Exact Software

Exact Software is one of the world’s leading providers of business software solutions. Its integrated solutions comprise traditional enterprise resource planning as well as related software solutions such as human resource management, customer relationship management, project management, business intelligence/analytics, and electronic workflow.

The Challenge

The PAN team was tasked with supporting Exact’s introduction to the U.S. business press. Since the company’s target audience is decision makers at small to medium-sized businesses who often aren’t tech savvy, it was important to reach these decision makers through mainstream business publications such as The Wall Street Journal. However, as Exact is a 23-year-old Netherlands-based company with $300+M in revenues, PAN couldn’t take the traditional startup approach, nor was the firm large enough to garner reporters’ interest in creating a standalone company profile.

The Approach

PAN came up with an idea for a trend pitch centered on small businesses eliminating internal emailing in lieu of workflow and other communication tools. To connect the pitch to a broader business issue, PAN uncovered a research study which found that individuals waste 15 days a year sorting through irrelevant e-mail. In addition, understanding that end-user examples were critical to solidify the pitch’s relevance to the small business audience, PAN interviewed two Exact customers about using workflow instead of internal email and the resulting productivity gains. The pitch leveraged direct quotes from these customers, including honest insight about the challenges and rewards of disrupting such an ingrained form of communication.

The PAN team took this compelling story directly to Wendy Bounds, small business editor with The Wall Street Journal. In addition to writing her own small business column, Bounds oversees story assignments for the Journal’s recurring Small Business special sections. Therefore, even if she didn’t cover the story herself, she was the key to getting the pitch topic on the agenda. Securing the coverage involved an 11-month process. Although Bounds was immediately interested, the story’s progress languished as breaking news and other assignments took precedence. To revive the pitch, the team produced additional statistics to validate the importance of the story.

While the story was ultimately assigned to Chris Reiter, a technology reporter for Dow Jones Newswires, it retained its emphasis on small businesses, and was slated for a Small Business special section. The team’s tenacity and creativity paid off and the idea finally came to fruition. In fact, Reiter commented that PAN’s “original pitch to Wendy was the impetus behind the story.”

The Results

The story ran as part of a Small Business special section in The Wall Street Journal. Although it was a larger piece on the impact of email, the two Exact customers were featured prominently, serving as strong validation of Exact’s ability to help small businesses increase efficiency and productivity. Overall, the coverage elevated Exact’s position in the business community, and sparked interest among new business prospects, ultimately leading to new deals.

Following PAN’s model of producing multi-faceted PR campaigns, the team used these trends to fuel pitches for the IT and manufacturing media. This resulted in a three-page case study on Davis Controls in Baseline. Moreover, as a result of the Baseline case study, Davis’ CEO Neil Montgomery was invited to deliver a keynote address at the Delphi BPM conference. In addition, Davis Controls and Altman Lighting were also included in a workflow feature in the March 2007 issue of Manufacturing Business Technology.