HiBob, a scale-up disruptor that’s been around since 2015, is an HR software (better known as bob) that powers productivity, engagement and retention. Unlike other HCMs that are designed for HR professionals, bob is an HCM for everyone working at a company: employees, managers, and the entire specialized people organization. Originally from Israel, HiBob is now spread across the globe with operations in Israel, New York, Amsterdam, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, and a center of excellence in Portugal. Their impressive growth in the last three years from 10 million ARR to 100 million ARR proves how essential HiBob is to HR professionals and how vital HR teams are to their companies in challenging times.
HiBob has been Determ’s client for almost a year now, and to mark the first year of successful collaboration, we talked to Natalie Homer, Director of Public Relations. Natalie shared many excellent insights into how she uses Determ and what value the solution provides her. As a Director of Public Relations, Natalie’s responsibilities range from designing and creating a global PR strategy, strategic advice, and content development to reporting and administration.
Challenge
When Natalie started working for HiBob, she searched for a media monitoring solution from day one. Primarily, she needed such a solution to help her with her biggest challenge which is proving the impact of PR efforts because it’s tough to justify the cost of PR.
The solution needed to fit into their dedicated budget, but also had to check some other requirements, such as good coverage and social media, insights into trends, etc. According to Natalie:
Solution
When Natalie found the solution to her main challenge in Determ, she quickly realized that the platform was a perfect match for her.
She uses the platform a few times a week, with more heavy usage at the beginning of each month when she has to report on the previous.
Natalie especially finds benefits in various data points or metrics that she can find in Determ because, as she says, reach in itself isn’t enough. That’s why she uses multiple metrics, in addition to reach, such as virality, influence score, the share of voice, etc. Interestingly, Natalie mentioned that using Determ made her look at reporting differently. A significant change happened when she realized she could create different tags to tag mentions and later create custom charts based only on those she tagged. That helped her add richness and layers to her reports.
She mentioned an example where they could have only three pieces of coverage for one story and 25 pieces of coverage for another. When asked why one story performed poorly, through Determ’s reports, she could easily prove that, in fact, the story with three pieces of coverage performed better because these three stories were published on influential media outlets.
Knowing how to create various charts and reports gave her confidence to report these insights to her superiors because, at every moment, she could thoroughly explain what a specific graph meant, why it was important, and why she chose to include a particular metric.
When it comes to editorially placed mentions and organic mentions, she likes to monitor those separately.
Another thing that proved quite valuable is Determ’s ability to monitor languages beyond English. In her case, she also monitors mentions in Israeli and German which help her track mentions in these media outlets. As she says, “one size fits all” is not always true.
When asked what the best part of her experience with Determ is, Natalie pointed out her experience with her dedicated Customer Success Manager, Tea. She described Tea as incredibly patient, helpful, and reliable, which made her experience with Determ very pleasant.
Impact
One of the most significant impacts Determ had on Natalie’s work is that she was able to present the PR efforts and value to her, at the time, new COO. She credits data that she gathered and analyzed through Determ for the presentation’s success.
Natalie can’t imagine doing all the work Determ does for her manually. The solution saves her from multiple days of work and effort just researching who published what and knowing the circulation of each publication. Also, without Determ, she wouldn’t be as confident in her data as she is now.
Speaking of saving time, Natalie was also delighted with Synthia, AI assistant – Determ’s newest addition.
Since Natalie has been actively using Determ for almost a year now, we wanted to know her thoughts on the cost/benefit ratio the solution provides. She said:
When asked what advice she would give to users who are testing out Determ but are not sure whether they should purchase a subscription yet, Natalie responded:
Natalie is also happy to recommend Determ to the people she knows and gives the platform high grades. She explained her view on this through two lenses – whether the person works in a massive company with over 1000 employees or a company with less than 1000 employees.
