Bloomfire soothes searches of Google Drive 'mess' at MuleSoft

Social business systems and wikis often languish unused in organisations as users find that complicated search mechanisms do not surface the documents that matter the most to them.

Managing some wikis can be a challenge too. Often the structure of a wiki makes it difficult to add meta data or to make sure documents are complete.

Corporations often have a tremendous volume of resources that are not visible to the team. Poor information management can hinder a company's performance by 29 percent.

Getting access to information and finding out where documents live can lead to a flurry of emails to the IT team who then find that they are creating new resources for users when existing resources are already in place.

MuleSoft offers an open source integration platform helping companies connect applications to other applications. Headquartered in San Francisco, it was looking for a learning management system (LMS) for its staff. It wanted a more comprehensive solution for its workforce.

One of the problems that MuleSoft was trying to solve was the scale of questions and answers the team received. It wanted to be able to answer a question once and have the response be searchable rather than be stuck cycling on email conversations that never-end. 

It had looked at other solutions and rolled out Litmus LMS for a short time. Teams used Box and Dropbox for document management. The company collaborates using Google Drive and uses Google Apps although it has challenges searching for documents on Google Drive.

After searching for learning management systems on the Internet it decided to use Bloomfire for its intranet solution.

Bloomfire is a cloud-based knowledge sharing platform across devices and social technologies. If the document is not found, then questions can be asked to the correct people who can provide an answer.

It is currently used for sales enablement at Mulesoft and for new employee on-boarding across the worldwide team. It chose Bloomfire primarily for its ease of use across the company.

One of the benefits the company found was the ability to find the highest priority assets on the intranet. Often intranets are stuffed full of every document – whether it is important or not.

Being able to see new documents that have been made available highlights important and relevant documents. MuleSoft rolled out the product to the sales organization and as people began to see the benefits it was rolled out to other divisions.

Bloomfire is searchable and has the ability to share all types of media such as PDFs, Word documents and video files. The portal reduces repetitive email conversations and questions – the cycle of ‘email hell.’

The ability to not only upload PDF and word documents but also video files was a big deal for the company. Just after it launched the portal, the sales team delivered sessions on its selling strategy.

The team uploaded a video of themselves delivering a PowerPoint presentation -- the recordings are some of the most viewed assets on the portal. Users liked the fact that they could access the presentation -- and see and listen to the session too.

Aaron Landgraf, product marketing manager at MuleSoft is the administrator for the 250-person company. He loves how easy Bloomfire is to use, and how it has grown organically from the sales department out to the entire company. 

Landgraf finds he saves at least 1.5 hours a day now he no longer answers repetitive questions in email. People now find the information they need themselves.

“We have a separate program for new hires outside the sales organization” Landgraf said. “Now the entire organization is using Bloomfire. Now we have more people contributing content and reading Bloomfire”.

Landgraf says that the solution has helped the company solve its original problem.

“Rather than searching Google Drive, which is a mess if you’ve ever tried to search for docs there, instead of searching email inbox, I get a lot fewer inquiries, and they come in via Bloomfire and I can answer them there”.

The time saving means that staff can do other tasks at work. "Now I’m spending that time enhancing the platform to make it scalable but also spending more time building out our go-to-market strategies for products we are launching. Less tactical and more strategic," Landgraf said.

MuleSoft expects to drive a significant percentage of its revenue from its partners. It reckons that the ability to take all the work already placed on Bloomfire and repurpose it to a more partner-centric angle will drive significant revenue for the company.