Cision Ltd. is a global leader in providing public relations services to businesses using cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) technologies. In the early 2000’s, Cision underwent a series of mergers and acquisitions to gain new technologies and build more comprehensive information databases to expand their services. These mergers and acquisitions successfully brought a multitude of new software products to the company, but no single software product contained all the functionality needed to be a comprehensive public relations solution.
The Problem:
With the addition of so many different software solutions, Cision had all of the puzzle pieces, but:
- Customers had to purchase and use each product separately.
- Daily operations were challenging as employees needed to transition between multiple systems to complete basic tasks.
- Marketing and selling the entire line of software solutions was a nightmare.
- Customers wanted all of the same features in a unified custom software solution.
- Different stakeholders had familiarity with and preference of different software systems, which made it difficult to move forward with a cohesive vision.
Additionally, all of these new systems needed maintenance, which required increasing effort from technical staff and left little time to spend building a new and unified custom software system.
The Goal: Multi-Product Integration
Geneca was brought in as an external lead developer to create a unified and fully integrated public relations software as a service (SaaS) product. This software solution needed to be comprehensive and functional for internal and external uses. Cision’s vision for the project was to change the way public relations functioned in the global digital world through a cloud based custom software solution.
Geneca’s solution:
First, it was imperative to meet with the newly joined executives of Cision and analyze the positives, negatives, and functionality of all existing software solutions. From information gathered in these meetings we were able to design a clearly outlined product strategy that included features, experiences, pricing, and go to market strategies.
The next course of action was to build the software. We collaborated with Cision’s technical team to create a unified and functional custom software solution that could be maintained and evolve in-house. An instrumental part of this process was creating “clean code” that would be easy to understand and build on in the future. We also developed some unique ways to access a vast amount of data in order to give customers a powerful tool that was incredibly fast and simple to use.
Upon completion, this software product was re-named CisionPoint, and became Cision’s foundational public relations management software. With this new software, Cision was able to realize its vision of successfully revolutionizing the way businesses do public relations in the 21st century. Cision acquired PR Newswire in 2016 and transitioned to a public company in June of 2017. Cision is now the largest global provider of PR services, tools, and software for the marketing industry, generating $628 million in revenue in 2017.
Results:
- Geneca provided the custom software that helped Cision become the global leader in PR software services
- Unified disbanded systems into one comprehensive custom software solution
- Created “clean code” that Cision continued to develop and build on internally
- Trained Cision’s internal team to ensure they were ready to support and evolve the product in the future.
- Reduced costs through increased efficiency
- Increased sales by offering one powerful software product instead of a suite of lesser products
- Saved significant costs on internal IT and maintenance of old systems
- Allowed time sensitive info to be entered quickly which increased the value of their product to consumers
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