Overview
InfinityQS® International, Inc. (InfinityQS) is the global authority on data-driven manufacturing quality. Headquartered near Washington, D.C., with offices in Seattle, London and Beijing, InfinityQS is the leading provider of Quality Intelligence software and services to manufacturers worldwide. Founded in 1989, InfinityQS has grown organically and now serves more than 2,500 of the world’s leading manufacturers, including Ball Corporation, Boston Scientific, Graham Packaging and Medtronic.
For much of its 30-year history, InfinityQS’ typical buyer was a quality professional from a single plant who needed the company’s software to solve an isolated quality problem. However, with technology decisions increasingly being driven at the corporate level, InfinityQS had to “re-imagine” its corporate brand and strategy to speak to a manufacturer’s C-suite.
To better serve the evolving market, InfinityQS created the only native-cloud quality intelligence solution to address a top-down corporate strategy that focuses on executive decision makers as well as plant-level influencers. It was a bold step that required a drastic change in the company’s sales and marketing approaches.
Challenge
InfinityQS upended its approach to client prospecting – expanding to pursue six-figure, multi-site deployments in addition to its traditional target audience of individual plants. It also transformed its marketing team into a modern department centered on people, processes and technology. The department extended to key partners, creating a collective of industry experts across every facet of marketing. A trusted public relations partner since 2011, DPR Group was one of only three vendors (out of 17) that were retained after the reorganization.
To re-imagine the InfinityQS brand, the marketing collective—InfinityQS marketing, DPR Group, Spreckley, Pico Digital and Refactored—developed a collaborative, data-driven plan to elevate the brand’s look and feel; humanize the brand story; provide engaging resources that focus on buyer and persona needs first and the product second; and accelerate a lengthy buying cycle that includes building consensus among multiple stakeholders.
From a public relations perspective, DPR Group had to break through the media perception that InfinityQS was simply a niche statistical process control software company and establish it as a global leader in Quality Intelligence solutions. This meant not only repositioning the company, but also creating a new definition of the function of enterprise quality data within the media landscape.
Key Goals
- Promote the company through its new corporate messaging as the global authority on data-driven enterprise quality.
- Position company executives as international thought leaders on quality intelligence.
- Foster InfintyQS’ overarching brand story and appeal for manufacturers to “re-imagine quality.”
- Build credibility among international enterprise prospects with increased awareness of the new brand and corporate recognition through industry awards.
Execution
DPR Group planned a thought leadership campaign that promoted the idea that manufacturers should “Re-imagine Quality.” Leveraging a series of whitepapers developed by the marketing collective, DPR created press releases, bylined articles, blogs, and awards nominations, among other targeted and persona-based content, to help raise awareness of the InfinityQS brand within the new quality intelligence space and build credibility among international enterprise prospects, with a strong emphasis on food manufacturers.
A series of “ghostwritten” bylined articles positioned InfinityQS’ executives as thought leaders throughout the global manufacturing marketplace. Key placements include articles and prominent mentions with Food Logistics, Industry Today, Supply & Demand Chain Executive, Pharmaceutical Processing, Food Manufacturing, Quality Magazine, Food Quality & Safety, Food Manufacturing, Food Engineering, Manufacturing Business Technology, Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery, Quality Digest, Dairy Foods, and Packaging Digest.
The company’s record sales in 2016 and 2017 and a strong nomination written by DPR Group won InfinityQS a Gold Stevie® Award in the Sales Turnaround of the Year category. DPR Group-written nominations also secured an ITSMA Diamond Award for Marketing Excellence and a Transform Awards North America Gold Award for creating an innovative brand differentiation strategy that highlights corporate transformation and drives quantifiable business results. The company’s head of marketing, Greg Matranga, was named a finalist for PRWeek’s outstanding marketer awards for elevating messaging, team, solution and company.
Strong messaging, comprehensive execution strategies and contemporary tactics contributed to InfinityQS’ unprecedented top-of-the-funnel success metrics with web traffic up 126 percent and social media traffic up 202 percent. Collective nurturing efforts quadrupled the number of qualified, enterprise prospects in the sales pipeline leading to record sales and year-over-year growth.
DPR Group Achievements
- Positioned InfinityQS executives as thought leaders across the international manufacturing marketplace through a series of bylined articles in key industry publications.
- Raised awareness of the company’s achievements and boosted the brand with carefully crafted a press releases, blogs, award nominations and social media posts.
- Contributed to unprecedented top-of-the-funnel success metrics, sales pipeline qualification, record sales and year-over-year growth.
Mergers and Acquisitions
In June 2022, TA Associates, a leading growth global private equity firm with more than four decades of enterprise software investing experience, in partnership with ST6, an elite team of software operating executives, had acquired InfinityQS, along with five other technology provides, to form a new company called Advantive. The new company offers Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and Statistical Process Control (SPC) software solutions for specialty manufacturers and wholesale distributors.
