T&F INFORMA REALISES RECORD ROI WITH DATABEACON

Integrated Web Reporting and Data Analysis solution pays for itself in one week and sells record number of new subscriptions

 Databeacon partners are used to hearing about fast customer ROI numbers from the firm’s Web Reporting and Data Analysis software. But when a representative from one of Europe’s largest providers of business information told a packed Databeacon partner conference that his company had recouped its entire investment in just one week, the crowd was in awe.

At the Databeacon Directions 2004 partner conference, Paul Bateman from the Telecoms and Media Division of T&F Informa PLC was sharing his success with an appreciative audience. He put up a slide with a budget breakdown, then offhandedly mentioned that T&F Informa had acquired several new subscribers and covered the entire cost of the project in the first week after deployment.

 “There was kind of a hush that fell over the room,” recalls Nathan Rudyk, Databeacon’s VP of Marketing. “Then we all started looking at each other as if to say ‘that can’t be right, he must have meant first month or first year.”

But the numbers were right. Gary Musgrave, eBusiness Development manager at T&F Informa confirms Bateman’s contention.

“Since we introduced the Databeacon-based delivery, record numbers of new subscriptions have been sold. The extra revenue generated has more than covered the costs of the initial investment, far quicker than we could have hoped for”.

With 5,000 employees and annual revenues in excess of US$100-million, London-based T&F Informa provides critical business information and intelligence to companies in most market segments and in all major countries. T&F Informa originates and delivers business and industry information in nearly 1500 electronic and print publications that are read in more than 180 countries worldwide.

 The Telecoms and Media division of T&F Informa offers everything from television viewer information to cellular subscriber data to major firms such as Nokia, Nortel Networks, Qualcomm, and Ericsson. There’s a huge amount of information and it comes in just about any format you care to name.

 “We really didn’t know what we had,” says T&F Informa’s Paul Bateman. “We were swimming in information, but we needed a way to deliver our customers the data they needed in a format that would let them make sense of it all. The best we could offer was an Excel spreadsheet, which was quite limited.” 

The T&F Informa team took a look at other vendors including Cognos and Business Objects – but the high cost and unsuitability for seamless Web delivery ruled them out very early on.

 “The other product we did consider was Pilot’s Business Analyzer, but the per user pricing model was prohibitively expensive,” notes Musgrave.

 “Databeacon’s licensing model enables us to create as many cubes as we want, which has allowed us to provide sales teams with sample cubes they can show to clients in the sales process.  This has undoubtedly contributed to the increased subscriptions we have seen since moving to Databeacon.”

 In addition to its flexible licensing model, Databeacon offered seamless Web delivery and an easy to use interface that required no end-user training.

 “One of Databeacon’s key strengths is the intuitive nature of the interface,” says Musgrave. “We switched to online delivery without having to offer any training to the users. We expected to be inundated with cries for help, but the only feedback we received was positive – even non-data savvy clients could use Databeacon with no training.”

When John Caiger of Databeacon partner Matraxis initially introduced the T&F Informa team to the Databeacon application they were immediately impressed.

“Right from the very start it was very intuitive, very easy to play with,” says Bateman. “And all of a sudden, without a lot of fuss and bother, you’ve got a whole new way of understanding your data.”

After a rigorous testing process T&F Informa rolled out its first Databeacon trial, offering subscribers its Broadband Subscriber Database which tracks 77 different metrics for over 160 operators in 45 countries. It was a huge success. Customers found the application both powerful and intuitive.

 As a Web-based product, there was no need for additional hardware on the client side. And timeliness improved dramatically as T&F Informa was able to offer subscribers nightly data updates as opposed to the twice-monthly previously available.

Plans are now in the works to roll Databeacon out across the rest of the Telecoms and Media Group, with the other major market segments within T&L Informa to follow.

Read the DMReview of the application at http://www.databeacon.com/articles/Article_DMReview_Informa.htm