Customer Solution Case Study

Vehicle Manufacturer Propels Customer Engagement with Digital Marketing Solutions Insights

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Manufacturing—Farm and recreational vehicles

Customer ProfilePolaris 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 SituationPolaris 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.

SolutionPolaris 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.

SituationPolaris 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

27

“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

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 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.

SolutionIn 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 ImplementationAlso 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,

37

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 SourcesIn 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

47

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 MarketingNow, 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 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.

BenefitsPolaris 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 InsightsPreviously, 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

57

Figure 1. Executive dashboards in SharePoint Server 2010 showing website statistics and trends via Webtrends.

“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

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 EngagementSince 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 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 PlatformUsing 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

67

“SharePoint Server 2010, along with Webtrends and the GNet Group SightN2 for Digital Marketing solution, makes data more accessible and usable for marketers.”

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.”

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010Microsoft 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

77

For More InformationFor 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