Building Credibility in a New Market
Opportunity:
A manufacturing company developed a high performance database to meet the needs of the factory floor. After years of testing, the company determined that the database was also appropriate for other high performance applications where relational databases and object-oriented databases were proving to be too slow. The company, however, had no track record in the database marketplace, and there were several well-established players in the IT and telecommunications markets that the company was targeting.
Strategy:
To go up against established database companies, Breakthru developed a complete set of background materials drawing from academic texts on database technology and from the documented results of using the new database in manufacturing applications. In addition, simple-to-understand diagrams contrasted the “entity-relation” database with relational databases—both organizationally and in terms of execution time. After researching current and planned articles on database technology, we also created a checklist comparing relational databases, entity-relation databases and object-oriented databases on a variety of criteria. This checklist clearly demonstrated where each database technology stood out, and also where the weaknesses lay.
Results:
The company’s materials and the credibility their spokespeople made an impression. The product launch was reported not only in manufacturing trade publications, but also in prestigious IT journals. Over the months to follow, several in-depth articles contrasting relational databases and object-oriented databases also included material on entity-relation database technology. The company was able to open several new markets for its database.