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In 2010, Ombud CEO and co-founder Thad Eby was faced with a decision, while working at a London flat: he could either leave his comfortable position or seal his days for the foreseeable future and embark on his own venture.
Once the Director for European Strategic Development at Endeca, Thad left his weekends of short jaunts to Italy and France for a less sexy calling – building a social research platform for enterprise business technologies, Ombud.
The technology evaluation process can be quite opaque when a vendor is courting a prospect. The relationship becomes even more diluted when evaluating solutions that cost six figures, require multiple departments’ approval and involve lengthy implementations.
Reviews for a ‘short-lived’ purchase - think consumption and entertainment - are often peppered with fiery opinions and irrelevant nuances of experiences. Reviews for enterprise technologies, on the other hand, are more complex and only one slice of data in the purchasing decision.
Review sites and Internet ratings have changed the purchasing model, steering the buyer directly to or away from buying a product. “Because of self-service, instant gratification and feedback has become the name of game. This instant feedback has become the pulse that every business has to listen to,” stated Eby.
The Ombud founders were aware of the power of the reviewer and thus they built in community moderation tools from the very beginning back in 2011. This allows the Ombud team to ‘curate’ the content and remove any spam and ‘pure gamification plays.’ They also employ LinkedIn to verify a reviewer’s identity to ensure an unbiased review.
According to Eby “The market lacked an independent third party who works as an advocate across both parties to understand the needs of the business and the capabilities of the vendor. “
Ombud’s initial focus revolved around helping buyers leverage their peers' experiences for insight into exactly how technologies are being used as innovative business solutions, empowering smarter business decisions based on real-world use cases.
But, like other community-driven sites, challenges persist in growing that community, Eby noted. Almost like a leading a horse to water, initially building that community of influencers is difficult because time and an immense appetite to overcome the challenges is required. “The first thing one has to realize is that the community exists before and will be there after your service,” Eby said. Therefore, the best communities continue to evolve and become more specialized organically.
According to Eby, there are five key characteristics of a productive community:
1. Trust – keeping the users safe
2. Adding value – by joining what do I gain
3. Receiving value – everyone has the opportunity contribute and give back
4. Social outreach – how does one stay connected?
5. Respected authority – spearheading the community in a collaborative way that ensures participation and that others get along.
Since Ombud’s launch, activity has grown to a community of over 100,000 monthly users and has been received well because the nimble team revolves around continuously building user-driven functionality within what Director of Product Tim Myers calls “a Walk-up User Interface.”
Myers believes that the old enterprise software paradigm (function trumps form) is counter-productive. Ombud has therefore invested heavily in user experience to ensure that function and form live in harmony.
“You have to move quickly,” Myers said. “We are always evaluating what works and what doesn’t. We push to production once a week and stick to this schedule, immediately adapting our solution when necessary to ensure user success.”
In line with the customer centricity, Ombud invested an entire year in understanding their community.
Leveraging user insights, Ombud came to the conclusion that reviews alone weren’t enough to change the industry. The company therefore pivoted its business model to helping businesses gain alignment and make the best decisions possible through collaboration and data.
Ombud has emerged as more than a review site for enterprise software. Rather, Ombud brings all stakeholders together to create a well-rounded analysis of a product: all of the third party users, the evaluation team, external consultants and the community’s activity surrounding the product can be found in one place.
As a result of moving away from a business focused around enterprise reviews, Ombud has evolved into a multi-million dollar business that is helping enterprises make better-quality decisions.
The Ombud community determines where and how the product will evolve, and what changes that we will be seeing over the course of 2014. This Denver-based startup is expecting to grow its Denver team five-fold over the upcoming year and will be moving to its fourth office in three years since it was founded.
