Calling All Case Studies: 7 Do's And Don'ts

Channel Partners is launching a new case study showcase initiative.

Lorna Garey

January 25, 2016

2 Min Read
Calling All Case Studies: 7 Do's And Don'ts

Lorna GareySharing a case study is a great way to demonstrate your expertise while giving back by educating peers. That’s why Channel Partners is launching a new case study showcase initiative. In a nutshell, we’re inviting our community to share success stories — partner, customer, vendor, the field is open.

We’ll publish them on our site in a special section, and the best submissions in various technology categories will make it into a new batch of special digital issues and earn the principals a Case Study Challenge champ logo. The best of the best will be invited to share their stories during a live session at a Channel Partners event.

A few tips on what makes a great case study:

  • Do focus on the problem you solved. How did you use a business challenge facing the customer to justify the purchase of a technology like security, backup and disaster recovery, cloud or collaboration?

  • Do include real metrics — did the customer save 50 percent on its monthly bill, or increase productivity by some demonstrable amount? Did you help enable a global business opportunity?

  • Don’t skim over important details. Some elements are universal in any IT project: security, compliance and regulation, enablement, and staff talent and certifications.

  • Don’t just throw out a laundry list of products used; also talk best practices and policies you helped the customer put in place. Did you do some custom coding? Which features of the products you deployed were most relevant? What could vendors in the tech area do better?

  • Do show reality, warts and all. No IT project is 100 percent successful. What roadblocks did you run into? How did you overcome them?

  • Do bring it to life. Profile an end user who benefitted from the project. Consider sending us a video or extending an offer for an editor to talk direct to the customer.

  • Do break new ground. Did you try something cutting edge, like an analytics and big data, NFV or IoT project? Did you figure out a way to enter a new vertical, whether health care, hospitality and retail, or education? Tell us about it!

For length, stay at or below 1,200 words. If you need more than that, maybe it should be two case studies, or split some content into a video. We’re accepting submissions on a rolling basis. You can download the form and send responses to me directly, or use our Web submission process.

Most important, write from the reader’s POV — in this case, peers, often with customers considering similar projects. Resist the urge to just say how great you are (though some horn tooting is expected). Instead, focus on helping your peers achieve the same success. I’m looking forward to reading what you’ve been up to!

Follow executive editor @LornaGarey on Twitter.

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Lorna Garey

Lorna Garey

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