How it started and how it’s going: the history of SWOOP Analytics
SWOOP Analytics was created at the request of a customer to meet that customer’s needs to measure business value, and to see how its people are connecting, collaborating and communicating.
10 years later, we pride ourselves on continuing to listen to what our customers need, and deliver updated analytics to help organisations achieve better communication, collaboration and business value.
As we prepare to celebrate SWOOP Analytics’ 10th birthday on August 27, 2024, we’ve taken the time to look back on the origins of SWOOP Analytics, and how and why it all started.
Jump back to 2014
Back in early 2014, Cai Kjaer and Dr Laurence Lock Lee (better known as Laurie) were approached by Luke Grange, a Microsoft Customer Success Manager for Yammer.
A significant bank in Australia wanted analytics to see if there was, in fact, any measurable business value in using an enterprise social network (ESN).
For years, Cai and Laurie had been running a consulting company specialising in Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) and had developed a “webmapper” tool to present social network analysis maps online, so organisations could see who was connecting with whom.
A much younger Cai Kjaer and Dr Laurence Lock Lee ran consulting company Optimice before expanding to online analytics with SWOOP Analytics.
Luke introduced Cai and Laurie to the significant bank and, soon afterwards, to one of Australia’s big four banks. After Cai and Laurie pitched their idea to the two banks, showing how they could provide real-time relationship-centred analytics, they received the response; “If you had a tool, we’d consider buying it”.
It was clear that organisations wanted a digital tool to measure the value of ESNs, rather than consultants coming in each year to conduct surveys. Interestingly, the seed for this idea had been planted months earlier when Cai and Laurie met with an advisor from the NSW state government to explore how to scale a business.
With decades of experience (and a PhD) in knowledge management and ONA, Laurie had endless ideas of how a digital tool could report on data to help organisations achieve business value through collaboration and communication.
While Laurie was the brains behind the science, Cai was the natural face and communicator of the business, and behind the scenes, Marianne Kjaer was the jack of all trades, the day-to-day manager organising everything from contracts, to payments and insurance. (Interestingly, Cai started his career as a Danish tax lawyer and Marianne as a macro economist and political scientist, but that’s another story you can listen to here.)
In the early days of SWOOP Analytics. Cai Kjaer, Marianne Kjaer, board member Marcus Dawe and Dr Laurence Lock Lee.
To create this new tool, the trio also needed a software developer. Paul Williamson was a former colleague of Cai and Laurie at CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation), where they had all met, and Paul had started his own software development business. He was happy to take on the role of software developer.
The decision was made to start a new business and create a social network analysis tool.
While Cai, Laurie and Marianne would encourage everyone to follow their passion and start their own business, the truth is, it’s not always easy.
Cai and Marianne mortgaged their family home to fund the new business, and Laurie chipped in with his share.
They had a tight budget to create the data miner, which Paul did, and they then had to build a user interface. Cai and previously worked with James Dellow at CSC, who was then working at digital workplace consultancy Ripple Effect Group. James put Cai in touch with founders Anne Bartlett-Bragg and Stephen Bartlett-Bragg.
“This is one of the most generous things that happened for us when we were starting out,” Cai said.
“Steve and Anne came back to me and said; ‘It’s a good idea you have, we have no idea if it’s going to work or not,’ but they said; ‘We’ll charge you at cost to develop this front end, and design it for you, and if you get a customer then you can pay us as if it was full price’.”
With a tool built, a company established, the name SWOOP Analytics decided upon, some angel investors to provide capital backing, all that was missing was a paying customer.
Step in long-time SWOOP Analytics friend Mark Woodrow, another CSM at Microsoft at the time. Mark introduced Cai to Ben Kimber, then the Head of Digital Employee Experience at Westpac, another of Australia’s big four banks (but not the initial big four bank Cai and Laurie had been speaking with), with about 36,000 employees.
“Ben looked at our mock up and said; ‘If you can deliver this, I’ll buy it,’ and Cai said; ‘Don’t things take two years in a bank?’ and Ben said; ‘No, we can get it up and running in three months’,” Laurie said.
Cai, Laurie and Marianne are forever grateful for the “risk” Ben took, because it meant the start of a whole new company.
“Ben took a big bet on us,” Cai said.
“A big conservative bank that goes in with a small, totally unknown tech company with a good idea but no history, and Ben said; ‘Yep, I’m going to pay you guys if you can do this’.”
Ben was also backed by Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer, who was a big supporter of Yammer (now Viva Engage) and ended up with a live dashboard in his office showing data from SWOOP Analytics so he could see where people were connecting across the bank, and which leaders were making an impact. The Australian Financial Review newspaper even wrote a feature article about how Westpac was using SWOOP Analytics.
