Businessmodel of Percolate

Customer Segments

Percolate has a mass market business model, with no significant differentiation between customer segments. The company targets its offering at firms of all industries and sizes that have social media platforms.

Value Proposition

Percolate offers three primary value propositions: convenience, performance, and brand/status.

The company offers convenience by making operations simpler for clients. Its platform is an end-to-end solution that helps marketing professionals plan, create, and execute all of their marketing activities. It makes their lives easier in the following ways:

• Enables them to coordinate marketng campaigns and activities on a single calendar; tasks can be seen together or filtered by topic, channel, team, and location
• Provides brief templates they can use to organize their marketing ideas and collaborate on content, events, and campaigns
• Provides a mobile format they can use to obtain real-time updates and share media
• Provides an integrated task management tool they can use to track work from beginning to end, and an enterprise-grade approvals system to conduct oversight over all content

• Streamlines tasks by integrating existing client systems for budgeting, CRM, marketing automation, and enterprise resource planning The company demonstrates strong performance through tangible results. High-profile examples of positive outcomes for specific clients include the following:

• Unilever used Percolate’s solution to reduce the amount of time spent developing and approving content, resulting in a decreased cost per social post and annual savings of over $10 million
• Amtrak used Percolate’s solution to make its marketing more customer-centric, resulting in the collection of 329 images of fans‘ experiences and a 110% increase in fan engagement
• General Electric used Percolate’s solution to plan, store, and distribute content through a single platform, resulting in a higher publishing rate – more than 950 posts in one month alone
• MasterCard used Percolate’s solution to brief its marketers and agency partners, enabling it to create and share six campaigns with more than 150 users across the U.S. and UK
• Freshpet used Percolate’s solution to provide a real-time view into consumer reception of its content, resulting in the saving of several hours a day and the publishing of pieces once a week The company has established a strong brand due to its success. It is used by over 800 brands worldwide, including Fortune 500 firms such as Marriott, IBM, adidas, Anheuser-Busch InBev, and Levi’s. It has also won a number of honors, including recognition as a “Leader“ in the Onboarding and Support category in The Forrester Wave Social Relationship Platforms report for 2015.

Channels

Percolate’s main channel is its business development team. The company promotes its offering through its website, social media pages, and participation in conferences.

Customer Relationships

Percolate’s customer relationship is primarily of a personal assistance nature. The company provides general phone and e-mail support. It also assigns clients an engagement manager that provides regular assistance, and offers a wide variety of support services through partners, such as implementation, onboarding, training, and campaign development.

Key Activities

Percolate’s business model entails maintaining a robust cloud platform for its clients.

Key Partners

Percolate maintains the following partnership programs:

Alliance Partner Program – Includes the following types of partnerships:

• Consultants and System Integration Partners – Service providers who offer implementation, change management, technical, and content support to its customers.
• Agency Partners – Creative, digital, and media agencies that assist in campaign development.
• Technology Partners – Tech firms in the content publishing, social connectivity, and software-as-a-service realms that extend Percolate’s platform with distribution channels and third-party applications in order to provide an enhanced offering for its customers.
• Marketplace Partners – Content fulfillment firms that supply licensed and on-demand content via the company’s in-app marketplace portal to help clients communicate more effectively. Program benefits include training programs, certification and accreditation paths, go-to-market collaboration efforts, and dedicated relationship support.

Affiliate Partner Program – Invites trusted third parties to promote the company’s offerings through their platforms (websites, mobile apps, etc.). Leads that result in new customers earn the parties referral fees totaling 10% of the customer’s first-year license cost. Many partners obtain additional earnings by providing services to clients.

Key Resources

Percolate’s main resource is its proprietary software platform, which serves over 800 brands.

It depends on human resources in the form of engineers to maintain and update the platform, consultants to provide training and advisory services, and customer service personnel to provide support.

As a relatively new startup it has relied heavily on funding from outside parties, raising $74.5 million from 14 investors as of May 2015.

Cost Structure

Percolate 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 customer support/operations and administration, both fixed costs.

Revenue Streams

Percolate has one revenue stream: revenues it generates from the subscription fees it charges for regular access to its software-as-a-service platform. Its staff must be contacted directly for pricing.