ISSEL news release
For further media information, please contact:
Mark Charmer, ICONIC
07976 960739 / mcharmer@iconicnet.co.uk
10 February 2004
PILOT SOFTWARE INTRODUCES WEB CHANNEL PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
New solution manages and motivates web channel
initiatives to pre-defined objectives
Pilot® Software today announced UK availability of
the first performance management solution for web-based marketing
channels. Pilot HitList 5.6 is available immediately from
UK Pilot HitList distributor ISSEL.
Demand for Web Channel Performance Management systems is
being driven in the UK by two factors: the need to understand
the relationship between online and offline channel marketing
and the rapid adoption of scorecard and other performance
management techniques among public and private sector organisations.
“The web channel is just one of the marketing channels
businesses use – but it is an increasingly important
part of the mix,” said Colin Cooper, ISSEL European
Commercial Director on behalf of Pilot Software. “The
value it delivers needs to be measured as part of wider corporate
measurement programmes.”
Pilot HitList allows companies to chart
progress towards goals by tracking the performance of their
web-based channels
against specific targets, calculating ROI, uncovering root
performance issues, identifying conversion bottlenecks, and
much more. It uses an open, modular software architecture
that grows with initiatives and integrates effectively with
other systems.
UK customers of Pilot HitList include BMJ.com, John Lewis
Direct, the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and Internet
Solutions company syzygy (www.syzygy.net). All have recently
deployed the solution to improve understanding of how online
channels are performing and to plan future initiatives.
“Three years ago, the value measurement department
was considered a useful addition to web marketers to report
back on traffic
across their sites. Now we’re mission-critical in the
eyes of our clients,” said David Ellis, value analyst
at syzygy. The team has introduced Pilot HitList web performance
software to capture and analyse data on how sites are used
as a foundation for delivering customer insight. The tool
also helps guide design and return on investment goals, forging
connections between web advertising, direct marketing and
channel initiatives. syzygy clients include Mercedes-Benz,
The Air Miles Travel Company, Macmillan, Shell and Mazda
amongst others.
“Many of the people we work with are being asked to
integrate performance measurement systems into company-wide
initiatives,” said
Cooper. “Techniques to track business performance such
as the increasingly popular Balanced Scorecard approach present
new challenges for functions such as marketing, sales and
service. Four things matter: how you capture the relevant
performance data, how you analyse it, how you report it and
how you act on it.”
Pilot HitList 5.6
Pilot HitList 5.6 introduces several important enhancements
that help companies move from web analytics to web channel
performance management.
Linked reports – users can now create drill-down ‘child’ reports
within larger reports. This makes implementation of dashboards
that support initiatives such as balanced scorecards more
effective as the reporting focus can remain on pre-defined
performance measurements. These can then be explored in more
detail based on a user’s need and knowledge-levels.
Performance v target – target measurements are now
easily compared to actuals in graph and conversion funnels.
This provides at-a-glance updates of performance against
target to permit faster response where action is needed to
maximise return.
Pricing and Availability
Pilot HitList 5.6 is available now. The typical sales price
is £10,000. The actual price varies based on the customer’s
environment, traffic levels and training and installation
requirements. Customers with a current Pilot HitList maintenance
contract are eligible to upgrade to the latest version of
Pilot HitList at no additional charge. For more information
about Pilot Software or Pilot HitList upgrades, contact ISSEL
at www.issel.co.uk / 020 7721 8580.
About Pilot HitList
Leveraging the lessons learned from 100+ deployments of its
award-winning technology, Pilot HitList is the industry’s
first packaged, yet customisable, web channel performance
management product that includes dashboard, analysis & reporting,
and data collection capabilities all in one convenient package.
When combined with Pilot’s extensive Web channel expertise,
Pilot’s web channel performance management solution
takes web initiatives to the next level by allowing sales,
marketing, and service organisations to align online activities
with strategy. Pilot’s web channel solutions have been
demonstrated to effectively support the unique needs of hundreds
of companies alike, with organisations such as The Boeing
Company, Cheapflights.com, Illinois State Board of Education,
Pacific Life Insurance and Trilegiant Corporation relying
on Pilot solutions to support their web initiatives. More
information about Pilot HitList can be found at www.pilotsoftware.com/hitlist.
