Extractable

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the website marketing manager for a credit union. We serve the community at large in Northern California. We deliver financial solutions across the board, including loans, insurance, savings—all that good stuff. We’re really community-based. I am responsible for the public-facing website and related digital assets. I oversee all the content creation and execution.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Extractable?

Our website, to be candid, is a bit of a dinosaur. It is home-grown and has been managed and coded by hand. It requires a lot of resources to maintain, involving the marketing department and heavy IT development resources. We do not have a content management system (CMS). In essence, we’re about a decade behind. Today, a website is the digital footprint for your brand. We truly need it to become, in essence, a digital branch to provide a seamless, easy, and convenient experience across the board.

Another challenge is that it’s not responsive. With today’s devices of all sizes, we are not delivering an optimized experience for our members and visitors. So, it poses lots of business challenges. We really need this to become a digital branch that supports the business objectives while providing a great and seamless experience for our members.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Extractable is partnering with us on what we’re calling our website redesign and CMS implementation project. As I mentioned, our website is very outdated and needs to brought into today’s world and also be forward-thinking. They’re currently working on the first phase, which includes helping us identify the best CMS solution to drive our business and also support what we’re looking to do with our website. They’re walking us through that entire process.

From a website redesign perspective, they are a true agency partner. They are providing start-to-finish project management resources. They will be doing all the design and development and a huge piece of execution as well on bringing our redesign to life. We’re looking to launch that in the fourth quarter of 2017.

There are some critical pieces in the first phase. We are in dire need of a more robust and clean search functionality. Search is a huge piece of this website. Intuitive design and navigation are another. Also, as much as possible in this first phase, we want to customize the experience to the end user. We’re not in a place where we can get to marketing automation just yet, but there are some elements where we’ll be taking the ability to identify folks and, if they return to the site, be able to deliver some content specialized to them based on their previous behavior on the site. We’re not yet at the point where I can call it dynamic content, but we will be making some forays into that as well to personalize the experience as much as possible.

From a design perspective, we’ll be really trimming down. Our current site has over 300 pages, and the new design won’t even be close to that. We’ll be trimming down content so it’s easy to digest, engaging, and highly visual using multimedia. We also need that whole responsive design, looking at it from a mobile-first angle. We want to really optimize the mobile experience, making that simple, easy, and convenient for folks. Organizationally, we are moving to an omni-channel platform, so the design work Extractable is doing rolls in nicely to the overall work we’re doing to provide that consistent experience across the board.

In the current phase, we have seven or eight people from Extractable working on our project. We broke the project into two phases, and we’re approaching the end of the design, navigation, site matrix, and visual design phase. The first phase also includes identification and selection of our CMS solution. The next phase will really dive into content, development, and our CMS implementation. I don’t yet know how many resources will be involved in the second phase.

How did you come to work with Extractable?

We did a formal RFP process. Extractable was included in the various agencies we went to, based on work they’d done with our SVP of member experience. They had done some initial work with her, so there was a relationship there. They emerged the winners for the project.

How much have you invested with Extractable?

At this juncture, we’re at about $60,000–$75,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Extractable formally came on in November of 2016, and the relationship is ongoing. We know that they will be partnering with us for a good amount of time. That’s been very much on the table, and they’ve been open about their recommendations if this really is a multi-year project. We’ve been very open and accepting of that, recognizing that it’s a multi-year effort.

After completion of the first phase in Q4, we’ll be launching into the next phase. We want to bring online chat functionality to our website, but that’s not something we can support in the first phase. We want to bring appointment generation and calendaring into the second phase. Our marketing automation platform will be coming in the second phase, in addition to ongoing search engine optimization. We know this is definitely more than a one-year partnership.

In addition to working on the whole plan, we had to create a business case per our internal process to get the budget approved. Extractable partnered with us for that very early stage and provided us with details about what the website will be able to do out-of-the-gate. They helped us project, five years down the road, what the lead generation and return on investment will look like from year one to year five. They were tremendous in that process.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

I don’t have anything super-tangible at this early stage in the project.

How did Extractable perform from a project management standpoint?

From a project management perspective, they have been extremely diligent on their timeline process and partnering with us to meet the deliverables on time. They’ve been very consistent with that. They provide a project manager, so on-time delivery has been great thus far. The project manager is in contact with our PMO (project management office). She submits reports to them. They track in Jira, as well as using another program for communication. She is working loosely with our PMO, following some of our guidelines for reporting and project management best practices.

What did you find most impressive about Extractable?

I’ve been continually impressed with their ability to connect the dots and get it right off the bat. That’s part of really listening to your client’s needs, and that has stood out to me. As the project lead on our side, I probably spend the most time with the Extractable team. They’re a true partner, and they’re about doing what’s in the best interests of the client and the partnership. They’ve been a great vendor from that perspective. There’s no ego there. There’s a lot of open dialog. When challenges come up, they raise them quickly, and both sides speak to them. From that lens, it’s been a very nice highlight of their capabilities.

Are there any areas Extractable could improve?

