Reclaiming Innovation While Maintaining Market Leadership The Challenge: Aspect Communications (now Aspect Software), a provider of contact center and workforce management solutions, faced a number of PR challenges when the Bateman Group began working with the company in 2003. The company wanted to reclaim the “innovator” title it once enjoyed, which it believed it could do by aligning itself more closely with voice over IP (VoIP) and speech technologies. It also wanted to eradicate dated perceptions about its technology being “proprietary,” “overpriced” and “a collection of point solutions.” Its public relations goal was to increase awareness about its market share leadership in the hot and growing Workforce Management sector. This required Aspect to provide a technology roadmap based on its linkage of disparate products for performance management, the small and medium business market and VoIP under the new Uniphi technology architecture. The Strategy: After working closely with Aspect to determine the company’s goals, the Bateman Group crafted a PR plan based on four key strategies: Elevate the dialogue, starting with cohesive business-level product messaging. The Bateman Group was confident that moving away from product-focused messaging would provide a different, yet credible, point of view, and would tie together disparate best-of-breed solutions. Become the focus of industry conversation by promoting Aspect’s product roadmap. The Bateman Group created Uniphi messaging and a new Uniphi boilerplate, and became Aspect’s “message minders.” The company's speaking program was also expanded, and more opinion pieces placed. Cultivate the endorsement of others by commissioning user surveys from analysts on VoIP adoption and increasing partner public relations activities with brands closely associated with VoIP, such as Digium Asterisk. Demonstrate market momentum through the aggressive pursuit of industry product awards and “First Look” product reviews. The Bateman Group turned the general availability of Aspect’s Uniphi Connect and Uniphi Suite into a customer showcase events, and supported the announcements with live webcasts moderated by analysts and featuring real customers. At these events, the PR team secured case study commitments from the media on the spot. The Results: In the first two years of the PR program, from July 2003 to July 2005, the Bateman Group raised Aspect’s industry profile through a torrent of results, including: 3,027 Articles 30 Product Awards Wins (many for Uniphi Connect & Uniphi Suite) 62 Speaking Engagements 25 Bylined Articles Throughout the coverage, Aspect was consistently credited with bringing newer, standards-based technologies — such as IP and Linux — into the contact center. Aspect is now widely viewed as the thought leader in workforce performance optimization and market share leader in workforce management licenses overall. Additionally, joint public relations programs with Scansoft/Nuance and Microsoft demonstrated that Aspect was serious about speech. Aspect’s aggressive PR program also helped improve its bottom line. The stock price increased from $7 to $12 per share during the two-year program, contributing to a higher valuation when Aspect was acquired by Concerto for $1 billion in July 2005. Furthermore, the acquiring company, Concerto Software, decided to name the combined entity Aspect Software to take advantage of Aspect’s sterling reputation with customers and better brand name recognition in the market overall.

"A highly seasoned, extremely intelligent and motivated PR team." Lakshmi Arya Bakshi Former VP, Global PR and AR Aspect Communications