RapidMiner

When RapidMiner began the search for a new provider, they had enough experience under their belt to know what they wanted and what they didn’t want. In fact, their decision to migrate presented them with an excellent opportunity to reevaluate their approach to community and look for a provider that could address their pain points.

After their previous experience, one thing was abundantly clear to Scott. They were looking for more than just a new platform that could provide solutions. “Honesty, transparency and a clear bilateral partnership was what we were looking for,” Scott exclaims.

Scott found everything that he was looking for in Higher Logic. Not only was Higher Logic Vanilla able to provide solutions for all the pain points, but Scott was able to find a level of honesty and transparency in Higher Logic that he admits is, “unusual in this world.”

With Higher Logic hitting every box on the RapidMiner checklist, Scott was convinced that Higher Logic Vanilla could deliver what they were looking for in a community. RapidMiner made the switch.

The Launch

RapidMiner was, of course, very nervous about migrating to a new community. After all, their community was over 10 years old and had over 40,000 posts. The migration team at Higher Logic, however, took this opportunity to prove that they had nothing to worry about; RapidMiner certainly wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last.

The migration was as smooth of a sail as sailing could possibly be. As Scott pointed out, “we were amazed how well Vanilla was able to grab our data, move it into its own ecosystem and get us up and running in a matter of weeks. We had actually budgeted months for the migration process; Vanilla had us a sandbox ready to go in a matter of weeks, and we were up live not long after that.”

The Outcomes: Better than Ever

One of the first things that RapidMiner noticed was that the average time to solution decreased substantially, which is incredibly significant for a support/ help based community. For this KPI, the clock starts ticking when a question is posted in the forum, and the clock stops when the original poster indicates on the discussion that their question has been answered. The results were astounding.

“In our old community, the average time the solution was about 5-10 days. With Vanilla capabilities, we’ve gotten that down to 36 hours time to solution, which is phenomenal.”

One of the game-changing features that RapidMiner took advantage of is the customizable gamification system, which Scott points out, plays a role in improving the numbers. By incorporating unique elements that embody the RapidMiner brand and personality, the community has increased engagement through having the power to customize the community with a touch of humour.

“Our ranks are all named after various elements that are known in the machine learning world,” says Scott, “so when people achieve a certain rank, it’s a bit of an inside joke.” The real advantage of Vanilla, however, is the backend, according to Scott. He states, “the real competitive advantage of Vanilla is our ability to measure [the community] (via APIs) and our ability to get a really clear idea of where we can get even better.” Ultimately, RapidMiner found the rainbow without even having to weather a storm. With the pot of gold now in their possession, their community is better than ever before.