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EXECUTIVE SUMMARYNetApp is an industry-leading provider of storage and data management solutions. It has a presence in more than 100 countries; thousands of customers and a network of more than 2,200 partners; and a culture of innovation, technology leadership, and customer success. !e company was seeking to build higher brand awareness and deeper engagement with employees, customers, and partners and decided to deploy both customer and employee communities. To ensure success, the marketing function took the leadership role in designing and implementing the communities — with broad participation from other stakeholders. Centralizing accountability helped to align community goals, strategies, and tactics. !e work done to launch the employee community allowed NetApp to launch its customer-facing community. More than 9,000 users from 100 countries registered in the "rst eight months, with 78% of the community users external to the company (customers, partners, technology experts). !e community implementation sped delivery of the company’s new branding initiative, reduced support costs, improved customer transparency, and delivered a new channel for product ideation and feedback.

SITUATION: NETAPP REBRANDING INITIATIVE DRIVES COMMUNITY EFFORTS

NetApp, formerly Network Appliance, is a proprietary computer storage and data management company headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. It is a member of the NASDAQ-100 as well as a member of the Fortune 1,000. NetApp is No. 1 on Fortune magazine’s 2009 list of “100 Best Companies to Work for”. NetApp is credited with the widespread adoption of network-attached storage (NAS) architecture as an alternative to storage-area-network (SAN) architecture.

NetApp wanted to further awareness for its brand by more deeply connecting with employees, customers, and partners. In late 2007, NetApp started a branding initiative with three primary objectives: 1) to clearly communicate who NetApp is and what it does; 2) to reach beyond existing customers and the traditional technology audience; and 3) to collaborate on an ongoing basis with employees, partners, and customers. To begin to meet these goals, NetApp conducted extensive studies and surveyed thousands of customers, partners, and technology experts. !e majority of respondents stated that they wanted an interactive community to facilitate the sharing of knowledge around product, technology, and business concerns.

!e launch of the NetApp brand was scheduled for March 2008 through a global campaign with both internal and external elements that included major advertising and a redesigned external Web site. One key element of the redesigned Web site and branding e#ort included the creation of an online community. A new internal community focused on the brand was launched at the same time as part of the internal brand launch.

September 28, 2009

Case Study: NetApp Marketing Takes Ownership Of Its Community Initiative To Ensure SuccessBest Practices In Customer Service Social Mediaby Chip Gliedman and Natalie L. Petouho!, Ph.D.with William Band and Andrew Magarie

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2Case Study: NetApp Marketing Takes Ownership Of Its Community Initiative To Ensure Success For Business Process & Applications Professionals

BEST PRACTICE: TAKE OWNERSHIP OF THE COMMUNITY EFFORT

An unsta#ed, underfunded, improperly deployed and managed community can lead to disaster. By enlisting the support and sponsorship of the senior vice president of corporate marketing, the community program could be placed under the umbrella of the branding e#ort — streamlining some processes but not reducing the need for broad participation.

Marketing decided to link the community initiative to the hard deadline of the launch of the new brand. From the outset, the leader of the team sought out a broad range of stakeholders in the cra$ing of the program, the selection and deployment of the technology, and the ongoing administration of the community. In fact, the initial request for participation across the company was made by the CEO. !e team realized that, while alignment with the branding campaign set a speci"c launch date, longer-term goals required broader and cross-functional involvement.1

Speci"cally, the NetApp team:

· Gave it a name. Early on, the internal employee community was named “NetApp Live,” allowing people to refer to it by name. !is provided a tangible rallying point for the team and made the community “real.” While a number of members of the community team had customer-facing as their priorities, the internal reference point for the community initiative was “NetApp Live”.

· Worked within the NetApp culture. As a company, NetApp fosters a collaborative approach to problem solving. !e core community group solicited participation from all areas of the company, eventually expanding to about 30 participants spanning virtually all internal groups and geographies. !is provided the team with expertise in diverse areas such as user interfaces, cra$ing of requests for proposals (RFPs) from vendors, and global requirements. Members of this core team continue to contribute to the growth of both internal and external community both in terms of strategic direction and providing content.

· Chose technology that meets business goals. !e community team worked to cra$ an RFP incorporating the business needs emanating from the internal demand for online dialogue and the need to develop an internal community. Ideally, the community platform would support both internal and external constituencies, domestic and international users, and be delivered by a "nancially stable vendor.

· Chose technology that matched technical goals. Likewise, the collaborative RFP process ensured that the selected platform would be compatible with internal technology, security, and integration standards.

· Balanced short-term and long-term goals. !e original community plan called "rst for the establishment of an internal employee community site. However, the team knew that the ultimate success of the program included the rollout of the external community for customers and partners. All decisions were made with both goals in mind.

