What is Guru? What problem does Guru solve?

JJ Ferroni, VP Sales at Guru, 6 years.

Guru – knowledge management platform that brings your teams the information they need when they need it, where they need it, and how they need it.

The origin started with Guru’s founder Rick at his previous startup, a company called Boomi, which did application integration and was about 50 folks when we were bought by Dell in 2010. When we were acquired, we wanted to try to get information into the hands of the Dell sales reps, who had a variety of products to sell, from laptops to Cloud software. We tried everything, from Wikis, to email, to Yammer and sharepoint, but we really struggled to get folks to use it. And what we learned through this experience is that…
We have so much company information everywhere, yet no ability to find or use it. Information is stored, and then duplicated, its outdated, or locked in systems that only a few people have access to. Because of this, we end up asking a ton of repetitive questions in Slack/Teams and it’s inefficient and a burden on our most knowledgeable people.

And that becomes demoralizing….When employees don’t have the information they need (due to knowledge silos or simply not knowing where to find it), they feel disconnected, and lack confidence to do their jobs. Across all the different tools a company might have, the flow of information in companies is broken, it’s often ‘out of sight, out of mind’, and because it’s not in your workflow results in many shoulder taps of experts, who are then inundated with the same questions again and again.
So, Guru’s first tenant is that we are ‘not another destination’ . That was one of the first things we wrote as to why Guru would win on our whiteboard in our very first office. We wanted to be IN your workflow rather than another portal. We felt that by being where you work, we could surface the right information, right when and where you needed it.
Remote work has made effective information sharing even more critical to get right. Real-time communication tools like video and chat are table stakes, but being available all day for video and conversations is hard. Forrester cites “lack of access to information” as one of the top three reasons employees burn out.
The volume of Slack & Zooms has gone up dramatically at Guru and our clients. Because of this it becomes critical to capture and share knowledge in an asynchronous way so that your employees can continue to be productive.. Because, whether you’re in the office or remote, your ability to do your job should feel the same.

Who is Guru for and how does Guru solve the problem for those users?

So who is Guru for? Well, Guru buyers tend to be people at Companies who understand that their people and their knowledge are their most important asset. These folks want their teams happy, productive and successful. Often, we are talking to teams who want to use Guru across their entire company (in which case we talk to Heads of IT, a People Ops Manager, Knowledge Manager, etc. Or, it could be a functional team who has a use case specific need, like a VP of Support. But the ideal buyer is one who sees the value of putting accurate knowledge into the hands of their end users wherever they are.
But that’s a lot of words, let’s actually get into Guru so I can show you exactly what I’m talking about. My co-worker Matt is going to do a quick run-through of Guru.

Product Demo

A lot of our work days begin in the web browser, leaping from app to app.
With Guru’s browser extension, it doesn’t matter if you’re in Gmail, Salesforce, Zendesk, LinkedIn or any other app you might use at work. The knowledge you need to do your job is right there with you, where and when you need it. You can forget the hurdles of shoulder tapping coworkers, navigating portals or chasing down answers.
And when your team uses Guru, it trains it, the more they use it, the smarter it gets so it can give you the info you need before you think to ask. Whether it’s FAQs, marketing decks, on boarding resources or competitive battle cards. Guru’s AI Suggest surfaces the knowledge you need without slowing down your pace. The fastest search is no search. And speed, it matters.
Guru’s integrations allow you to access knowledge out of the browser too like where your teams chat. Quickly leverage Guru from any Slack channel to cut on repeat questions and get new employees up to speed. You can even add new knowledge to Guru without jumping out of your conversations so important info doesn’t get lost in the chatter or the gifs.
But having all that knowledge isn’t worth a fartlek if you’re unsure if it’s accurate, up to date and untrusted. But hey don’t sweat it because Guru ensures that every bite sized piece of knowledge is assigned to and verified by the right expert at your company. So you can trust the info you share and for any new knowledge that you request
And with Guru’s analytics, you can see the knowledge that’s working or where you’re falling behind. Discover the holes in your team’s knowledge and take major strides in delivering the high impact knowledge your team needs to get to the finish line. And make your customers and prospects happy
Guru helps you capture all the knowledge you have across various platforms and unifies it into a single source of truth. From full migrations to real time syncs, getting your knowledge into Guru is easy!

What is the impact of using Guru?
Hi there, welcome back. Hope that video was helpful in understanding how Guru will make your company information useful again by placing it everywhere your teams work.
Mckinsey: A robust knowledge management system can reduce information search time by as much as 35% and raise organization-wide productivity by 20-25%
Reduce repeat questions in communication tools by 36% (Intercom Case Study)
Reduce onboarding time by over 50% (Forrester)
A few examples of companies doing this really well that I wanted to share: Shopify, Sailpoint, Slack
Shopify customer example
Ecommerce platform
Thousands of employees all over the world. Shopify has been a remote and distributed team since 2014, and has used Guru since 2016. Using Guru with our remote teams helped Shopify scale and maintain consistent, quality internal communications. Reliable and up-to-date information in Guru is critical to ensure our remote teams are set up for success.
Sailpoint customer example
Identity Management and Governance, 1200 users on Guru
The purchase of Guru was part of a 2019 goal to modernize their entire tech stack to promote collaboration, and provide their workforce with “best in class” tools
Before the Covid stay-at-home order Sailpoint had an average of about 35,000 slack messages a day. Overnight that jumped to about 60,000 messages per day after the order was issued. That’s 25,000 shoulder taps, in-person chit-chats that overnight started happening in Slack. People are now referencing Guru Cards more than they used to, throwing them in chats and Slacks and sending them over email—working from home became easy because we were so prepared for it with Guru.
“With Guru, we were ready for a pandemic before we knew there’d be one”

Slack
Rapidly growing communication hub, thousands of users, remote
Guru’s Slackbot makes it easy to surface knowledge within conversations you’re having
“I don’t want to think about where we would be if we didn’t have Guru at the size Slack is at right now.”
We do have a free edition. Head over to www.getguru.com to learn more if you’re interested. Our Starter Edition is free up to 10 seats and includes our Slack and Teams bots. After that, seats range from $7 to $24 a user, depending on what you’re looking for. Our Builder Edition gives you more access to analytics. Our Expert Edition allows you to access our AI capabilities. Guru can suggest knowledge in real time for your reps or agents as they’re talking to customers or prospects.
In terms of onboarding and timeline to adoption, we see folks do this in a matter of days or weeks depending on how much knowledge there is to document and organize.