Customer Solution Case Study

Vehicle Manufacturer Propels Customer

Engagement with Digital Marketing Solutions

Insights

Overview Country or Region: United States

Industry: Manufacturing—Farm and

recreational vehicles

Customer Profile

Polaris Industries designs and

manufactures high-quality, high-

performance motorized products for

recreation, utility, and military use.

Based in Medina, Minnesota, the

company has 4,700 employees.

Business Situation

Polaris needed to improve its ability to

determine the effectiveness of its

marketing strategies. It aimed to

analyze sales and marketing data from

numerous channels and brands.

Solution

Polaris used Microsoft SharePoint

Server 2010 and technologies from

Webtrends and GNet Group to create

a digital marketing solution.

Benefits

Enhances business insights

Extends marketing budgets, boosts

engagement

Provides cost-efficient, effective

digital marketing platform

“The insights we have gained through SharePoint

Server 2010, Webtrends, and GNet Group solutions

have helped us greatly expand our reach while

operating on the same marketing budget.”

Kim Weckert, Interactive Manager, Polaris Industries

Polaris Industries, a maker of recreational vehicles, wanted to

better engage with customers to generate higher sales and

revenues. The company implemented a solution that takes

advantage of the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 digital

marketing platform along with technologies from Webtrends

and GNet Group. Now, Polaris marketers use web-based

dashboards to gauge the effectiveness of their marketing

strategies. The solution integrates data from numerous channels

to provide insights about the performance of each Polaris

brand’s effectiveness in reaching consumers—much faster than

before. For instance, Polaris produces real-time reports to

measure engagement on its website and in other channels to

improve engagement and optimize its marketing investments.

Since implementing the solution, Polaris has achieved a double-

digit reduction in “bounce rate” and cost-per-visit for its online

ads.

Situation Polaris Industries designs, manufactures,

and markets high-performance,

motorized off-road vehicles,

snowmobiles, and motorcycles for

recreational, utility, and military use. The

company maintains engineering,

manufacturing, and distribution facilities

in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, South

Dakota, France, Australia, and Canada.

The company’s annual sales in 2011 were

US$2.7 billion.

Polaris relies on its brand websites to

engage with motorsports enthusiasts

and utility vehicle users and to engage

and encourage them to purchase their

next vehicles from Polaris. Thus, the

company has created sites that are rich

with information about each of its

vehicle brands and models. The sites

feature videos; photography; information

and catalogs on parts, maintenance, and

accessories; advertisements for rebates

and financing offers; vehicle

configuration tools; and easy

connections to dealers and social media

forums. Polaris built its websites using

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

because it could take advantage of the

solution’s flexible web content

management capabilities and its ability

to interoperate with third-party

technologies.

Interoperability is important for Polaris

because it relies on tools from several

different vendors to gauge the

performance of its marketing efforts

across website, email marketing, and

social media channels and also its brands

(Polaris, RANGER, and Victory). Polaris

uses technology from Webtrends,

ExactTarget (the company’s email

marketing provider), and Microsoft

Dynamics CRM software to capture,

analyze, and report on the effectiveness

of its online advertising and marketing

efforts. Polaris also uses the e-commerce

functionality of Microsoft Commerce

Server 2007, and it measures and tracks

online activities conducted through

Commerce Server with its analytics tools.

“We brought multiple partners together

to build a comprehensive customer

experience that would allow us to

measure our marketing effectiveness,”

says Kim Weckert, Interactive Manager at

Polaris.

However, even though Polaris had built a

robust website and was able to gather a

great deal of valuable customer insights

that was in high demand by the

company’s marketers, it needed a way to

easily aggregate, integrate, analyze, and

distill the data from its numerous data

sources. Polaris first tried a business

intelligence solution from a third-party

vendor, but it found that the product was

not capable of scaling to accommodate

the vast amount of data that Polaris

managed—for instance, the company

managed more than one terabyte of

data from Webtrends alone.

