The Challenge
This was the challenge facing Whiteoaks in working with Pegasystems: to cut through end-user confusion in demonstrating how the company’s unique rules-based approach could bring substantial benefits to those organisations who would gain most from a BPM-type solution.
Whiteoaks has huge experience in working with companies in precisely differentiating their product or service offer and then developing pragmatic media programmes to drive that message hard, with both analysts and those key press titles read by key influencers and decision-makers in their chosen markets. This was especially critical in the case of Pegasystems, who had a strongly-focused prospect list in such target sectors as financial services, insurance, telecoms and the public sector.
At the same time, as with many other clients, in addition to developing a powerful UK programme Whiteoaks provided a broader European co-ordination role to ensure that the Pegasystems message was delivered consistently across its growing EMEA market.
The Response
Whiteoaks recognised that, these goals could best be achieved by focusing on BPM as an essentially practical business issue rather than an arid and, to the end-user, more or less incomprehensible technology debate.
In so doing, Pegasystems’ long-established ability to enable rapid change within the business and deliver substantial proven performance improvement (20% increase in new business, 40% in productivity) made it possible to cut through the hype and promote real business gains.
As a result, Whiteoaks developed a broadly-based issues-led PR campaign which focused on building strong IP which would directly support Pegasystems sales campaign. The programme was designed to build opinion leadership through a series of surveys, white papers and feature articles which reflected Pegasystems’ understanding of the issues facing today’s enterprise businesses, backed up by case studies which showed how, in practical terms, its ‘Build for Change’ approach provided the essential agility for businesses to respond rapidly in fast-changing markets.
At the same time, a parallel programme of analyst briefings was seen as essential in increasing awareness and understanding of the Pegasystems approach among key opinion formers. And finally, message delivery had to take full account of the increasing importance of web-based publications and the emergence of blogs as a medium for understanding and responding to current issues.
The Result
The success of the Whiteoaks campaign to-date can be judged by a number of measures.
A media satisfaction survey undertaken at the outset of the campaign showed that Pegasystems performed poorly, behind such key competitors as IBM, Oracle and Tibco. Today, by contrast, independent research by Apollo Surveys shows that Pegasystems is consistently maintaining the number one share of voice in its key media – including Computer Business Review, Information Age and Management Today - by setting the agenda in the area of practical business improvement.
White papers on such related issues as ‘BPM and the front office’ and Customer Process Management, together with surveys on Customer Relationship Management, for example, have proved especially valuable in providing a high volume of quality coverage on areas of key importance to existing and prospective customers.
This has been reinforced by the fact that, for the first time, major analysts such as Gartner (in its Magic Quadrants) and Forrester (in its Forrester Wave Reports) now recognise rules–based BPM as a distinct and highly-effective form of BPM delivery, in which Pegasystems is confirmed as a global leader. Such independent endorsement is especially critical as enterprise decision-makers typically take note of such analysis in drawing up shortlists for IT providers
And finally, the UK and EMEA share of Pegasystems’ global business continues to grow in line with the company’s strategic objectives.
In summary, for marketing director, Jeremy Payne, “Whiteoaks has been key to the creation and delivery of a powerful Pegasystems message that is relevant, credible and well-targeted.