There are always lessons when working with external partners, and some of it is just adapting to our style. They’ve done it very gracefully, but they needed to adapt to our need to go a little deeper than most in terms of hearing the rationale and understanding why they’re doing some things. When they present, we’ve asked them to go a little deeper because that’s needed for our leadership to feel comfortable. Leadership also needs to explain to our board of directors and our CEO why decisions are being made. We need to understand if a certain point comes from their expertise, the experience, industry best practice, or a combination of all those together. That’s been an interesting learning process that they’ve done very gracefully, but it was something we had to go through. It took a little bit, and now I think they understand how recommendations need to be presented. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior director responsible for digital transformation and digital excellence across a Fortune 500 company. We’re based out of many countries, and my team and I work with all those global teams.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Extractable?

I’ve been working with Extractable for four years on projects in and out of America. We needed help with an agenda around digital marketing. We were doing web but not digital marketing. Our biggest channel was not being used by all our business units. Everyone thought there was no value in that channel, so that was what we hired Extractable to work on. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first project lasted about four months. Extractable went around, talked to different business units, and understood their needs and requirements. Then, we tagged around 30 or 40 websites across the company. The team did an analysis of all those websites to understand the type of people coming on these channels, what they’re doing, and what opportunities are there.

It was possibly one of the best investments that I or my leadership has made in any project. As soon as the outcomes of their study came out, we were able to use it to change the course of digital marketing in this company. Their analysis helped me to build a big business case for a digital transformation of our marketing. It was approved, and we are now in year three of that digital transformation.

The projects fall into two categories. The first one was the analysis of the core system, and we have been doing those quarterly analyses regularly. The second part of the relationship is that Extractable supports my analytics team.

In the first project, we looked into our websites to understand the user behavior and the company behavior. We tried to understand and correlate what the behavior is and how it can create more revenue for the company. We find new opportunities that we may not be focused on and educate our business partners and my team. We focus on new opportunities on the web to generate more business or make the customer experience better. That’s one part of the ongoing work they do for us.

The second part of the ongoing work is that they support my analytics team. They help us clean up the data, ensure that Google Analytics is tracking everything properly, and build analytics dashboards in Tableau. They help us verify the accuracy of the analytics. They support all the operations around analytics. They also help us build dashboards in different types of tools. We have been using them for years now. We work with a team of three people from Extractable. One person on this team was the chief analytics officer. I use him as my strategy partner.

How did you come to work with Extractable?

They were introduced to me by my senior vice president. I understand that they did some projects for someone else. We met them and talked with them, and we spent a good amount of time understanding their capacity, and then we just funded the project.

How much have you invested with Extractable?

We’ve invested between $500,000 and $1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in the second quarter of 2013, and our relationship is ongoing. More than any other vendor, Extractable is like my own team. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or impact of the engagement?

The biggest challenge for any analytics team is that there’s no way to quantify analytics other than how happy your customers are. I haven’t run analytics for Extractable because they are part of my team. I have analytics for the group as a whole, but I can’t directly attribute it to Extractable.

They provide timely reports around quarterly analyses. More important than the time, the reports should be something I’ve never reported on before. Every time, there should be something new and innovative, something that forces us to think in a new direction. Most of the time, the team has been able to do that. They think about how to do things differently than most of the people on my team would like. They bring new and innovative ways to do things both for the business and inside the team. Those are the main areas where I’ve seen them delivering value to me.

How did Extractable perform from a project management standpoint?

That’s an area they need to improve. I have seen a lot of attrition of resources in that specific area. The other two resources on their team have been consistent and have not changed. We have been working with almost the same people, and there has been continuity. The reason we invested in them is because they understand our culture and background. The project manager is one area where they need to improve—having someone who stays on the team for a longer amount of time and manages it properly. There have been a couple of people who moved out of this position, and new people have come in. So, there is no continuity, and that hurts us sometimes.

What did you find most impressive about Extractable?

One of the biggest reasons I do business with them is Mark, their chief analytics officer. He brings skills unmatched by anyone else in the analytics field. He understands that the reason of analytics is to help the business. He goes after the business reasons and not just after analytics. He’s really focused on having a business-leader mindset, and that is one of the key areas of strength. Other people with whom I’ve worked are not able to understand the value that analytics can bring for the business.

The two resources on their team are really some of the smartest people in this industry. They have a strong sense of the purpose of analytics. I feel that a strong, skilled workforce is important. I just keep adding more value than I pay for them. I often need discussions with people from different areas, such as customer experience, design, or any other field. Extractable is very quick in putting together those people from the organization and meeting with them. I’ve had full-day meetings with them where they brought all the people from different areas of their team to help me when I needed. They’re really partners; they’re more than just vendors. That’s one thing I really like.

They’re not always looking for chances to bill us like other agencies. There have been times when we’ve overused them. They’ve been very professional in building the partnership, without just trying to charge us whenever they get a chance.

Are there any areas Extractable could improve?

Personally, I have not seen any area except the project management.

Do you have any tips or recommendations for a potential client of theirs?

Get into any relationship, with them or any other vendor, by doing some pilot projects and not just RFPs. An RFP may lead you to a vendor that may not be culturally fit. With a vendor, the culture fit is more important than the skill set, and there is no way to see that in an RFP. I highly recommend doing some pilot projects. I’m quite sure that Extractable will do their best and bring the best people to force you to be successful and give you an understanding of their culture.