Social Software Buyer Case Study: Farmers Group Uses Hearsay Social to Empower Agents While Maintaining Compliance

This IDC Buyer Case Study is designed to capture the business situation and drivers, metrics, implementation and adoption, outcome (anticipated and unexpected), next steps/future plans, lessons learned, and advice for other buyers considering a social software investment. Social software has received increased attention over recent years, but the question of how end users are approaching business requirements, vendor/product selection, and solution rollout to achieve successful usage levels has been a top question among IDC clients.

To help other buyers evaluating social software and vendors developing, marketing, and selling these solutions, IDC is conducting a series of buyer case studies to highlight end-user organizational challenges, the evaluation process, solution attributes, the implementation procedure, and benefits and results achieved from select social software products. In this Buyer Case Study, IDC features Farmers Group, a unit of Farmers Insurance Group of Companies, a company containing multiple operating companies related to personal lines insurance. In April 2011, IDC interviewed Ryon Harms, director of Social Media, Farmers Insurance Group, to get insight into his experience.