Forrester Groundswell Awards: Embracing

uTest Puts a Human Face on Crowdsourced Software Testing

By uTest

With new applications wrestling for media attention, VC investments and consumer dollars, the pressure to get apps built, tested and launched has never been greater. This calls for a fresh approach to software testing - crowdsourcing.

By tapping into the uTest community of 19,000+ software testers from 155 countries, companies can send a "call to action" to the right members of a global testing community who are capable of testing their apps across any criteria, including location, language, OS and browser.

This community can function as a virtual testing team for startups or as an on-demand extension for in-house QA departments of large corporations. Communities of skilled QA professionals are being used to complement in-house resources to build, test and launch world-class desktop, web and mobile apps.

uTest's new website (May 2009) and online platform (July 2009) have increased visibility into its global testing community and enhanced collaboration and information sharing among customers and QA professionals worldwide. The website redesign highlights the human face of software testing with new community-centric apps, including:

-Meet The Testers
-Discussion Threads
-Community Forums
-Software Testing Blog/RSS
-Social Networking Sites.

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Definiens eCognition Community

By Definiens

Professional network community for Geo-Spatial analysts working within the eCognition Environment Suite. The community allows to have direct feedback in the development of the new software version, knowledge exchange, videos, trainings, image galleries, desktop tool for real time interaction, blogs, wikis, event calendars...etc

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Adoption Requires Extreme Home Makeover

By infoGROUP Inc.

We use our small business marketing blog (StormDawg.com), social media channels (like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube), and email marketing to announce and promote a monthly contest for small business owners. This contest is their chance to submit their stories of struggle for a chance at adoption, a chance at a free marketing plan and a budget to kick it off with. For infoGROUP, it’s a chance to integrate the small business into the very fabric of our culture.

We ask small businesses to tell us their most compelling story, currently via email and comments on the blog but soon in a new community of their very own. Each month we call the applicants, add depth to their stories, and select a winner. Simultaneously, we analyze the entries and collect insight about what small businesses need.

It’s early, but we’ve already discovered that the things we’ve been promoting and providing aren’t necessarily what small businesses really need. Our solution? Integrate this insight into the core of our business!

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(18 votes)
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The Archer E-GRC Ecosystem

By Archer Technologies

Archer Technologies is a leading provider of enterprise risk, governance and compliance (GRC) solutions. The company has created two online collaboration tools - the Archer Community and Archer Exchange - which allow customers and partners to share knowledge, best practices and the actual applications they have developed using Archer's SmartSuite framework.

The Archer Community is an online social network for Archer's passionate user base to interact, support each other, share ideas and drive Archer's product development. Through the Community, Archer communicates daily with clients, employees and partners to broadcast updates, solicit feedback and facilitate the sharing of best practices for solving business problems.

The Archer Exchange is an online marketplace where clients download best-practice applications developed by fellow clients, Archer product experts and top-tier providers.

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(1 vote)
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Chordiant Mesh

By Chordiant Software

Chordiant has taken a radically transparent approach to building trust and achieving success with our customers and partners, which are large enterprises with highly complex systems. With the Chordiant Mesh, we invite our customers and partners to co-develop and design products with us inside our core worldwide engineering infrastructure.

The Mesh is an integrated set of applications and social tools providing deep-access into product development. All parties can participate in discussion forums, author web documents, view and change product source code, track work and defects, and connect with other community members. We’ve connected the dots of our product development process and we share that traceability with our community. All customers and partners can join the Mesh upon signing a governance agreement.

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(20 votes)
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Through thwack, Customers Drive the Product Engine at SolarWinds

By SolarWinds

SolarWinds, a leading provider of powerful, simple and affordable network management software, is focused on creating great products at an aggressive pace. To that end, we build and maintain strong relationships with our users through our 25,000+ customer community, thwack.

First introduced in 2003 as a message board and later a support forum, our community site was branded thwack and re-launched in 2007. Today, it’s a hub where our customers and IT professionals can find tips from company experts, peer-to-peer support and perspectives on SolarWinds’ products.

When SolarWinds sets out to develop new products or features, we look to this community to gauge interest, vet ideas, beta test and tweak.

While most companies typically tap only a handful of employees to engage customers at the beginning and end of a product development cycle, over half of SolarWinds’ staff – across nine departments and around the world-- participate in at least one of our eight product development touchpoints.

