Case Studies

Both management and employees find Vetter very useful since the software serves as a venue to ask specific questions, reward the best ideas and most importantly - let employees see whether their ideas are implemented or not - Shanan Aravind, Business Analyst and Employee Engagement Program coordinator at FastFrate, a Canadian trucking and transportation company

Problem - employee confusion, not employee engagement!

• The biggest problem, according to Shanan Aravind the Administrator of the Vetter system at FastFrate was that employees were using a system that was “complicated in every way” which led to widespread employee confusion and dissatisfaction with the employee engagement programs at the company.
• There was no effective feedback mechanism, so employees didn’t know if Ideas were implemented or not
• Ideas were unfocused; FastFrate needed a method to ask specific questions to target specific areas. The company also wanted to track and then reward the best ideas.
• The previous solution only received ideas from a limited number of employees. Management were keen to broaden usage greatly, hoping to “tap into employee resource pool by actively engaging them in our company strategy.”

Action

FastFrate teamed up with Vetter and launched an online suggestion box for 400+ members of its staff, spread over 10+ cities. Vetter helped FastFrate co-ordinate the simultaneous delivery of invitations to all its staff, helping the scheme get started with a bang. Given the disappointing experience with the previous solution, FastFrate immediately launched an Idea Challenge, with a small prize for the best Idea.

Solutions

• According to Shanan, Vetter offered “solutions such as easy maneuverability, a simple layout, contributor rewards, activity tracking, inter-company groups, management dashboards and a whole slew of useful admin functions.”
• Thanks to Vetter’s 60 second tour for first time Users, plus the tips and explanations spread throughout the Vetter app, employee confusion was largely eradicated. This helped instantly engage Users the first time they logged in to the Vetter software.
• Employee participation in the company’s ideas and employee engagement programs shot up as a result of heavy usage of Vetter’s Challenges feature.
• Senior management got to hear employees suggestions, often suggestions based on direct customer feedback that can improve the end product.

FastFrate's locations are spread across Canada

Successes - Ideas that impact the bottom line, 100% volume growth, little Admin time

Winning back lost business
With contracts in the six figures $$s, ideas that can help win back customers can have a massive impact: “An idea that got implemented is that we went after the reduced/lost accounts with our new customer-oriented tech tool package which can reduce costs and response times for both customers and us. The new tool package along with the new branding of the company is helping us gain back the customers we lost over the period.”

A Doubling of Ideas
FastFrate received, on average, double the amount of ideas that they used to receive every month with their previous system. “As time went on, more and more employees were seen joining and participating in discussions!” Ideas submitted to Vetter are anonymous at the Rating stage, and this boosted participation at FastFrate “The anonymity available for both submitters and people rating ideas definitely helped the participation levels.”

A new advertising angle
Another Idea that FastFrate received via the Vetter system was an idea about a fresh way to advertise. “Another very public idea that got implemented is that we started using ‘positive recommendation based advertisements’ directly from our customers. Based on the idea submitted, we approached customers for their feedback and started using those feedback quotes directly on our ads.” (an example of this type of advertisement can be seen below).

Administration Time reduced
With its easy to use and understand Admin features, FastFrate needed a minimal amount of time to keep the Vetter suggestion system running: “During the last 2 months, with the added features, it took less than 10 minutes per week to administer the site.” said Mr. Aravind.