network with other members, create groups and participate in surveys or discussion forums", confirms Debbie McGrath. "For us this means that we have to provide information from various sources in a personalised or topic-related way to our members."
The search for a software platform to meet all these requirements turned out to be difficult. "Most of the solutions we evaluated were focussing on pure web site functionalities such as web design or content management. As a consequence it would have been necessary to use other applications for CRM or the online shop with an immense integration effort among these different applications", describes Debbie McGrath. Luckily enough HR.com last year made contact with SITEFORUM.
SITEFORUM: SaaS Platform for Web-based Business Processes
With its web-based software-as-a-service platform SITEFORUM is providing turn-key business processes for marketing, social networks, sales, support and resource optimization, leveraging on an almost ten-year experience with 2,000 customers in 70 countries.
HR.com profits from this experience as well. Debbie McGrath: "SITEFORUM powers our business and community. This includes webcast management, content management, member management, some surveys and polls, etc. In addition, we will use their CRM module and social networking platform." With the SITEFORUM search enginge optimization module for example the number of visitors to HR.com already could be increased by 40 per cent. Debbie McGrath sees a huge advantage in using SITEFORUM as software-as-a-service: "The costs and manpower that is required to implement and run this platform are so small, that a company of any size can use this technology. In addition, we do not need to worry about the next upgrade, how it interfaces, if we need more hardware back ups and bandwidth. It is all SITEFORUM's business."
Further Expansion Planned
Asked to summarize her experience with SITEFORUM so far, Debbie McGrath answers: "Our experience has been wonderful. The SITEFORUM platform enables us to further develop our vision of a worldwide leading HR community and gives us the guarantee to always have the right technology in place for an attractive pricing."
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