acquia

Businessmodel of Acquia

Customer Segments

Acquia has a mass market business model, with no significant differentiation between customer segments. The company targets its offerings at firms of all industries and sizes.

Value Proposition

Acquia offers two primary value propositions: performance and brand/status.

The company demonstrates strong performance through tangible results. Specific positive outcomes for clients include the following:

  • gov used Acquia’s solutions to replace its legacy platform, resulting in estimated savings of $4.7 million over five years
  • BAC Credomatic used Acquia’s solutions to develop a platform enabling customization by marketers, resulting in an increase in its website’s organic traffic by 140%
  • Wilson Sporting Goods used Acquia’s solutions to integrate its eCommerce solution and content management system, resulting in an improvement in revenue by 10%
  • Intuit Mint used Acquia’s solutions to quickly transform its website, resulting in a relaunch occurring within a month-and-a-half with over 1,000 pages moved from its legacy site

  • SABMiller used Acquia’s solutions to move to a new platform, resulting in a 50% reduction in production costs and improvements in control, security, and consistency The company has established a strong brand due to its success. It has over 4,000 clients, including Global 2000 firms such as Warner Music Group, Intuit, NBC, Time, Nokia, Twitter, Stanford University, and Harvard University. It has also won a many honors, including the following:

  • Recognition on the Inc. 500 as the #1 fastest-growing software company
  • Recognition by the Fast500 as the fastest-growing software firm on the east coast of the U.S.
  • Ranking as one of the OnDemand 100 Top Private Companies by AlwaysOn
  • Recognition as one of the Boston Business Journal Fast 50
  • Recognition as a “Leader” in Web Content Management Systems by The Forrester Wave ### Channels

Acquia’s main channel is its direct sales team. The company promotes its offerings through its website, social media pages, and participation in industry events such as conferences.

Customer Relationships

Acquia’s customer relationship is primarily of a personal assistance nature. The company assists customers in the following ways:

  • Support Services – The company provides phone and e-mail customer service on a 24x7x365 basis. It also maintains Advisory Support, a special option that offers scheduled discussions and best practice consultations with support staff members on key issues clients are dealing with. Lastly, it provides remote administration for hosted sites, handling routine tasks such as security updates and patches.
  • Training Services – The company operates Acquia Academy, a program through which it provides training on Drupal and other topics. Options include classes at public training centers and private classes at the client’s site. It also maintains a certification program through which participants can validate their knowledge and skills on Drupal and its products/servicess.
  • Professional Services – The company offers a variety of consulting and advisory services, including customer onboarding, enablement, risk mitigation, and technical account management. Despite this orientation, there is a self-service component. The company’s website enables clients to submit support tickets and take self-paced learning courses. It also features a “Resources“ section that includes white papers, eBooks, case studies, analyst reports, and webinars. The site also features a “Knowledge Base“ with technical articles and troubleshooting tutorials. Lastly, it provides answers to frequently asked questions and access to an e-mail newsletter.

Key Activities

Acquia’s business model entails designing and developing its software products for customers.

Key Partners

Acquia maintains strategic partnerships with firms that use its platform to build digital experiences. Specific partners include Amazon Web Services, FFW, WPP, Manifest, and Mediacurrent.

Acquia also maintains a referral program through which it invites third parties to promote the company to potential employees. Referrals that result in a hire earn the party $500.

Key Resources

Acquia’s main resource is its proprietary software platform, which serves over 4,000 clients.

It depends on human resources in the form of engineers to design and develop its software, sales employees to promote it, training/consulting employees to provide instruction/advice, and customer service employees to provide support.

Lastly, as a startup it has relied heavily on funding from investors, raising $173.5 million from 11 investors as of April 2016.

Cost Structure

Acquia has a value-driven structure, aiming to provide a premium proposition through significant personal service and frequent service enhancements. Its biggest cost driver is likely cost of services, a variable expense.

Other major drivers are in the areas of sales/marketing and customer support/operations, both fixed costs.

Revenue Streams

Acquia has one revenue stream: revenues it generates from the sale of subscriptions for its platform to customers.

Written on October 25, 2017