Since 1993, Webtrends, a member of the

Microsoft Partner Network with Gold

competency in digital marketing and

Silver competency in ISV, has helped

companies optimize their digital

marketing programs. Webtrends has

provided Polaris with web analytics and

marketing optimization solutions since

2007, and Polaris wanted to find a way to

integrate this comprehensive data with

other enterprise data to make it easier

for people throughout the organization

to perform marketing analysis and draw

intelligent conclusions. “Every day, we

got new requests for custom reports that

included Webtrends data,” says Weckert.

But it took the Polaris IT staff days or

weeks to collect the data and create

“We needed a business

intelligence solution that

would enable our

stakeholders to gather

real-time insights and

adjust marketing tactics

quickly.”

Kim Weckert, Interactive Manager, Polaris Industries

easy-to-read reports. “We had a fire hose

of information,” says Weckert, “but we

needed to narrow that information down

to key performance indicators and build

a scoring mechanism that would allow us

to improve our segmentation and direct

marketing for each customer. We needed

a business intelligence solution that

would enable our stakeholders to gather

real-time insights and to adjust

marketing tactics quickly.”

Furthermore, Polaris wanted to

implement an enterprisewide analytics

solution. “Due to the diversity of our

product line, we needed to build a

repeatable process for delivering the

same types of insights across all of our

brands, so we could most effectively

determine how our digital marketing

efforts were influencing our sales

performance,” says Weckert.

Solution In early 2010, Polaris evaluated other

platforms for building Internet sites that

would enable it to create a broader

business intelligence and digital

marketing solution. “But we liked and

agreed with the Microsoft vision and

digital marketing roadmap for

SharePoint Server the best,” says

Weckert. Polaris also felt that it could

take advantage of the Insights

capabilities in Microsoft SharePoint

Server 2010—for example, using the

ability to create interactive dashboards

and scorecards using PerformancePoint

Services in SharePoint Server 2010, to

work with key performance indicators

(KPIs), and to access information from

many sources, including databases,

reports, and business applications. “We

felt that we could build a solid

foundation for business intelligence to

deeply enhance our marketing strategies

by using SharePoint Server 2010.”

In May 2010, Polaris engaged GNet

Group, a member of the Microsoft

Partner Network with Gold competencies

in Digital Marketing and Business

Intelligence, to formulate and implement

a business intelligence strategy that

would enable Polaris to combine data

from Webtrends, ExactTarget, and

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and make it

accessible in web-based dashboards for

the company’s marketers. GNet Group

worked closely with the Polaris IT

department and sales and marketing

teams along with Webtrends to build a

solution.

Proof-of-Concept Implementation

Also in May 2010, in a first-phase

deployment, GNet Group delivered a

proof-of-concept (POC) implementation

that featured a number of KPIs for

marketers to gauge the effectiveness of

various aspects of the Polaris website,

such as its marketing campaigns and

associated spend, through visual

dashboards made accessible from a

SharePoint Server 2010 website. The

dashboards are enabled by the GNet

Group SightN2 for Digital Marketing

solution, which automates data

integration through prebuilt interfaces,

to reveal important cross-channel

insights to Polaris marketers—as

measured by Webtrends—including

webpage bounce rates (representing the

percentage of visitors who immediately

leave the site after viewing the entry

page) and engagement or trends.

Webtrends is a Preferred Analytics

Vendor for Microsoft SharePoint Server

2010, and Polaris used Webtrends

Analytics and Webtrends Visitor Data

Mart to build detailed profiles of visitors

to the Polaris website. “Webtrends sees

the strategic value in Microsoft

SharePoint Server, and we have built

analytics solutions specifically for

SharePoint Server. With this project, we

saw that we could help Polaris take full

advantage of the investment they had

made in SharePoint products and

technologies and Webtrends by helping

them to take action on these visitor

profiles to improve their business

results,” says Abed Farhan, Director of

Alliances at Webtrends.

