MCPL Sings the Praises of Savannah by OrangeBoy

Savannah®, a hosted customer intelligence solution offered by OrangeBoy, is now a trusted Amigos vendor partner thanks largely to the positive experiences of an Amigos member. A cloud-based "software-as-a-service," Savannah integrates diverse customer and organizational data to provide actionable knowledge. Savannah's data visualization tools empower libraries to make decisions with confidence while measuring results.

Amigos member Mid-Continent Public Library (MCPL), Independence, MO, has been working with OrangeBoy since early 2012. Katina Jones, Statistical Research Analyst in Marketing for the library, noted that MCPL was one of the libraries that helped the company launch Savannah. "We've been in it since the beginning," Jones said. She said Savannah has proven itself to be an effective data visualization tool. "It has helped us see the data in ways that were not clear in standard spreadsheet formats," she noted. "This is a tool utilized by our administrative staff to see how our interactions with customers change the face of library data. We can then use Savannah to monitor our progress toward our desired goals."

The software's Cluster Segmentation feature helps to focus staff efforts on certain customer activities, Jones said, adding that Savannah's Query Builder and Analytics features help staff create custom reports across several data sets, a task she said is difficult to do with basic spreadsheets. MCPL staff loves Savannah's Targeted Communications option, which enables the library to send automated, personalized emails to specific customers, making short work of reaching out to them and helping build solid customer relationships.

During the planning stages for a new Grain Valley Branch location, MCPL sought a deeper understanding of its customers. The library worked with OrangeBoy to determine that the largest, most active customer clusters were the Early and Often (customers circulating juvenile and adult print materials) and Point and Click (customers who use library computers).

Using intelligence from Savannah, MCPL discovered that parents in the Grain Valley community were using neighboring branch locations. "By using the Query Builder feature, we discovered that only half of our local customers were using Grain Valley. The other half were using neighboring and larger branches as their primary library location. A significant percentage of these users were parents with children, suggesting that parents saw the children’s area in Grain Valley as inadequate," said MCPL Community Relations and Planning Director Jim Staley.

The findings led to a new, larger library location with dedicated programming space, more computers and an expanded children's area. This was done in a direct effort to create a more desirable destination for parents closer to their homes.

MCPL Director and Amigos Board Member Steve Potter is a believer in OrangeBoy's Savannah and encouraged Amigos to partner with OrangeBoy. "Regarding OrangeBoy, I can't calculate how important this decision has been to MCPL," Potter said. "I strongly believe that libraries have to show their worth and benefit, not by counting how busy we are, but by showing the impact our programs have on our customers. This is a key point to the 'data-driven decision-making' movement in librarianship."

Potter added, "I think it is very important to employ library marketing. But marketing a generic, broad message to everyone really reaches no one. OrangeBoy helped us to identify the people that use our library, create legitimate market segments, and start to identify how we can tweak services and messages to be meaningful to those segments."

Since it began using OrangeBoy, Potter noted that MCPL and the Tulsa City-County Library, another Amigos Member, have helped develop Savannah, a library CRM system. "The team at OrangeBoy are very good at helping you understand your customers and your market, and then giving you the tools to provide great library service" Potter said.

For more information about Savannah, visit their website. For discounted pricing available to Amigos members on new subscriptions, contact Liz Wardlaw at Amigos, wardlaw@amigos.org or 800-843-8482, ext. 2802.