Qlik's Story of Data Migration and Iterative Implementation

Prior to the merge, the user research teams at Qlik and Talend had different ways of storing and analyzing their research. The Talend team had some prior experience with research repositories, having used Dovetail before making the switch over to Condens. And the Qlik team was using an entirely different method to manage their research. Thus, the two teams experienced different sets of challenges before they found a common solution in Condens.

Data accessibility needed to be easy and trustworthy

The team at Qlik used to store their research in a knowledge sharing workspace. But the tool lacked the search functionality that Qlik needed to help manage large volumes of data.

This affected the team's ability to find specific research quickly and sometimes required them to scroll through lengthy lists of reports or files to locate the research they needed. It also wasn't an optimal way to categorize research, making it less accessible.

Vendor support wasn't as consistent and engaging

Before the Talend team started using Condens, they had used Dovetail as their research repository. The main reason behind their decision to change over to Condens was because they felt they weren’t getting the support they wanted from Dovetail’s customer success team.

Research processes and practices weren’t optimized

During the early stages of consolidating the Qlik and Talend research teams, they found that the two teams were accustomed to different ways of conducting and managing research. This prompted them to begin working toward standardizing their research reports and processes.

A centralized and secure research repository

Using Condens as their research repository gave the newly merged Qlik team more structure and a clear way of working. Having one centralized platform helped them to align the terminology they used to better communicate with each other. And they also made use of templates to ensure that their research results would be accessible, consistent, and easy for everyone to understand.

AI support to streamline storing, analyzing, and sharing research

Condens’ AI features, like auto-generated bookmarks, made it easy for the Qlik team to provide structure to their raw data. And features like AI-assisted tagging simplify the process of identifying and sharing key information, such as user testimonials.

A Customer Success team that listens

One of the things that the Qlik team most appreciates about Condens is that the Customer Success team has truly taken the time to listen to their use case. This has been especially important because they view learning how to effectively use Condens as a continuous process. And as their team grows and they identify new needs, Condens’ Customer Success team is always available to provide them with timely and helpful feedback.

Before the Talend team began the process of migrating their existing data to Condens, they had two key considerations in mind to assess whether the migration would be worthwhile:

1. Would all their research remain intact during the data migration?

2. Would they need to completely change their research processes by moving over to Condens?

Happily, the answers to the two questions were respectively a “yes” and a “no”.

Not only was the data migration a fast and smooth process (finished within a matter of hours), but it was handled entirely by the Condens team. Additionally, the data stayed in a similar format as they had had in Dovetail. So accessing and navigating their existing data after the migration was very intuitive, and made the learning curve for using Condens low and fluid.

Since the successful data migration to Condens (which they consider as phase one of implementing Condens), the merged Qlik user research team has steadily implemented more and more of Condens’s capabilities. They didn’t try to have everything perfectly set up before they started using Condens. Instead, they focused on setting up what they considered to be most important at the present time.

After phase one, they moved on to phase two, which was getting the individual contributors onboarded to Condens and showing them its value. They set up report and participant field templates so that everyone on their team could easily create and publish structured research insights. Everyone was also given the chance to play around with features like Condens’ tagging system to familiarize themselves with the platform before being introduced to the more structured workflows.

Fast forward to the present, and phases one and two are both complete. Now the Qlik team has moved on to what they consider phase three, which is creating a more robust systemization set-up by:

1. Establishing a global tagging system that will enable them to classify and quantify a lot of their data around pain points, product areas, and opportunities for improvement by persona groups.

2. Setting up access controls for their projects and upgrading their data privacy capabilities with more customized video and data retention policies.

As the Qlik team sets up Condens in phases, they are accomplishing the goal they set out to achieve when they moved from Dovetail to Condens: To steadily grow and improve their research processes while continuing to develop and upgrade how they use their research repository with the help of a supportive Customer Success team.

Growing interest in research and the repository

Having research data centralized in Condens has made it more accessible to other teams who also work with customer experience data, like product managers and designers. This has led to not only the expectation that research will be more and more centralized, but also a growing interest from other teams to learn how to use Condens and access the data.

Analyzing and sharing research is easy and fast

The amount of time needed to invest in research analysis has been significantly reduced, while the Qlik team’s ability to bring stakeholders closer to the research and work together collaboratively has increased.

Preparing research findings has also been simplified thanks to Condens’ split-screen mode, which enables Qlik’s researchers to easily access the raw data while creating Artifacts in either a Report or Whiteboard format.

Decision-making is smooth and fast

Whenever the Qlik team has a request or expresses a need, they receive a response shortly afterward, and concrete actions are taken by the Condens team. This enables them to make decisions faster and makes setting up and implementing new strategies and workflows a smooth experience.

To create a more structured workflow process, it’s important to establish a common terminology. This will help uphold consistency when carrying out research, preparing new insights, and making results easier to comprehend. It’s also important for cases where someone might need to step in and take over a project- something that is much easier to do when they can understand and smoothly follow the flow of the work that has already been done.

It’s also good to take your time and remind yourself that setting up a research repository is an iterative process that doesn’t need to be perfect right away.

Want to learn more about UX research repositories? Explore Condens' introductory guide to research repositories!