Press Releases
InterSystems Recognised as Customer Affinity Leader In New Study of Technology Purchases
Chief Marketing Officer Council Research Finds Customer Affinity More Accurate than Brand Awareness In Predicting Customers' Buying Decisions
Sydney, Aust. March 10, 2008 InterSystems Corporation today announced that it is ranked as a leader in customer affinity – the most accurate measure of predicting customers' technology purchasing intentions and decisions, according to a marketing effectiveness study recently released by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council.
InterSystems develops and markets innovative database and integration software. Its product line includes the InterSystems CACHÉ® high-performance object database, the InterSystems Ensemble® rapid integration platform, the InterSystems HealthShare™ platform for regional and national electronic health records and the InterSystems TrakCare™ advanced patient-centric healthcare information system. The CMO Council is a global peer networking and thought leadership organisation of more than 3,000 top marketing executives.
InterSystems was one of three technology vendors topping the Customer Affinity Index, winning out over vendors such as Sybase, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and IBM. The index rankings are based on study results from surveys and interviews with more than 1,000 leading B2B technology buyers. Respondents included IT buyers in end-user organisations, technology vendors, marketing executives and customer service and customer care executives. The Customer Affinity Index was developed by the CMO Council in conjunction with Dr. V. Kumar, professor and executive director of the ING Center for Financial Services at the University of Connecticut, and Dr. Girish Ramani, assistant professor of marketing at Drexel University's LeBow College of Business.
The study, "Profitability from Customer Affinity", indicates that brand awareness and existing relationships have a relatively small impact on why customers decide to work with a particular technology vendor. Other factors including competence, quality of service and support, and a sense of true vendor commitment have a greater influence on customers' buying decisions, according to the study respondents.
"For three decades, InterSystems has had a consistent commitment to forming true working partnerships with our customers for the long term," said Denis Tebbutt, Managing Director for InterSystems in Australia. "It's very gratifying to receive objective input that validates our corporate philosophy and our approach to customer relationships."
"To be successful in today’s shifting market landscape, marketers must adopt new performance measurements that are actually tied into the customer and turn away from those traditional brand metrics that can reinforce counter-customer-centric behavior," said Donovan Neal-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. "Companies have to reorganise around the customer and embrace activities that are customer centric in the eyes of the customer. The companies that rank highly in this inaugural Customer Affinity Index demonstrate that it is possible to build your company and product around the customer. We applaud those companies who are actively engaged in activities, programs and measures that place the customer front and centre, embraced in co-innovation and tied into the overall customer experience."
About InterSystems
InterSystems Corporation is a global software product company with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and offices in 22 countries. InterSystems provides innovative products that enable fast development, deployment, and integration of enterprise-class applications. InterSystems CACHÉ® is a high performance object database that makes applications faster and more scalable. InterSystems Ensemble® is a rapid integration platform that enriches applications with new functionality, and makes them connectable. InterSystems HealthShare™ is a platform that leverages existing healthcare applications to rapidly create regional or national electronic health records. InterSystems TrakCare™ is an advanced patient-centric healthcare information system that is installed in leading hospitals in 25 countries.
About CMO Council
The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior marketing and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council's 3,000 members control more than US$70 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures. Companies represented on the CMO Council have combined annual revenue of over US$600 billion. Visit the CMO Council web site to find out about the initiatives geared to address executive marketers' challenges at www.cmocouncil.org.
###
Editorial Contact
David Sanday
Bowes Communications
02 9387 2333
david.sanday@bowespr.com