Data Integration from Multiple

Sources

In the second phase of the project, which

began in July 2010, GNet Group helped

Polaris expand its data visualization

capabilities in SharePoint Server 2010 to

include information from Microsoft

Dynamics CRM and ExactTarget and also

combine it with enterprise data from the

company’s enterprise resource planning

(ERP) software. GNet Group helped

Polaris define KPIs unique to each of the

company’s brands and then implement

them in the dashboards. The GNet Group

SightN2 for Digital Marketing solution

helps Polaris understand engagement

and behaviors by collecting data from

the aforementioned marketing tools to

provide a foundation for improving

direct marketing efforts (that includes

data on email campaigns, online

advertising, and website messages.)

Polaris aggregates, stores, and extracts

information from Webtrends and its

other data sources in an enterprise data

warehouse that runs on Microsoft SQL

Server 2008 R2 data management

software and invokes SQL Server 2008 R2

Integration Services. The solution also

invokes Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Analysis Services, through SharePoint

Server 2010, so that nontechnical users

can transform raw sales and marketing

data from SQL Server 2008 into

interactive dashboards and scorecards

using PerformancePoint Services in

SharePoint Server 2010. “In this

environment, Polaris marketers can ‘slice

and dice’ data to better understand

what’s working in their marketing

channels and what is not,” says Neelesh

Raheja, Vice President of Consulting

Services at GNet Group.

Interactive Dashboards, Integrated

Marketing

Now, Polaris users who are focused on

marketing and business analysis can

access and work with data in a number

of dashboards from a SharePoint site.

Polaris has mature digital marketing

practices with well-defined KPIs to

monitor and track performance. With

SharePoint Server 2010, marketers can

view and measure KPIs and trends

against goals and use the information to

better understand the correlations

between marketing spend and

performance. For instance, a marketer

can narrow focus to drill into the product

hierarchy or a webpage that features a

Figure 1. Executive dashboards in

SharePoint Server 2010

showing website statistics

and trends via Webtrends.

promotion, in order to measure referrals,

page views, bounce rate, number of

visits, and unique visitors. (See Figure 1.)

The marketer can also understand

activity pertaining to banner

advertisements and email marketing

campaigns, such as impressions and

click-through rates. “For instance,” says

Weckert, “we can create a campaign in

Microsoft Dynamics CRM, create banner

ads for the campaign, publish them to

the website, and through Webtrends, we

can determine the exact bounce rate of

each location on the site where the ad

exists and then use this data to refine the

ad and message with our media

provider.”

In September 2010, Polaris completed

the implementation of its business

intelligence solution based on

SharePoint Server 2010, and it plans to

begin upgrading its websites from Office

SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint

Server 2010 in the second quarter of

2012 to fully enable its marketers to

strengthen the Polaris brand and reach

new audiences.

Benefits Polaris used SharePoint Server 2010

along with technology and consulting

expertise from Webtrends and GNet

Group to create a cost-effective,

enterprisewide digital marketing and

analytics solution. Using interactive visual

dashboards, Polaris marketers and

analysts can gain better insight into the

company’s sales and marketing

processes, reduce IT involvement, make

more informed marketing decisions for

higher customer engagement, and make

better use of the company’s marketing

budget.

Enhances Business Insights

Previously, Polaris marketers and IT staff

often spent several weeks mining and

preparing data to build informative

reports. This was a resource drain on the

IT department, but more importantly, it

limited the company’s ability to make

quick decisions about its marketing

strategies to most effectively engage

potential customers and influence their

purchase decisions. “Now, with

SharePoint Server 2010, Webtrends, and

the GNet Group SightN2 for Digital

Marketing solution, we are able to create

reports instantly. Marketers make

decisions in real time,” says Weckert. For

instance, through the dashboards, Polaris

can see what content is working and

what content is not working on the

website. “We increase the effectiveness

of our campaigns by making small

adjustments to our messages, web tools,

and imagery—in direct response to the

customer experience,” Weckert adds.

“With our business intelligence solution

based on SharePoint Server 2010, we can

positively impact marketing performance

on daily basis.”

Extends Marketing Budgets, Boosts

Engagement

Since implementing the business

intelligence solution, Polaris has reduced

its bounce rate for banner ads

significantly, which has also resulted in a

reduction of cost per visit. “The insights

we have gained through SharePoint

Server 2010, Webtrends, and GNet

Group solutions have helped us greatly

expand our reach while operating on the

same marketing budget,” says Weckert.

