“The flexibility and versatility of the Vocus system aggregates collateral, contact lists, press coverage and notes into a single source of information.”

Challenge:

Solution:

Establishing, maintaining and solidifying relationships with key influencers such as reporters or bloggers is pivotal to any professional working in the PR industry. This may sound simple at first, but as geographically dispersed staff, key contacts and PR interactions grow, so too does the task of effectively tracking and managing communication activities. This was the challenge facing the public relations team at PayPoint, a leading UK-based cash and Internet payments company. With a newly established PR team involving people at corporate and divisional levels as well as a new PR agency on board, and with a brief to take the company’s PR and public affairs activity to a higher plane, the quality of its communications – both internal and external – has to match its reputation as the leader in its field.

PayPoint implemented Vocus, a leading provider of on-demand software for public relations management, to facilitate the management of a busy press office with both internal and external staff. Vocus provides the team at PayPoint with easy access to media contacts, their profile, including recent news coverage published by that contact and a complete history of their interactions.

“The flexibility and versatility of the Vocus system aggregates collateral, contact lists, press coverage and notes into a single source of information,” said Peter Brooker, Head of Corporate Affairs at PayPoint. “The ability to integrate press coverage was crucial to my decision. Vocus allows me to respond to daily press issues far more quickly because I am able to retrieve a full history of our relationship with a particular outlet or journalist from a single source - regardless of whom in our organisation has been communicating with the contact.”

Benefits:

• As a web-based system, Vocus allows PayPoint’s public relations team members to access their media information from any location – putting critical relationship information at their fingertips. More importantly, the ability to track relationships ensures that members of the team aren’t stepping on each other in reaching out to media contacts. For example, access to such information ensures the PR team avoids sending duplicate emails, or makes phone calls, to the same reporter - a well known pet peeve of journalists that carries the potential to damage a PR professional’s reputation as a reliable source.


• This point is especially important for PayPoint because at any given time, the team may have three staff members and a PR agency reaching out to reporters on a given news topic. In addition, as the senior leader in the PayPoint’s press operations, Brooker can use the Vocus system to supervise the activities of his staff and PR agency.


• “Vocus enables the team to record every interaction it has with key influencers in both the media and political world,” said Brooker. “It’s extremely flexible, so keeping up with rapidly changing contacts is easy as adding new outlets, contacts and organisations is simple and very quick. Furthermore, I can analyse communications campaigns to see how effective they were and easily create reports to share with senior management.”


• Peter Brooker is a repeat Vocus customer. In 2003, he became Vocus’ first European customer while working for another company and when he moved to PayPoint, he saw Vocus as an essential tool to add value in his new organisation.