How GMS Improved Achievement of Its Performance Goals by 30 Percent

In only a short time, texting has become the most prevalent form of communication across the globe.

But, maintaining that network of efficient, speedy communication requires deep technical knowledge, good connections, and commitment to transparency for mobile operators and enterprise clients. 

Messaging traffic expert Global Message Services (GMS) is very familiar with the scope of the task; they provide services for over 900 mobile operators worldwide.

Their customer acquisition team needed a robust, flexible, and transparent platform to help them visualize trends and reach goals, so they turned to Databox for a solution perfect for every member of the team.

Getting Up to Speed (with Ease)

Just because your team generates a lot of data, doesn’t necessarily mean they want to spend every day deep in the numbers; Therefore, when Hendry Soong, GMS’ Head of Digital & Content Division, came on board with the directive to build a digital team and digitize the company’s marketing functions, he knew the solution would need to be accessible to all.

This was especially important, as the team encountered datasets from nearly a dozen individual sources on a daily basis. 

That’s a steep learning curve, and a lot of information to go through for non-data-scientists.

Databox allowed everyone to get comfortable with navigating the numbers through an intuitive interface and data visualization that makes it easy to get to grips with the numbers.

“Databox is flexible enough to do this pretty easily. You can mix and match, create custom metrics. You can define pretty deeply what you want to pull out, and you can visualize it in the best way possible for the team to understand.”

By using a system that works for everyone, Hendry reports seeing better data practices across the team.

As everyone becomes more excited about the possibility of seeing trends and understanding the context and results, they’re beginning to think of other ways they’d like to explore.

They’re approaching Hendry about access to new and improved Databoards and Calculations to help them move the needle.

GMS Top Integrations

Better Goalsetting

With the sheer volume of data available to the team, being able to understand and take action on what they’re seeing is a top priority.

For both the marketing and sales teams, they are beginning to see the ways Databoards can serve them best. One of the important areas in which this context is helping: demand generation.

Hendry and the team follow the numbers across a number of different social media platforms, from Facebook and Facebook Ads, to LinkedIn, Google Ads, and other social platforms.

“We’ve integrated these into Databox to have a stronger monitoring system,” explains Hendry.

Now, understanding how social media posts are performing— and how that performance translates into engagement, site traffic, and ultimately conversions— the team can make better decisions about the types of content they create, and how they leverage it. 

Hendry uses both trendlines and goals in tracking the team’s performance. Though Goal-tracking has always been part of the planning process for the team, Databox has streamlined the process.

“Databox allows you quite a bit of flexibility in how you display your Goals, and mapping your goals on the data visualization as well as the trend line.”

This availability helps the team quickly identify trend changes and respond effectively. 

Each of the teams has made use of Databoards to improve their grasp on the numbers and improve the daily operations.

The Brand team has enjoyed keeping an eye on social engagement numbers, and the CMO uses Databoards to keep the rest of the C-Suite informed of the latest marketing performance.

Hendry says, “Everyone in the team has access so they can check on a daily basis,” and crediting Databox with helping the team learn the importance of data.

“The benefit of using Databox is that the team, in general, increased their data analytics literacy.”

More Time for Progress

Of course, when data is readily available and cast in the proper context, there’s more time in the day for the important work that keeps growth steady. 

Individual departments sync up weekly or even daily, so good preparation ahead of time allows meetings to go quickly and efficiently.

Having data ready to present means that meeting leaders can put the dashboards on the screen, go through all the results, and make further decisions based on the data they’re seeing.

This approach can quickly let stakeholders know “Whether we are moving in the right direction in general, from month to month.” 

Good data visualization also takes manual labor out of reporting. For instance, while Google Analytics is a robust tool with a native reporting function, it’s not always the easiest way forward for teams that aren’t data scientists. That can take the excitement out of the data success the team has experienced.

“Not everyone knows how to use Google Analytics. That has saved us a lot and presented it in a useful way. That has saved us a lot of time.”

When learning a new system, having someone in your corner can also time and frustration. For those moments, the Customer Service team is there to help with questions, concerns, and integrations. The team is there to ensure that teams can take full advantage of their data without going it alone.

“Most people, when they signup for Martech software – they like what they see,” explains Hendry. “They like the features, but the support is not really good enough to execute fast.”

With Databox, there’s always someone to assist.