Case Study: Knowledge Peers helps todayâs leaders get ahead of their game

Knowledge Peers is a unique peer-to-peer learning network where senior business leaders across a variety of sectors engage around a wide range of emerging, and sometimes sensitive, executive-level topics. Its tone is strategic, professional, consultative and trusting; it only publishes content that is relevant, inspiring and thoughtful.

Mvine Solution

Mvine for Private Business Networks provides Knowledge Peers with a reliable, safe and disciplined membership management platform for sharing senior level program members’ know-how.

“The robustness and reliability of the Mvine platform is exemplary. It's stable and secure and seen as such. I would not have been able to do what we've done so far without the Mvine platform and what it's been able to do for us.”
Chris Dines, CEO and Co-Founder, Knowledge Peers

Features and benefits

- Granular control over permissions
- Quick, cost-efficient set-up
- Standardised, yet highly configurable
- Reliability – no downtime in six years
- Integrated payments
- Multi-media content support
- Multi-level membership support
- Multi-user categories

The Platform for Secure Business Conversations

Mvine for Private Business Networks is a safe and secure membership management platform that helps membership organisations such as Knowledge Peers take a disciplined approach to managing content, subscribers and services.

So, whenever Knowledge Peers interviews forward-thinking business and charity leaders, they are happy to reveal their innermost thoughts. They know their experience and know-how will only be shared amongst known and relevant peers.

A peer-to-peer network for senior leaders

Knowledge Peers is a unique peer-to-peer learning network where senior business leaders across a variety of sectors engage around a wide range of emerging, and sometimes sensitive, executive-level topics. Its tone is strategic, professional, consultative and trusting; it only publishes content that is relevant, inspiring and thoughtful.

Top executives use the network to share their experience and know-how on a wide range of topics – from developing cloud-based business models to securing growth capital – while making new business contacts. They are happy to reveal their personal experience within this clearly defined, close-knit community of their peers – experience they would not be happy sharing on a public forum.

Where it all started

Knowledge Peers’ CEO and Co-Founder Chris Dines conceived the idea for creating a high grade peer group network for more senior people in 2008.

At that time, those at the top would only meet with their peers occasionally. Chris’s concept would facilitate engagement amongst two or three hundred senior-level peers, on a regular basis. Chris recalls:

“We wanted to develop a business sharing concept for more senior people, within a secure and controlled environment – both online and

So when Frank Joshi, CEO at Mvine and Director on the Knowledge Peers board, showed Chris the robust and reliable Mvine for Private Business Networks, the entrepreneur just knew it would be the right platform for bringing his vision to life.

“With Mvine you can show senior people who is there listening. Senior people are very happy to talk if they know the environment is controlled and not open to abuse. They want to know that only relevant people are there and that they’re not going to get annoyed by people they don’t want to get annoyed by – which often happens on other platforms where you don’t know who has access to you.”

From idea to reality in under a month

It took just a month for Mvine to deploy the first iteration of the Knowledge Peers site. A cloud-based platform, Mvine for Private Business Networks is a feature-rich portal solution offering rapid deployment, high levels of scalability, flexible pricing models and built-in best practice.

The wealth of valuable features available out-of-the- box included the built-in security and multi-level user management that Chris was looking for. He was able to rapidly deploy a variety of groups that only have access to relevant packages of information, capabilities and permissions. Chris confirms:

“We were able to create a wide range of different groups very quickly, often in less than a day if the group was well understood. It’s a nice and orderly system where we can run groups very cleanly and tightly. The groups can be kept as separate as we want them to be.”

Thanks to the Mvine solution, Knowledge Peers was able to ensure content was only shared with the people it was relevant to and who wanted it from day one. Chris adds:

“The discipline and order in Mvine for Private Business Networks are critical when you’re dealing with important people and big businesses.”

Knowledge Peers today

Today the Knowledge Peers network is a high-value community, boasting high levels of membership and experience satisfaction. Confident relevant topical insight is only shared amongst their peers, leaders are happy to be open and frank without worrying about the integrity of the content or members. Chris reveals:

“We ask them what’s on their mind, what they worry about strategically. We interview the same network and get everyone’s ideas about how they’re dealing with a particular challenge and share it back to the network through video case studies, written documents or organised meetings.”

By using Mvine for Private Business Networks, Knowledge Peers can provide its 7,000 users with a consistent and exceptional experience at minimal cost Chris reveals:

“Since going live four years ago, the Knowledge Peers site has always been available. I run other networks on other platforms and don’t get the same reliable experience.”

Confident the platform will scale without impacting quality or costs, Knowledge Peers has also offered
its solution to outside organisations. As well as three networks of its own – focused on funding innovation, technology innovation and innovation in the charities space – Knowledge Peers runs six networks on behalf of other organisations.

The future

Chris’s plans for the future include integration with other systems, including potentially a subscription management solution such as Salesforce.com.

“I think the next step for us would be to bolt some subscription management software into the Mvine platform.”

Apart from that he has no plans to make any great changes to his solution – just to continue ‘tinkering and tailoring’, as he puts it. Chris concludes:

“The robustness and reliability of the Mvine platform is exemplary. It’s stable and secure and seen as such. I would not have been able to do what we’ve done so far without the Mvine platform and what it’s been able to do for us.

Other open source and collaboration platforms were never going to work for us unless we spent a lot of money and time bolting together at least four systems”

About Mvine

Mvine is a leading provider of Portals and Portal Solutions, providing secure and easy-to-use workspaces in the cloud for organisations across a wide range of public and private sectors. Our combination of Software-as-a-Service technology and professional services allow some of the best known brands to work safely outside the firewall with partners, clients and suppliers.

Mvine’s home page is www.mvine.com

About Knowledge Peers

Knowledge Peers is an on- and off-line service for forward thinking leaders to explore emerging ideas and challenges. We facilitate peer to peer learning between directors of businesses and charities via video-based Case Studies, topical events and specialised research.

Knowledge Peers' home page is www.knowledgepeers.com