InterSystems Recognized as Customer Affinity Leader In New Study of Technology Purchases

InterSystems Corporation announced that it is ranked as a leader in customer affinity - the most accurate measure of predicting customers' technology purchasing intentions and decisions, according to a marketing effectiveness study recently released by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council.

InterSystems develops and markets innovative database and integration software. Its product line includes the InterSystems CACHÉ ®  high-performance object database, InterSystems Ensemble® rapid integration platform, and InterSystems HealthShare- platform for regional and national electronic health records. The CMO Council is a global peer networking and thought leadership organization of more than 3,000 top marketing executives.

InterSystems was one of three technology vendors topping the Customer Affinity Index, winning out over vendors such as Nortel, Sybase, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and IBM. The index rankings are based on study results from surveys and interviews with more than 1,000 leading B2B technology buyers. Respondents included IT buyers in end-user organizations, technology vendors, marketing executives and customer service and customer care executives. The Customer Affinity Index was developed by the CMO Council in conjunction with Dr. V. Kumar, professor and executive director of the ING Center for Financial Services at the University of Connecticut, and Dr. Girish Ramani, assistant professor of marketing at Drexel University's LeBow College of Business.

The study, "Profitability from Customer Affinity", indicates that brand awareness and existing relationships have a relatively small impact on why customers decide to work with a particular technology vendor. Other factors including competence, quality of service and support, and a sense of true vendor commitment have a greater influence on customers' buying decisions, according to the study respondents.

"For three decades, InterSystems has had a consistent commitment to forming true working partnerships with our customers for the long term," said Paul Grabscheid, InterSystems Vice President of Strategic Planning. "It's very gratifying to receive objective input that validates our corporate philosophy and our approach to customer relationships."

"To be successful in today's shifting market landscape, marketers must adopt new performance measurements that are actually tied into the customer and turn away from those traditional brand metrics that can reinforce counter-customer-centric behavior," said Donovan Neal-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. "Companies have to reorganize around the customer and embrace activities that are customer centric in the eyes of the customer. The companies that rank highly in this inaugural Customer Affinity Index demonstrate that it is possible to build your company and product around the customer. We applaud those companies who are actively engaged in activities, programs and measures that place the customer front and center, embraced in co-innovation and tied into the overall customer experience."