Interfor success story
Creating seamless, sustainable productivity with a worldwide lumber leader.
Key outcomes
- 14,000+ tickets deflected in first 9 months
- $200,000+ saved in support costs
- Average of 23 in-app content views per user
“Adopt means my team spend less time on support and more time testing features, implementing products and improving the employee experience.”
Kayla Richardson, Senior Human Resources Information System Specialist
The objective
Interfor is one of the largest lumber producers in the world, with over 3,000 employees spread between 20+ locations across the United States and Canada. They are proud to offer diverse, high-quality products to customers around the world in a way that is responsible as well as productive—and wanted to take a similar approach to their employee experience.
Despite solid performance, the modular nature of Interfor’s Talent System, Cornerstone OnDemand, meant their frontline employees had to regularly use differing interfaces with unique experiences and requirements. This was creating frustration and inefficiency, which was only compounded by other applications, such as Infor EAM, offering their own differing experience and the help materials being stored outside of the processes themselves.
“Anytime somebody takes 3-5 clicks to find something, you’ve lost them. Adopt ensures this doesn’t happen.”
Robert Schulz, Senior Director Information Technology at Interfor
The time and focus lost to navigation and context switching meant the employee experience, productivity and support requests were not where they should be. Interfor wanted to support their production-focused people, with limited time at desk, and make their time in application as productive as possible—improving their output and reducing the associated support burden.
After trying e-learning, SharePoint and varied media strategies to change this, Interfor set out to find a holistic, measurable way to improve performance at the source for both their end-users and administrators. After a referral where they learned about our Adopt platform and Cornerstone OnDemand partnership, this search ended with AppLearn.
The solution
While Interfor’s Cornerstone challenge was with the quarterly processes spread out across different modules, the challenge with other apps was different. The primary issue with the Infor EAM, for example, was its complexity—even with 80% of users accessing it daily. The processes here work very well if people follow the right steps and input accurate information but get difficult if they do not.
In order to tackle both scenarios and deliver the seamless experience Interfor was aiming for, we tackled the three underlying challenges: engagement with communication, context switching linked to finding help and UI complexity.
For communication, the Interfor team soon turned to Smart Pages. They started to use our in-app pop ups to kick off tasks and send reminders or announcements, but their real potential was realized when linked to the challenge around accessing support. By using the in-built buttons to link to in-app support in the form of field-level Tooltips and side-panel resources using our Split Screen module, the previously hard-to-find or underutilized materials were all in one place and right where they needed to be.
"Adopt’s in-app support is so seamless people think it’s part of the LMS and ERP applications they're using."
Robert Schulz, Senior Director Information Technology at Interfor
This combination not only ensures users got updates and help in the flow of work, but also unlocked the real power of video. No longer held back by requiring external links to be clicked in emails, Interfor could deliver crucial detail without demanding the user break away from the task at hand.
To reinforce this ease-of-access with clarity, the Interfor team turned to our Tooltips module—using it to add information, explanation and clarification to any entry fields, buttons and icons that require it. And this experience was as productive for the application administrators as it was for the end-users, with the team being able to build all these interventions themselves without the need for code or input from the AppLearn team.
In addition to the above features, Interfor uses our digital adoption analytics to measure the impact of their in-app support and identify problematic processes. This not only helps the team to demonstrate clear ROI, but also ensures they can preempt issues and intervene before problems happen based on insight as well as instinct.
"With Adopt in place, support calls are now very low. The number of emails I receive has dropped dramatically too"
Kayla Richardson, Senior HRIS Specialist at Interfor
The outcomes
With the above modules and measurements in place, Interfor was able to deflect over 14,000 support tickets and more than $200,000 of associated costs in just 9 months. This was made possible by an average 23 in-app support deliveries per user, with field-level Tooltips making a big difference.
On top of the quantifiable results and good feedback from leadership, the Interfor administrators also noted the end user response. The team went from only hearing from most employees when they got stuck to getting positive reactions and seeing their immediate relaxation once they realized the support was right there if they needed it.
By continuing to deliver comms and support in the flow of work rather than requiring users to search for help, Interfor is now continually improving output and reducing waste. They have not only made their employee experience as productive as possible, but have done so in a way that means their in-app approach reflects the care they put into all the work they do. continue to make things fly.
"Thanks to Adopt, there’s one email I never receive any more: ‘Where is the training material?"
Robert Schulz, Senior Director Information Technology
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