Businessmodel of Beckon

Customer Segments

Beckon has a mass market business model, with no significant differentiation between customer segments. The company targets its offering at marketers at firms across industries and sizes.

Value Proposition

Beckon offers four primary value propositions: convenience, performance, risk reduction, and brand/status.

The company offers convenience by simplifying customers’ operations. It collects all of a client’s marketing data in a system of record and automatically cleans and organizes it, making it ready for use. It then highlights what is working across all of the information through performance analytics in its Scorecard feature. The Scorecard is updated continuously, providing real-time visibility.

The company has demonstrated strong performance through tangible results. It commissioned an independent study from Forrester Research to quantify its return on investment for customers. The research firm found the following:

• Using Beckon’s solution results in a 12.7% higher return on marketing investment (12.7% better business outcomes with the same dollar of spend)
• Using Beckon’s solution leads to a 513% return on investment
• Beckon’s solution pays for itself within seven months The company reduces risk by offering high standards. It integrates security practices into all aspects of the product development lifecycle and aims to ensure application, network, host, and physical security. It also monitors all servers 24/7, and conducts frequent security reviews and vulnerability/penetration testing through independent third party services.

The company has established a strong brand due to its performance. It bills its solution as the first platform to combine marketing best practices with data best practices. It has a number of prominent clients, including many members of the Fortune 500 such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Gap, Reebok, Converse, StubHub, and Hewlett-Packard. Lastly it has won many honors, including an SIIA CODiE Award in the Best Sales & Marketing Intelligence Solution category (2016) and a Gold Stevie Award for Best New Product or Service of the Year in the Business Products category (2015).

Channels

Beckon’s main channel is its website. The company promotes its offering through its social media pages and participation in forums, summits, and conferences.

Customer Relationships

Beckon’s customer relationship is primarily of a self-service, automated nature.

Customers utilize the service through the main platform while having limited interaction with employees. The company’s website features a “Resources” section that includes self-help tools such as white papers, reports, case studies, webcasts, and videos.

That said, there is also a personal assistance component in the form of phone and e-mail support.

Key Activities

Beckon’s business model entails maintaining a robust platform for its customers.

Key Partners

Beckon does not maintain any formal partnership programs. No information was found regarding partnerships at the company.

Key Resources

Beckon’s main resource is its proprietary software platform.

It depends on its engineering employees to maintain the platform and its customer service personnel to provide support.

As a relatively new startup it has relied heavily on funding from outside parties, raising $23 million from four investors as of January 2015.

Cost Structure

Beckon has a cost-driven structure, aiming to minimize expenses through significant automation and low-price value propositions.

Its biggest cost driver is likely sales/marketing, a fixed cost. Other major drivers are in the areas of customer support/operations and administration, both fixed costs.

Revenue Streams

Beckon has one revenue stream: the subscription fees it charges for access to its software-as-a-service platform. Published sources say its pricing is in the thousands, and the amount varies with the number of data streams that customers attach.