Polaris has also seen a dramatic

improvement in customer engagement.

“We use insights to make improvements

across all of our brands, to maximize

engagement and return on spend, while

“With our business

intelligence solution

based on SharePoint

Server 2010, we can

positively impact

marketing performance

on a daily basis.”

Kim Weckert, Interactive Manager, Polaris Industries

at the same time increasing our audience

base,” says Weckert. With real-time

business intelligence in the hands of its

marketers, Polaris can continue to boost

its return on marketing investment. “The

level of customer engagement, overall, is

vastly higher,” says Weckert. “The data

that we collect enables us to create many

small wins in terms of our marketing

strategies: on our website, in our email

marketing campaigns, and in our social

media outlets.”

Provides Cost-Efficient, Effective

Digital Marketing Platform

Using SharePoint Server 2010 as a

foundation, Polaris worked with GNet

Group and Webtrends to enhance and

extend the solution to create a

comprehensive digital marketing and

analytics platform. “GNet Group

understands analytics implicitly,” says

Weckert. “And Webtrends has helped us

gain insights and solve numerous

problems since 2007. The collaboration

has been a complete success.”

While each company’s business

intelligence expertise has been critical, so

has the interoperable nature of each

partner’s technologies. “The cost to do

this project with other technologies, such

as Oracle or IBM DB2, would have been

exorbitant,” says Raheja. “Microsoft SQL

Server 2008 technologies provide a very

cost-effective way to build a data

warehouse solution that integrates data

from multiple sources—including

Webtrends, ExactTarget, and Microsoft

Dynamics CRM—and SharePoint Server

2010 makes this information very

accessible.” GNet Group estimates that

Polaris saved approximately 70 percent

in hardware costs alone with the

solution.

Technology integration costs would also

be higher with other solutions. “Many

other solutions require companies to

integrate technologies that are not

necessarily compatible,” says Farhan.

“The cost—and risk—is greater for the

customer. The inherent interoperability

of SharePoint Server and Webtrends,

combined with the strength of the

Microsoft partner ecosystem contributed

to making this project a success.”

In addition to keeping costs low, the

solution also helps Polaris marketers to

become more effective because it makes

the information they need available in an

environment they already use.

“SharePoint Server is designed for

business collaboration,” says Jeff Seacrist,

Director of Product Marketing at

Webtrends. “So integrating it with

Webtrends and GNet’s SightN2 for

Digital Marketing solution is a winning

combination because users can work

within a familiar environment, instead of

having to access different interfaces and

log on to different systems. SharePoint

Server 2010, along with Webtrends and

the GNet Group SightN2 for Digital

Marketing solution makes data more

accessible and usable for marketers.”

Weckert adds, “Without these tools,

without this collaboration, we wouldn’t

be where we are today.”

“SharePoint Server 2010,

along with Webtrends

and the GNet Group

SightN2 for Digital

Marketing solution,

makes data more

accessible and usable for

marketers.”

Jeff Seacrist, Director of Product

Marketing, Webtrends

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is the

business collaboration platform for the

enterprise and the Web.

For more information about Microsoft

SharePoint Server 2010, go to:

www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

For More Information For more information about Microsoft

products and services, call the

Microsoft Sales Information Center at

(800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the

Microsoft Canada Information Centre

at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the

United States and Canada who are

deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach

Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD)

services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the

50 United States and Canada, please

contact your local Microsoft subsidiary.

To access information using the World

Wide Web, go to:

www.microsoft.com

For more information about

Webtrends products and services, call

(877) 932-8736 or visit the website at:

www.webtrends.com

For more information about GNet

Group products and services, call (651)

305-2236 or visit the website at:

www.gnetgroup.com

For more information about Polaris

Industries products and services, call

(888) 704-5290 or visit the website at:

www.polarisindustries.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published June 2012

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

2007

− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Enterprise

Technologies

− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Analysis Services

− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Integration Services

− PerformancePoint Services in

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

Partners GNet Group

Webtrends