Insights, Speed, and a Data-Informed Culture
“Think of all the data you wished you had to solve your biggest problems. Now, think of how you'd do your job differently if you had access to all of that data in real-time."
— Marissa Morrison, VP of People at Artera
Meet Artera
Artera is a SaaS digital health leader in patient communications. Artera enables conversations between patients and their providers through secure, multilingual messaging in the patient’s preferred communications channel (text, email, and phone). Since its founding in 2015, the company has raised over $97M in funding and grown to over 300 employees.
The Challenge
Once Artera started experiencing rapid growth—doubling headcount every 6 to 12 months—Marissa reached a point where she needed more powerful and accessible workforce insights. And the difficulties of building manual reports through spreadsheets grew more frustrating.
“I was spending hours building different reports in spreadsheets, and trying to overlap data from different sources. It was apparent that this would be a blocker to move at the speed I needed to.”
It was only a matter of time before Knoetic and Artera would partner together. Marissa was first introduced to Knoetic back in 2018 when it was just a growing idea in our founder’s mind. Coming from a background in big tech and consulting, she was immediately impressed with the concept.
“When I first heard Knoetic’s vision, I remember feeling really excited and found myself thinking ‘This is where HR needs to go’. I loved the data-driven mindset founded in ease, efficiency, and accessible insights to support the next wave of People leaders.”
A Solution with Knoetic
Shortly after onboarding, Marissa and her executive team quickly became avid, daily users. She was able to leave pivot tables and spreadsheets behind while gaining time back in her day.
"It used to take me an hour each week to pull weekly executive reports. Board decks would take up to 2 hours per quarter. Today, I have everything I need in about 15 minutes.”
Knoetic also empowers Marissa to shine in her executive leadership meetings. In one of these meetings, a leader asked if it was possible to view attrition cut by tenure and regretfulness.
“I went into Knoetic and found exactly what my colleague needed in a few minutes. And we quickly discovered key insights around our average tenure together. Everyone had what they wanted.”
The quick adoption across Artera's leadership team was due in part to Knoetic’s well-designed and intuitive user interface. With self-serve access, leaders were empowered to seek out insights without needing to ask HR for help, which in itself cut out hours of work spent fulfilling these requests.
"I’m impressed by how often I hear my leaders say, ‘I found this in Knoetic’ or ‘I pulled this report from Knoetic’. Because the data is so digestible, they’re going into Knoetic first, and far more often than they ever did with our HRIS.”
As the executive team grows, new leaders utilize Knoetic to quickly get a pulse on core data insights, like team tenure and breakdowns. Thoroughly understanding the team’s state today allows them to more effectively plan for the future.
"When a new executive comes in, we double down on onboarding and trust-building activities. Being able to assess how things are currently working has helped me drive more strategic conversations around how they can better orient themselves.”
The Outcome
The benefits of our partnership spanned widely across Artera's organization. And a few core themes started to appear after only a few months on Knoetic.
Team-Wide Efficiencies
In addition to gaining back hours of time, Marissa and her team leverage Knoetic to keep a pulse on their workforce trends, particularly Artera's headcount growth, and remain proactive in their strategy.
“I personally go in a few times a week just to see our projected headcount and what our organization will look like 3 to 6 months from now. This helps me get a sense of how we can be proactive from a breakpoint perspective.”
As for the rest of the HR team, they’re better able to answer important questions for both managers and employees.
“It's been helpful for my team to see historical employee events. If an employee thinks they’re mis-leveled or mis-comped, we can quickly spot check to see why decisions were made.”
Confidence in Insights
Aside from the obvious time-saving and decision-making benefits that data transparency brings, Marissa feels ready to tackle any question or issue that’s thrown her way—whether during a one-on-one meeting or an all-hands.
“I like knowing that I’ll always be empowered by insights going into any meeting. I can quickly dig into or debunk whatever pops up.”
A Data-Informed Culture
When looking at the big picture, Marissa is confident that her team’s new approach to data, with Knoetic by their side, has changed and shaped how they fundamentally operate—in a good way.
“To other People leaders, think of all the data you wished you had to solve your biggest issues. Now, think of how you’d do your job differently if you had access to all of it, and in real-time.”
What's Next?
A company of data transparency! Marissa recognized that there is a clear gap in executive, manager, and even HR team’s knowledge of what information is available for them. To close this, she plans to thoughtfully open up People insights across the organization, specifically at the manager level.
“We sometimes assume that we have to operate in a vacuum because we’re not used to having access to data. So, I thought… if my managers were as empowered as I am, what insights could they glean?”
One Final Takeaway
With Knoetic on-hand, People insights become easy. The true power comes from how the team harnesses them to make smarter decisions. Building this into your strategy will put People at the core of your organization.
“I’m a believer in that the more I empower my execs with data, the better decisions they’ll make.
One of my colleagues said this beautifully in my first month. She said, ‘if there was a fly on the wall in your executive meeting and any given topic was being discussed, the fly shouldn’t know who was speaking.'
In other words, when we’re discussing a People issue, our SVP of Product, for example, can clearly speak to it because of how deeply they understand it, how engaged they are with it, and how committed they are to it. That’s the sign of a healthy team.”
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