“Westpac was our first paying customer,” Cai said.
“When we got the money from Westpac, one of our proudest moments was when we could go back to Ripple Effect and say; ‘We did it, we got a paying customer’ and then we paid them back.”
Soon after, the news was quickly spreading across Microsoft’s customer success network.
“We started to get introductions to other customers around the world,” Cai said.
10 years later and SWOOP Analytics’ customer list boasts many of the world's top brands.
“It’s just incredible to arrive in a big city and look at the company names on buildings and recognise them as a customer,” Cai said.
It started with Yammer, next came Workplace, Microsoft Teams, M365 and more
In those early years, SWOOP was providing analytics just for Yammer, now Viva Engage. In 2016, Facebook released its enterprise social network Workplace, with SWOOP Analytics as an official analytics partner. This opened the door to more customers for SWOOP Analytics who were using Workplace as their ESN, starting with Australia’s national broadband network operator NBN.
In 2018 and 2019 during meetings with customers, Cai was told time and again of the need for analytics for Microsoft Teams, and in 2019 SWOOP Analytics for Microsoft Teams was launched.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and millions of people were forced to work from home, many relying on the Microsoft 365 suite of tools to work remotely, but with little in the way of analytics to help people work more efficiently. In 2021, SWOOP Analytics for M365 was released, along with the Seven Collaboration Habits to improve digital working habits.
SWOOP CEO Cai Kjaer with then Workplace from Facebook VP Julien Codorniou at Menlo Park in 2017.
Over the years, there have been constant requests from customers asking for analytics for SharePoint intranets. The challenge with providing analytics for SharePoint intranets is the ability for every user to customise almost every page, so the production of SWOOP Analytics for SharePoint intranet took a little longer to be built, and was successfully launched in early 2023.
Early in 2024 came the arrival of Dr SWOOP, a Generative AI bot that has been trained on published and private content relating to SWOOP Analytics, such as support articles and selected content from our website including blog posts, case studies and benchmarking reports.
You can ask Dr SWOOP any question about your digital workplace and be instantly provided with proven tips and ideas to boost communication and collaboration across your organisation.
Moving forward, SWOOP Analytics will be including additional sources including Outlook email and live meetings to our suite of products. Eventually, we will also have a product incorporating all SWOOP Analytics’ products into one. And we’re always open to new ideas so please share your ideas with us!
World leaders in digital workplace research
SWOOP Analytics co-founder and Chief Scientist Dr Laurence Lock Lee.
Since its inception in 2014, SWOOP Analytics has become the world’s leading researcher into how people are using ESNs, Microsoft Teams, the M365 suite of tools, Workplace and SharePoint intranets.
Since 2015 we have published a yearly Yammer, and now Viva Engage, benchmarking report. This is the world’s largest and most comprehensive analysis of Viva Engage, based on real-life data. We have analysed millions and millions of online interactions.
SWOOP Analytics co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Marianne Kjaer.
We have also published annual SharePoint intranet benchmarking reports, along with Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams and Workplace from Meta reports.
SWOOP Analytics co-founder and CEO Cai Kjaer.
Our benchmarking reports provide achievable goals for each platform based on the top 20% of users, along with best practices and hundreds of case studies over the years from the top performing organisations.
Growing a global company
While SWOOP Analytics’ products have grown, and continue to do so, so has our team. What started out as Cai, Laurie, Marianne and Paul in Sydney in 2014, soon expanded to the United States with Sharon Dawson, and now we have a team of SWOOPers spread all over the world to meet the needs of our global customer base!
About 70% of SaaS companies fail within the first 10 years, so it’s a testament that SWOOP Analytics continues to grow at a rate of about 30%+ each and every year.
Laurie attributes the success of SWOOP Analytics to its origins.
“Optimice was about people and relationships and SWOOP still is about people and relationships,” he said.
“We’re still centred on people and relationships and that hasn’t shifted and it’s still a differentiator for us. When we see a lot of other analytics companies, they’re not centred on people and relationships, they’re centred on counting activities.
“We were analysing relationships in a lot of depth before SWOOP started, so we carry that through to the organisation and that’s what makes us different because we’re not just measuring everything that moves without a central value proposition. We remain people and relationship centred.”
Marianne says another differentiator between SWOOP Analytics and every other analytics provider is SWOOP’s passion.
“What is different for us is this passion, which I hope is obvious to everyone, and I think a lot of people, when they talk about SWOOP, know that it comes back to relationships,” she said.
“We are passionate about what we do and we’re really here to try and help. Courtesy and looking after customers doesn’t cost anything and we provide that.
“A lot of people see data as really boring, just a lot of numbers, but we try to make it so much more than that, something people can use to better their workplace and their better their lives.”
