Challenge

Apptio is a technology platform that enables companies to understand their information technology spend. Apptio created a category called Technology Business Management, and the applications support that. Over 40 percent of Fortune 100 companies use Apptio. Many of them are managing IT budgets of up to $10 billion using Apptio technology.

Using product usage to measure user engagement was non-existent as of January 2014. Even though the application tracked usage of every report view down to the individual user, the organization failed to used this data to understand usage patterns. One designer had spent their entire three year career at Apptio without talking to a single customer.

Through unstructured qualitative research and anecdotal evidence, five separate organizations within Apptio had constructed their own personas. This lead to different points of view of who the user was, what their needs were and how to supper them through company efforts.

Goals

• Understand product usage and the user profiles for the application with the greatest reach, Cost Transparency
• Tie new product design to what reports the users are using and why they are using them
• Grow Apptio so the organization can determine what good usage is and drive the journey to a usage-based culture

Process

Analytics

To understand usage, I extracted usage out of the Apptio Metrics data repository and created a website that displayed report usage across a significant portion the user base on a month by month basis. This data was used in combination with qualitative research from Customer Success to better understand the user profiles that used Cost Transparency.

User Profiles

System Analyst User Profile

With the help of an intern, we pulled the usage data of the top 2,000 users and found through LinkedIn. This helped us to better understand their job responsibilities and how they related to Apptio. This list was also used to validate and revise the personas so they better matched the responsibilities of users that used Apptio. The results were used by several departments to change their materials.

Heat Map

Cost Transparency Report Views

With another designer, we created a usage heat map to show which reports were working and which are not in Cost Transparency. The heat map is being used by different departments to set priorities, including which topics to focus on for training and education.

Solution

The process of highlighting the usage data as a source was had several positive effects at Apptio:

• Based on Product Design's proof of concept, Products and Engineering built a data warehouse tying the usage data with other sources, like SalesForce data, to better understand customer health and how it affects renewals. Over 75 percent of the customer base is now captured. This data is now used company-wide to understand customer usage.
• Usage data is now informing product and design decisions for the next generation Cost Transparency application. The data is tied to Scenarios, Epics and User Stories and will be used to measure successful usage.
• Personas are aligning company-wide organically through influence and discussions with various stakeholders. Product Management and Product Design has established a point of view that was adopted by Education, Community and Customer Success to inform future decision making.