December 2000 to September 2005

The Situation

• Spotty awareness and understanding among BI industry analyst community of Actuate’s corporate and product strategy , little visible/measurable support for sales and marketing efforts (late 2000)
• Low visibility with Gartner Research, inventor of term “business intelligence”
• Need for greater understanding of leading BI analyst research agendas, in U.S., EMEA, Asia/Pac
• Loss of corporate communications management before critical product launch (mid-2002)

The Program

• Industry Analyst Strategy: robust global program negotiating and managing research subscription accounts across 5 top firms to maximize contract return on investment (2000-05)
• Acting Corporate Communications Director overseeing all media activities, search/selection and oversight of new public relations firm (2002-03)
• Sales Support lending current opinion and references from prominent analysts to shorten sales cycle
• Product Marketing Support with regular counsel on industry trends, issues, and opportunities to directly impact go-to-market strategy
• Investor Relations Support to increase management team visibility, cross pollinate AR and IR efforts

The Results

1. Closed sales directly attributable to industry analyst support totaling more than $300,000 in new business in a single Quarter – thanks to quick response, active references, and sales tools packaging
2. Increased raw amount of industry analyst research coverage by 58 percent (2002 vs. 2001); “share of voice” measurement of coverage relative to top competitors improved by 52 percent (2004 vs. 2003); dominated enterprise reporting segment in 2004 vs. larger competitors (ReportNet, Crystal, IBI)
3. Increased media “share of voice” from 4 percent to 29 percent in only 8 months (July 2002-March 2003)
4. 100 percent analyst coverage, quotes for Actuate / Eclipse open source partnership announcement (August 2004)
5. Actuate named Enterprise Reporting Leader in Forrester Wave report (August 2004); improved plotting of Actuate along “vision” axis on Gartner’s BI Tools Suite Magic Quadrant (3 years in a row) improved position in Meta Group’s BI MetaSpectrum (2004 vs. 2003)
6. Successful defense of Actuate “uniques” among key influencers: BI extranet deployments, high scalability, managed spreadsheet server, strong Java development, EII for reporting
7. Successful account management of Actuate’s six-figure Gartner contract spanning consulting services, events, direct marketing and research sponsorship
8. Flawless execution of annual Analyst Day, combining both Wall Street and industry targets
9. Regular, ongoing analyst support for PR activities – including multiple analysts as press references for use during major product launches and news announcements (Actuate 6-8)
10. Averaged 10 analyst interactions per month across 70+ global analyst targets (2004-05)

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