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Thomson Reuters OpenCalais

By Molecular

Molecular worked with Thomson Reuters to redesign www.OpenCalais.com, a rapidly growing toolkit of capabilities that allows users to incorporate state-of-the-art semantic functionality within a blog, CMS, website, or application. OpenCalais seeks to help make content more accessible, interoperable and valuable via the automated generation of rich semantic metadata, the incorporation of user-defined metadata, the transportation of those metadata resources throughout the content ecosystem, and the extension of its capabilities by user-contributed components. Calais has three major components:

• The Calais Web Service is the core and provides for the automated generation of rich semantic metadata in RDF format.
• Sample applications demonstrate how the Web Service can be utilized and serve as a starting point for other development activities.
• Active support is provided to developers who want to incorporate Calais capabilities in their applications and web sites.

Molecular collaborated with Thomson Reuters to deliver Opencalais.com using Drupal, an open-source content management solution. Molecular also created wireframes, compositions and technical design documents to facilitate the redesign.

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Ciena's BizConnect Partner Community

By Mzinga

Ciena Corporation is a global communications equipment company that builds network solutions for service providers and enterprises worldwide.

In 2008, Ciena launched a Partner Community, designed to be the communication center for its global BizConnect partner program, which supports the business and technology partners who bring Ciena's products and solutions to market.

The Partner Community, exclusive to BizConnect partners, allows participants to easily connect with the Ciena team and each other using a broad range of social applications that enable bi-directional communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Specifically, the community enables Ciena and its community members to:
* Share information and ideas about Ciena's corporate vision, product strategy, and obtain feedback to influence the future direction of the company's offerings
* Facilitate timely, efficient online support from Ciena and member peers
* Share and comment on best practices, industry trends and research from various subject matter expert bloggers
* Access, share, rate and comment on product information, documentation, and files
* Participate in collaborative virtual events
* Search, find, and connect with members of the Ciena team and other partners

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(1 vote)
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Daptiv Greenhouse

By Daptiv, Inc.

The Greenhouse is an online meeting place for Daptiv customers to collectively decide on which new product features/enhancements are most important to them. Users can submit product ideas, vote or comment on existing ideas and get insight into which ideas have been implemented into our product. The purpose of the Greenhouse is to create a simple and direct product feedback vehicle while also giving the community better insight into Daptiv's product roadmap.

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SAP Enterprise Services Community

By SAP

The Enterprise Services Community enables SAP's diverse ecosystem of partners and customers to get early access and have direct influence on SAP's product development cycle through a comprehensive process and intellectual property framework. The program is unique because of the depth of transparency and co-innovation it provides at every step of the product lifecycle, and the fact that more than half of the enterprise services delivered as part of SAP's most recent enhancement packs (numbers 3 & 4) were influenced by the active work of the community. There are 342 companies engaged in more than 125 different groups, with thousands of specified interfaces. The program is open to any company willing to agree to common intellectual property rules, providing a powerful extension to the public forums from SAP's Developer Network. Examples of active community members include: P&G, Adidas, Nokia, Intel, HP, Nike, Mars, Intelligroup, Wipro, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, etc.

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(5 votes)
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Vergo Marketing

By Vergo Marketing

Adam Smith, the founder of economic theory, believed people did business when they felt it was in their best interest to do so. In other words, the seller sells as he feels he is getting a good price, and the buyer buys as he is getting something he values greater than his money. Both parties feel they are winning.

The lead generation industry is supposed to help consumers make better decisions by providing them with more choices; unfortunately, what consumers are getting is overwhelmed and harassed by five different companies calling five times a day. For the lead buyer it is just as bad. Understanding that leads are going to five other competitors, lead buyers race to make sure they reach leads before their competition; thus, leading to the harassing five-times a day phone calls and very unhappy consumers.

VERGO Marketing, Inc. has broken this vicious circle and has returned to Smithâ€™s economic theory. As an educational lead generation leader, VERGO Marketing prides itself on matching consumers with colleges, universities and degree programs that are relevant to their specific interests, needs and wants. Unlike other lead generation industry players mill-like practice of reselling leads, VERGO Marketing does not reduce, reuse nor recycle leads.

So, how does VERGO marketing stand above the rest and avoid the burn and churn practice of lead resale? VERGO creates custom micro-sites for our schools that are specifically targeted to reach prospective students whose education and career goals are congruent with each school's degree programs. Thus, creating a better experience for both the consumer and the school by meeting both the school's as well as the student's goals. VERGO's model improves upon many lead generation companies strategy to broadly market to drive potential students to a directory. VERGO's way is how lead generation should be done.

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