Birst, Inc.

Company: Birst, Inc., San Francisco, CA
Company Description: Birst is the leading provider of on-demand business intelligence, bringing high impact analysis to more companies than ever before-- quickly, easily, and affordably. Birst customers include both regional nonprofits to companies in the Fortune 100. In 2009 alone, Birst won the Red Herring 100 North America award, the TDWI Best Practices award, and a WebAward.
Nomination Category: Marketing Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Marketer of the Year

Nomination Title: Barbara Lewis, Director of Marketing

1. Tell the story about what this nominee achieved since January 1 2009 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Working with a small budget, a small marketing team, and a challenging
recessionary technology solutions market, Barbara Lewis led Birst’s marketing
efforts to establish the young company as a leading provider of on-demand
business intelligence.

Birst is a new, on-demand business intelligence solution. A small private
company, Birst launched its solution on September 30, 2008 with a very limited
marketing budget and a single person marketing team (in March, 2009, Ms. Lewis
hired one additional person to the team). 2009 was a year in which the
marketing team had to evangelize a new software category (business intelligence
on-demand, or Software-as-a-Service business intelligence), establish Birst as a
market leader, and generate strong customer uptake and revenues to prove the
viability of the offering.

Led by Ms. Lewis, the Birst marketing team overachieved its goals, gaining
significant traction with customers, media, and analysts. It also won awards as
a company, a solution, and as a marketing team.

• Customers – Expanded customer base by 17x over prior year. Signed major new
customers such as Rackspace Hosting, one of the largest data hosting providers
in the US, and YMCA, one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the US. These
customers also agreed to press releases, success stories, and press coverage.

• Users – Expanded user base by over 20x. (Exact figures cannot be shared.)

• Revenue – Expanded revenue base by over 12x. (Exact figures cannot be shared.)

• Marketing lead generation – Exceeded internal targets for lead generation
while beating cost expectations. Was generating over 5,000 leads per quarter by
end of 2009, with a cost per lead more than 20% lower than expectations.

• Public Relations - Achieved extensive, positive press coverage that exceeded
coverage achieved by competitive on-demand companies in 2009. Coverage included
the following news outlets:
o CNET
o San Francisco Chronicle
o San Jose Mercury News
o Computerworld
o Inc Technology
o Information Management
o Information Week
o Destination CRM
o The Register
o DM Review
o TMCnet

• Analyst Relations – Achieved positive initial coverage from major industry
analyst organizations, including Gartner, Forrester, The 451 Group, Ovum, the
Boulder BI Brain Trust, and Hypatia Research. Considering that firms like
Gartner, Forrester, and Ovum typically only cover large companies like Oracle,
SAP, and IBM, getting early attention was a significant win.

• Awards
o Won the Red Herring North America 100, a prestigious competition for
private technology companies. It is highly unusual for a company as young as
Birst to win on its first attempt.

o Won the TDWI Best Practices Award, for RBC Wealth Management’s
implementation of Birst. TDWI is The Data Warehousing Institute, a leading
industry organization for data warehousing and business intelligence. Other
TDWI winners are typically large, established software companies, and winners
have to have demonstrated business value.

o Won a Web Award for Software Standard of Excellence for the 2009 spring
website redesign.

2. List hyperlinks to any online work samples, news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

1. Birst PR page: http://www.birst.com/about/pr.shtml

2. Birst customer success stories: http://www.birst.com/stories/index.shtml

3. Birst Awards:
a) Red Herring North America 2009:
http://www.birst.com/about/press/05-19-redherring.

b) TDWI Best Practices Award 2009:
http://www.birst.com/about/press/07-14-tdwiaward.shtml

c) Web Award for Software Website, 2009: http://www.webaward.org/winners.asp

4) Analyst coverage:
a) Gartner Group: “Business Intelligence as a Service”
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=865316&ref=g_sitelink&ref=g_SiteLink

b) Forrester: “TechRadar™ For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals:
Software-As-A-Service”
http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/techradar%26trade%3B_for_sourcing_%26_vendor_management_professionals/q/id/46747/t/2

c) The 451 Group: “Birst Is Busy Building Out Its SaaS BI Business”
http://the451group.com/report_view/report_view.php?entity_id=57626&source=search-web&sm=WW91IGhhdmUgc3VjY2Vzc2Z1bGx5IGxvZ2dlZCBpbi4=

d) Hypatia Research – “Business Intelligence – Connectivity Options &
Evaluation Criteria
http://www.hypatiaresearch.com/images/HypatiaResearch_SaaSBI_Abridged_2009.pdf

3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the nominee:

Barbara Lewis is the Director of Marketing at Birst, Inc. Barbara was
previously in marketing leadership positions at Good Technology and Siebel
Systems, where she helped launch both Siebel Analytics and Siebel CRM On-Demand.
Barbara also has strategy and investment experience from her years at McKinsey &
Co. and Vector Capital, a venture capital firm. Barbara holds an MBA from the
Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in History from Yale.