© 2009, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction ProhibitedSeptember 28, 2009

3Case Study: NetApp Marketing Takes Ownership Of Its Community Initiative To Ensure Success For Business Process & Applications Professionals

· Avoided autocratic decision-making. !e team charged with the initial community was careful not to overstep its charter. !is team took the lead and ownership and invited others in the company to leverage the sites. At the same time, others in the company were free to implement other technologies to meet the speci"c needs of their audiences. Most quickly joined the communities supported by the new so$ware program the team had selected. NetApp hired "rst one, then a second community manager to provide central support, simple processes, and clear policies. People who built out a subcommunity took ownership and responsibility of that subcommunity. !e team realized that if it was successful, others would come around later to the same technology platform, which has been the case.

· Did not quit at launch time. !e community team did not disband with the launch, and there continues to be broad support for community e#orts. !e structure for the community has changed. !ere are monthly meetings as well as weekly team meetings with the community managers and weekly meetings with the broader social media team. When discussing the success of the community with Forrester, NetApp assembled a team including representatives from corporate communications (the senior manager of internal communications and the internal community manager), representatives of outbound marketing (the director of online marketing programs and the community manager for the external community), and a representative from "eld operations (the manager of knowledge management) — all of whom spoke with a uni"ed voice about the NetApp community e#orts.

BEST PRACTICE RESULTS: THE BRAND SUPPORTS THE COMMUNITY AND VICE VERSA

Both the internal and external communities at NetApp launched in March 2008 — about 60 days a$er the start of implementation and about a year a$er the initial project kicko#. Over the ensuing months, it:

· Accelerated the branding initiative. One of the core goals of NetApp’s new branding initiative was determined to promote a more transparent, open, and collaborative culture to work with its customers and partners to create innovative and valuable solutions. Online communities served as a core component in this strategy.

“Engaging in active online conversations across the enterprise value chain is a must for any brand that wants to be relevant and competitive.” (Tracy Hansen, senior director of corporate marketing)

· Became more transparent to customers and partners. !rough the community, NetApp was able to connect global teams and user groups for better internal and external communications. !e community enabled technical discussions and collaboration, centralized access to documentation, and shared best practices. !is resulted in a more knowledgeable user base receiving more value from its NetApp investments.

© 2009, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction ProhibitedSeptember 28, 2009

4Case Study: NetApp Marketing Takes Ownership Of Its Community Initiative To Ensure Success For Business Process & Applications Professionals

· Grew beyond expectations. NetApp external community adoption and participation far exceeded NetApp’s expectations. More than 9,000 users from 100 countries registered in eight months, with 78% of community users external to the company (customers, partners, technology experts). !e membership year to date has grown to more than 26,000. !ere are currently around 900 active participants, and the current repeat visits to the community is about 50% of the members (see Figure 1). !e internal community, NetApp Live, has grown faster than projected to include almost all employees as registered users (see Figure 2).

· Drove production ideation. Discussions in the community tapped into a much richer pool of ideas that help drive company and product priorities. !e community established a forum for customers and partners to continually provide feedback to NetApp. NetApp mines these discussions to enhance its products and services to meet the most pressing needs of its customer base.

NEXT STEPS: NETAPP SEEKS TO FURTHER LEVERAGE THE COMMUNITY

To build on NetApp’s success to date, the company intends to:

· Further consolidate the technology platform across the company. Initially, multiple platforms were piloted in di#erent parts of NetApp. Over time, as the success of the project grew, technology outliers moved to the common platform, allowing them to leverage the capabilities and support infrastructure.

· Leverage the community to enhance marketing communications. NetApp has moved beyond a traditional, periodic email newsletter to more frequent and dynamic community communications. Tech On Tap newsletter content is already being discussed within the community, leading to a greater feeling of independence in discussions of key technology topics.

· Continue to ask, “How can we leverage the community?” By maintaining continuity through implementation and growth, both the external community and the internal community, NetApp Live, have become integral parts of the company. !e company refuses to rest with the success found to date. Rather, NetApp continues to seek ways that the community can better enhance the customer and employee experience.

© 2009, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction ProhibitedSeptember 28, 2009

Case Study: NetApp Marketing Takes Ownership Of Its Community Initiative To Ensure Success For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Figure 1

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.55274

Source: NetApp

Membership growth from October 2008 to July 20091-1

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6Case Study: NetApp Marketing Takes Ownership Of Its Community Initiative To Ensure Success For Business Process & Applications Professionals

Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 20 key roles at major companies providing proprietary research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 26 years, Forrester has been making IT, marketing, and technology industry leaders successful every day. For more information, visit www.forrester.com.© 2009, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To purchase reprints of this document, please email clientsupport@forrester.com. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com. 55274

Figure 2 Adoption Rates Of Community Members In NetApp Live

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.55274

Source: NetApp

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ENDNOTES1 Getting both broad involvement and ownership from key stakeholders is one of the "ve fundamental ways

to improve the ROI of your technology deployment. See the August 14, 2009, “Best Practices: Five Strategies For Customer Service Social Media Excellence” report.