How Barco and Qualtrics enable bright outcomes through ‘experience management’

“We’ve always spent a lot of resources on measuring and improving employee and customer satisfaction,” says digital program manager  Iman Emami, who is leading the Qualtrics project at Barco. “Until recently, however, all these initiatives were scattered across teams, sites, and departments. As a result, valuable findings and insights were sometimes not shared, complying with GDPR required tremendous effort, and we missed opportunities for improvement."

When things just click

Convinced that a better approach was possible, Iman and his colleagues from Barco's global marketing team started scouting for solutions. “In an ideal world, there would be a single, centralized platform from which to manage all customer and employee surveys in a standardized and controlled way. To ensure fast adoption across the company and reduce manual work, such a platform had to be easy to implement and highly user friendly.”

At about the same time, the Barco's ClickShare team – which is responsible for the company’s hugely popular wireless presentation system – was creating a proof of concept of an experience management platform that was turning heads across the world: Qualtrics.

Iman: “They were really excited about their experiences, and we quickly figured that this might be the solution we were looking for. So, we started exploring our options for a full-company roll-out.”

A close partnership

Qualtrics advised Barco to team up with a partner who could not only cover the technical side of the project, but who could also organize the necessary training and coaching.

“Initially, there were several options,” Iman continues. “One of those was delaware, an IT partner we knew and trusted, but that had started working with Qualtrics fairly recently. In the end, the proximity of delaware, their personal approach, and their no-nonsense, hands-on mentality convinced us to team up with them once again." 

"Qualtrics has joined forces with SAP at the start of 2019, so there aren't that many certified SAP partners yet," explains Joyca Vervinckt, the senior consultant at delaware who also organized several training sessions on Qualtrics. "However, when we learned about the possibilities of the platform in terms of improving customer and employee experiences, we dove right in. When Barco called, we were more than confident in our ability to help them get the most out of Qualtrics, from both a technical and a business perspective."

All for one and one for all

Just like in any implementation process, the first step was defining the scope: technological requirements, user groups, required training sessions and integrations with other platforms and technologies.

“Determining user rights, for example, was challenging for us,” explains Iman. “On the one hand, we wanted to give as many people as possible the opportunity to experiment with the platform. On the other hand, we desperately wanted to avoid a mess. Luckily, delaware had a lot of experience with this kind of governance, so they could really help us out in that area.”

One feature the Barco team decided to implement early on was single sign-on (SSO). Iman: “For us, it was important to ensure that anyone could work with the tool without our team having to manually make new accounts all the time. However, that doesn’t mean that anyone can just randomly send out surveys. The actual launch is controlled through our marketing automation platform. One person now has a clear overview and ensures all surveys and questionnaires are aligned."

How insights lead to better service

After the first training sessions, Barco decided to use Qualtrics to track 5 different trajectories: a weekly Support Center satisfaction survey (limited to once per three months) for customers with a closed ticket, a quarterly NPS questionnaire, a post-project satisfaction survey, lead-to-deal surveys, and various marketing ad hoc surveys. The advantages of this centralized and standardized approach are numerous. Iman: "Thanks to Qualtrics, we generate more valuable insights from our data processes and have reached a higher level of automation and efficiency. For our customers, these insights translate into better services, products and overall experiences. For example, we can follow up more closely on service tickets, and we have a clearer view on what went wrong as to avoid a similar occurrence in the future. And, of course, Barco saves a lot on maintenance and hidden costs by centralizing all its experience management efforts on one platform."

Keeping a finger on the pulse

The platform's first big test came in March 2020, when the global COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of employees – including Barco's – to work from home. This sudden shift created a lot of blind spots: how were employees dealing with this new situation? Were they still able to work efficiently? What could Barco do to help?

"delaware told us that Qualtrics was offering these handy 'employee pulse' templates: ready-made questionnaires you could send out to the entire workforce to take stock of the overall mood at the organization and the most pressing issues. I notified HR about it, and in less than half an hour, we were ready to go. The results were fantastic: more than 70% of our colleagues worldwide took the survey."

So, what did the Barco team think about working what delaware for this project? "We chose delaware because they were so close to us – both geographically and in terms of their mindset – and they did not disappoint. Working with their team didn't feel like working with a supplier, but with a colleague who is thinking along and moving towards the same goal."