Case Study
Solibri Applies Actionable Insights to Build Higher-Value Software
Aligning products with customers’ needs in 70 countries
Related Resources
Solibri provides innovative quality assurance and control tools for building owners, construction companies, architects, engineering firms, and other professionals in more than 70 countries.
Challenge
- Move past anecdotal and fragmented information about how users work with Solibri’s products
- Develop a more quantitative and comprehensive view of customer behavior
Solution
- Implement usage analytics platform to capture wide-ranging, actionable feedback about user behavior in real-time
Benefits
- Embed timely customer feedback throughout the development process
- Capture actionable data for use in areas from R&D to marketing
ACHIEVING TIMELY AND COMPLETE CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
A global leader in Building Information Modeling (BIM) quality assurance and control software for construction, Solibri provides innovative tools for BIM validation, compliance and conformity checking, design management, and code checking. Its customers include major building owners, construction companies, architects and engineering firms in over 70 countries.
Solibri’s software works across multiple project disciplines, encompassing architects, structural engineers, and installers of key building subsystems such as electrics and MEP (mechanical, electric, and plumbing). It streamlines communications and coordination to help all stakeholders identify and resolve problems in earlier stages of design, when changes cost less.
Today, construction firms are faster to recognize the benefits of innovative technology, says Solibri Product Manager Juan Rodriguez. But the far-reaching nature of Solibri’s users— professionals in multiple disciplines, on every continent—has made it hard to get timely and complete customer feedback.
For example, it was difficult to answer key questions such as: Which of the model checking rules built into our software do our customers use to assess the accuracy and consistency of their models? Have they experimented with certain rules and stopped using them? Or have they simply never noticed those rules?
“We’ve typically spoken with customers at events, and sometimes salespeople talk with prospects and customers. And, of course, some users contact support. But we knew support calls represented only a very minor portion of our real customer base, and not even those who use the software most. We turned to Usage Intelligence because we wanted a much better understanding of how our typical users are engaging with the software. If we created a new feature, was it successful? Has it been adopted? Why, or why not?”
Usage Intelligence is helping us build a continuous customer feedback loop, and a more data-driven company.
Juan Rodriguez PRODUCT MANAGER, SOLIBRI
CHOOSING THE BEST SOLUTION
After a rigorous evaluation, Rodriguez and his team quickly instrumented a release of Solibri Model Checker with Usage Intelligence. Within six weeks, Solibri was capturing valuable information to drive discussions with users at its annual customer event.
For example, Solibri’s product integrates a library of rules for checking the accuracy and consistency of building models. Usage Intelligence quickly pointed out the most popular and frequently used rules, alongside those which were being underutilized.
Armed with this information, Solibri can explore why customers haven’t adopted these rules. It can then provide more relevant marketing and educational support, and investigate opportunities to make the rules easier to find and use.
Solibri knew there were significant variances in how professionals in different countries use its products. Usage Intelligence analytics quickly provided granular insights into these patterns, so that product teams can reflect customers’ localization requirements more closely in new releases. In addition, Solibri now has detailed per-country release adoption data for targeting reminders and other customer communications.
Using Usage Intelligence, Solibri has captured detailed system configuration information and discovered that its customer base is using more powerful computers than previously recognized. Developers can now implement features requiring more robust hardware, confident that their innovations won’t leave customers behind.
BECOMING A MORE DATA-DRIVEN COMPANY
As Rodriguez puts it, “Usage Intelligence is helping us with one of our key priorities: to become a more data-driven company.” Within the product management team, it’s easy to use the dashboard to review up-to-the-minute information about usage and adoption. When it’s ready, Solibri intends to use the Usage Intelligence API to integrate this data into executive and marketing dashboards, alongside information from its website and Salesforce.com. This data aggregation will give a more complete and holistic picture of product usage, enhancing the value of usage data for targeting a wide variety of product investments and customer promotions. It will also support Solibri’s strategic goal of becoming a more data driven business.
By using analytics throughout its beta process, Solibri aims to capture feedback from more users earlier, building a closed feedback loop with customers and expanding their role throughout development. Rodriguez and his team can measure how rapidly new features are discovered and adopted, understand usability issues and fix them before release, and focus R&D investments where they’ll deliver the most value.
In a marketplace that’s changing faster than ever, Usage Intelligence enables Solibri to quickly recognize usage shifts, anticipate new requirements, and customize products and communications for the unique characteristics of diverse geographical markets and types of user. This increased speed, agility, and data-driven insight enable Solibri to build on its strengths and extend its competitive advantage.