About Pilot Software
Named as the best Business Performance Monitoring & Management
Environment in the 2003 Intelligent Enterprise Readers’ Choice
Awards, Pilot Software provides customised, flexible and
open performance management solutions. The culmination of
20-plus years of development and industry expertise - and
feedback from more than a thousand deployments - it enables
executives, managers and employees alike to attain organisational
goals and objectives by rapidly aligning day-to-day execution
with strategy. It offers sales, marketing and services expertise,
and a complete array of performance management technologies,
including scorecards, dashboards, analysis & reporting
and modeling & integration. Pilot Software allows organisations
to choose only those elements of its solution needed to augment
their existing technology portfolios and implement successful
performance management. Customers include Coors Brewing Company,
The Boeing Company, General Services Administration, Ingersoll-Rand,
Pacific Life Insurance, Uno Restaurant and Swiss Re.
Pilot Software was founded in 2002 and has headquarters
in Cambridge, Mass. and Mountain View, Calif. The company
is
privately held with funding from Excelsior Venture Partners
III, LLC, a private equity fund managed by U.S. Trust; G-51
Capital, a Texas-based venture capital firm; and individual
investors. Pilot Software can be reached at (650) 230-2830.
More information about Pilot Software is available at www.pilotsoftware.com.
© 2003 Pilot Software Inc. All rights reserved. Pilot
is a registered trademark and HitList is a trademark of Pilot
Software Inc. All other trademarks are the sole property
of their respective owners.
About ISSEL
ISSEL (Intranet Software Solutions (Europe) Limited) is a
specialist in helping customers maximise the benefits from
their web investments through the use of web analytics and
performance management technologies. This permits a real
understanding of the impact of internet, intranet and extranet
sites and the return on their investment from online activities
both on and offline. It is the European Master Distributor
for Pilot Software’s HitList product and an ABCE Associate
Subscriber. UK Customers include John Lewis Direct, Informa
Group, Cheapflights, BMJ, Marcus Evans and Gold Medal Travel.
More details on ISSEL can be found at www.issel.co.uk.
ISSEL – UK Press Backgrounder
February 2004
Performance Management and Balanced Scorecard
It is now well-understood that traditional financial measurements
take little account of factors such as customer satisfaction
and the general value customers
derive from the organisation. Nor are the complex networks of customer and
supplier relationships that a company maintains considered as assets on a conventional
balance sheet. Other factors not measured in traditional accounting include
process quality and compliance and human resource accounting – the measurement
of ‘intellectual capital’. Exploring the above means you can measure
the likely impact of things you have done on the future business.
A typical – and prominent - response has been the balanced scorecard,
a form of strategic, measurement-based control that goes beyond traditional
financial performance measures and is adaptable to the unique conditions and
priorities of every business. It emerged in the early 1990s from work by the
consultants Kaplan and Norton. It grew from the increased dependence many organisations
had on immaterial resources – and the subsequent need for control tools
that used metrics other than traditional financial ones.
The benefit of an approach such as balanced scorecard is
that it articulates strategy using a specific format that
integrates a restrictive selection
of metrics. Critically, the scorecard describes a set of hypotheses on
which the
business is built and which can measure connections and correlations between,
for example, the improvement in customer service processes, the number
of satisfied customers and increases in revenues. Such connections
are not new,
but insisting
they are central to a focused group of key performance numbers is new.
UK organisations are expected to invest heavily in such
business planning techniques over the coming years, most
of which will put greater emphasis
on mapping business
performance to future strategy using reporting dashboards that feed into
balanced scorecard strategies.
Built on Pilot HitList’s award-winning heritage, Web channel performance
management solutions enable organisations to capture, process and report on
information relevant to these new types of business planning methodologies.
Questions that Pilot HitList helps answer include:
Sales
How do I ensure that online sales promotions are driving
sales — not
just generating heaps of unqualified leads or unproductive market buzz?
Can I increase online sales without cannibalising sales through my
traditional channels?
Service
How can I reduce the cost of service by moving support
to the Web, while still providing excellent service?
How does the Web site contribute to the likelihood that customers
will renew their service contract?
Marketing
How can I identify missing or confusing product features
based on questions to our online knowledge database?
For further media information, please contact:
Mark Charmer, ICONIC
07976 960739 / mcharmer@iconicnet.co.uk
About ISSEL
ISSEL (Intranet Software Solutions (Europe) Limited) is a
specialist in helping customers maximise the benefits from
their web investments through the use of web analytics and
performance management technologies. This permits a real
understanding of the impact of internet, intranet and extranet
sites and the return on their investment from online activities
both on and offline. It is the European Master Distributor
for Pilot Software’s HitList product and an ABCE Associate
Subscriber. UK Customers include John Lewis Direct, Informa
Group, Cheapflights, BMJ, Marcus Evans and Gold Medal Travel.
More details on ISSEL can be found at www.issel.co.uk. |
