Hanover Research is a global information services firm that provides surveying, market assessments, benchmarking, and quantitative and qualitative data analysis. The company serves enterprise B2B and B2C companies, as well as K-12 and higher education, healthcare and nonprofit organizations. Hanover delivers clients custom reports and access to a broader range of data and market intelligence through a unique, subscription-based service.

Challenge

Hanover's portal provided clients with online access to their private, custom reports as well as to other relevant research reports about their markets. Clients found the system difficult to search. Hanover had little insight into what clients were searching for, and how they used the system. The process for updating the portal with new content was cumbersome and time-consuming. In addition to better content management, Hanover was seeking to align the site's look and feel with their overall branding and style.

Solution

Through interviews with Hanover team members and clients, Aptaria recommended a customized approach that would integrate Hanover's client-facing portal with their Salesforce.com customer relationship management (CRM) system. The solution provides Hanover clients with better access to content, and gives Hanover team members an easier way to maintain content.

• Using the Force.com Sites framework, content from Salesforce is presented to users in a way that is visually integrated with Hanover's website. The entry page of the portal shows links to reports that have been purchased by the client, featured reports related to the client's areas of interest and contact information for the client's primary support consultants. Clients can also quickly retrieve recently viewed reports from the home page. Twitter and RSS feeds display additional information from Hanover's website.
• Researching available reports has been made easier and more powerful in the new client portal. Clients can search on a single term or phrase, and then refine results by research Practice Area, Report Type, Geographic Focus and Subject Area. Clients can refine by multiple aspects at once, a capability that was previously unavailable in the portal.

• Aptaria also created a way for clients to interact with each other. Share and Comment capabilities are available on every research report to encourage communities to discuss. Related Items at the bottom of each page of research help users to find other research that may be of interest.

• For Hanover's research team, Aptaria developed a custom content management system from within Salesforce.com's administration interface. Administrators can include descriptive metadata and access permissions for all research reports in the portal. Through download logs, Hanover can track what clients are downloading and reading to better anticipate their needs.

Results

Hanover's new client portal is a fully integrated, branded experience for clients. From Hanover's home page, users log in seamlessly to access their subscriptions.

Clients are now able to find and filter more information, more easily. With the newly incorporated feeds from other sources, users are able to see curated content based upon their industry and interests. Client usage of the portal has increased.

Hanover portal administrators have gained a more intuitive process for creating and adding content. Document administration has been streamlined. Through usage statistics, administrators are now able to see what clients are accessing, and proactively present more relevant information.