Helping you to determine the right tools and technologies

NorthStar assisted Good Run Research, a market research firm, who was preparing a new survey on the perceptions of aging and caregiving: how it feels to age in our current times, what it means to be a caregiver, and how perceptions have shifted over the past few years. The firm recognized the need to optimize their survey language with an analysis of how consumers naturally speak about aging and caregiving. To supplement, NorthStar used a leading social media analytics tool, Brandwatch, to analyze four years of related social media conversation, providing a comprehensive examination of conversation drivers, influencer levels, sentiment, gender, life stage and geographic trends. The insights enabled the research firm to write their survey, and further their own consumer perception research project, with a stronger understanding of the topic than a stand-alone survey could have accomplished.

A well-known NYC experiential marketing agency turned to NorthStar when they were strapped for resources and needed to quickly execute social media conversation monitoring and reporting for a major social influencer-driven music festival event they were producing for a Fortune 10 client of theirs. The campaign would cover real-time influencer content distribution across multiple coinciding events in multiple cities, driving consumers to a website & social media to create their own content around a set of hashtags.

Within less than 48 hours, NorthStar executed a support agreement, pulled together a team of skilled social media analysts, rapidly gained a thorough understanding of the project, created a detailed monitoring plan using Talkwalker, a leading social analytics tool, and then performed day-of-event social media monitoring with Talkwalker and the agency's Crimson Hexagon license. This included capturing, evaluating and flagging real-time positive & negative commentary during the event, as well as hourly recaps of conversation volume & influencer highlights sent to the agency's on-site production team. After the event, NorthStar analyzed the social conversation comprehensively, presenting key insights & recommendations to the agency client as part of the post-event recap report. As a result of NorthStar’s agility, in-house skill set and ability to execute, the project was a resounding success.

As a part of establishing a project management office (PMO) for the digital center of excellence (DCOE) there needed to be a tool to track and report the progress of each initiative within the DCOE taking into account current roadmap and any net new initiatives. With the PMO framework, staffing plan, and Governance established, NorthStar looked at current tools in place and any new tools/vendors needed to create a central repository or system of record.  NorthStar’s approach was to analyze current tools to see they would meet the needs of the PMO.  Next steps were to look at outside vendors who support Portfolio and Project Management life cycles.  

After careful selection, NorthStar helped the client select ServiceNow which was already implemented within the DCOE for intakes and incidents.  By highlighting the PPM module in ServiceNow, the client was able to save cost as this tool was prepaid up to 2 years with over 260 licenses.  Eliminating the need for an additional costly tool, the client’s challenges were resolved.  Implementing the ServiceNow PPM module meant measuring project successes from a dashboard and provided a summary of all portfolios.  As a result, the Project Managers maintained their programs and projects within ServiceNow.  NorthStar also provided training for all PMs and other resources as well as created a much-needed Project Request process and form within ServiceNow for all net new implementations.