EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

For this project, we cooperated with Festo Didactic, which has been discussing the introduction of an online community internally and is now on the verge of implementation. This community should complement the learning experience of their platform Festo LX. Festo Didactic gave us the assignment to provide a deeper insight on the implementation strategies, the performance management and the potential impact of their future online community.

Goal

The project aimed to give an overview of the different providers of online community platforms and to compare the offers with a potential in-house development. This task was complemented by the examination of key performance indicators for the future online community. The last goal within the course of this project was to provide Festo with information about the potential impact of a well-operated and monitored online community.

Methodology

In order to fulfil the goal of the project, primary as well as secondary research was conducted within this project. The administered survey on online community users and the expert interview transcripts were then compared to the desk research findings. The interviewees were divided into Festo LX users and other community operators. In order to conclude the interview contents, a qualitative content analysis by Mayring was undertaken. Adding to the survey and interviews, a benchmark for the KPIs was calculated via averaging the available data of courses like Udemy and Coursera, which have a similar number of users to Festo Didactic. The secondary research findings mainly were taken out of blogs and journals which were found by using keywords related to the different topics of the project.

Results

With the help of desk research, three different providers of platforms for online communities were found and set against in-house development as the opposing option. Based on this, the recommendation was given to not outsource the process in order to keep options of new features open and use the gained knowledge for further progress within the field. Based on the validation of the secondary research with the results of the primary research, a suitable combination of KPIs has been picked.

This selection contains a mix of standard indicators, feature-specific indicators and a sentiment analysis, which senses the emotional basis of the community by filtering words by connotation. Concluding the project, the different levels of impact, the operation of an online community can have, were listed. These findings consist of revenue-driving and cost-saving benefits. In addition, non-monetary advantages including the enhancement of customer relationships and the possibility of value co-creation with the help of a high lead user concentration within the community were outlined.

Cooperation Partner

• Festo Didactic SE
  Rechbergstraße 3, 73770 Denkendorf
  Germany
  services.didactic@festo.com

Contact Person

• Dr. Ute Gebhard - ute.gebhard@festo.com

Student Team

• Maria Kremneva

• Lukas Ehlers

• Fabian Schweizer

• Alexander Welser

Project Manager

• Caroline Fabian

• Shtefi Mladenovska