Major SaaS Company Gained Efficiency When They Replaced Goo.gl
How BL.INK Saves a Global Saas Company Thousands of Hours Per Month by Making Internal Information Easily Accessible To Employees
After Google announced it was discontinuing its URL shortener in 2018, a leading SaaS company needed to find a new link-shortening solution. They wanted a new tool that would seamlessly integrate with their Single Sign-On system and that would be flexible enough to adapt to their internal requirements. BL.INK’s solution fit the bill and now saves this SaaS giant thousands of hours every month by making tasks and internal information readily available to its 10,000-strong workforce worldwide.
About Our Customer
Our customer is a global software company with headquarters in Sydney, Australia and US headquarters in San Francisco. It currently employs over 8,000 people worldwide. Its flagship product, a project and issue tracker, is used by over 180,000 customers in 190 countries.
This global software company was looking for a new link-shortening tool after Goo.gl announced its discontinuation in 2018. They needed a platform that would give its 8,000 employees the capability to create short URLs for internal use. With offices spread out in different parts of the world, they wanted the tool to be easily accessible and flexible enough to integrate with their internal systems and protocols.
Firstly, they needed their short link provider to integrate with their Single Sign-On system. Auto-provisioning and de-provisioning were big priorities for them.
And secondly, they wanted their URL shortener to be able to work with an internal redirection system they use for accessing internal information and JIRA tickets.
BL.INK Made Provisioning Easy and Seamlessly Integrated With Their Internal Redirection System
BL.INK checked all the boxes as the platform already offered most of the features they needed. Designed to meet the needs of modern enterprises, and with a focus on security and compliance, our tool was exactly what this SaaS company needed.
1. Single Sign-On & Provisioning
Single Sign-On was a basic requirement for this customer. Security is a top concern for them and a tool’s ability to integrate with their auto-provisioning and de-provisioning system is essential.
BL.INKs Single Sign-On module is available to enterprise customers and has grown in popularity in recent years.
"Let's say you get hired at this company. On your first day, when they set up your user account, they'll give you access to all these tools and BL.INK will be one of them. In your general authentication, when you click on the BL.INK button, it will automatically add an account for you," explains Andy Meadows, BL.INKs' CEO. "We create that account, we automatically provision it, and you are authenticated in the system—all in a few seconds," he adds.
The same happens when employees are terminated or leave the company. BL.INK runs a process at the end of every day that removes access for those employees and transitions their links to another account for continuity.
Multi-factor authentication is also available to BL.INK customers, adding to the features that make it the most secure and compliant link-shortening solution on the market.
2. Integration with Internal Redirection System
Another critical factor for this SaaS giant was that their new link-shortening tool be able to integrate with their internal redirection system.
Andy explains: "They have this system where if you type in the word "go," then"/" and then a keyword, you get redirected to a specific page. So, for example, if an employee is curious about vacation policies, they might type in 'go/vacation.' Their network automatically converts that to 'go.companyname.com/vacation.'"
BL.INK coordinated with the client so that the link-shortening service could work seamlessly with their internal redirection system.
"They also use it to access JIRA tickets easily. If they type in 'go/JIRA/1234', the system will convert that into a different link to tell their JIRA instance to go to ticket number '1234'. So it's basically taking certain parts of that link and then translating them into something else that is more useful internally," Andy adds.
Quickly accessing tickets and information this way saves this SaaS company's employees many hours every month. Staff can access the tasks they need to collaborate on without remembering long URLs.
3. Productivity Tool
Although people don't usually think of a link management platform as a tool that can boost productivity, that is precisely what BL.INK was able to achieve for this global software giant.
Since they first started using BL.INK in March 2020, the company's staff grew 30% (it went from 6,000 to 8,000 employees), but BL. INK's active users tripled—going from 1,500 to 4,500 monthly users. The platform has become an essential tool for the company's workforce and one of the many productivity tools they use daily.
By integrating BL.INK’s data into Sprinklr, the company's marketing department can get more accurate campaign data and have a single point of "truth" in terms of analytics.
4. Pricing Model
The pricing model that BL.INK proposed to this SaaS company was another deciding factor. Instead of billing based on the number of employees, BL.INK bills them for the number of active users.
"We were able to come up with a pricing model that scaled based on, not only the number of users that had access, but their actual utilization. And that was key because although 8,000 employees have access, not all of them use the platform regularly," explains Andy.
The Takeaway: A Flexible Link Management Platforms That Doubles as a Productivity Tool
At the end of the day, this SaaS company saves thousands of hours every month by making information and tasks easily accessible to its 8,000 employees. Its staff can seamlessly create and manage short links and can also access a specific knowledge page or JIRA ticket without having to remember a long URL:
BL.INK has boosted productivity at this software giant and regularly works with them to propose solutions to any new challenges that arise. By offering a pricing model based on the number of active users, BL.INK has also allowed them to scale without worrying about whether its staff is actually using the tool.
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