Kronos
“Utilizing Measurement to Help Drive Desired Positioning”

The Challenge:

When Mark Ain founded Kronos in 1977, it became the first company to electronically capture “time” by delivering the world's first microprocessor-based timeclock.  Since then, Kronos has broadened its software offerings to include a suite of human resource management products however, it is often hard to erase history and after nearly three decades, Kronos still had the perception of being a time clock company.  Aiming to alter its public perception to reflect this new line of software offerings, Kronos first had to shake its reputation as a time-clock company and re-educate the media and the market on their long-standing achievements in workforce management software and services.

Kronos first evaluated the frequency of the time clock and/or time and attendance positioning used to describe them in the media. Next, it aimed to achieve several goals: promote its leadership in key human resource areas critical to business, determine how it was being perceived vis-à-vis it’s main competitors, evaluate the type of coverage they were receiving compared with competitors, the tone of their coverage and the executive visibility being received by key Kronos spokespeople.  In addition, the company also wanted to measure how well its key workforce management and human capital management messaging were resonating with the press to help alter where their current positioning needle was pointing.

Kronos was currently engaged with LP&P as their agency of record and was asked to expand on the program by developing a customized solution that would best meet their goals for a measurement program, as well as leveraging these results to enhance the current PR program.

The LP&P Difference:

LP&P met this challenge head on with the development of a customized, quarterly measurement and analytics tool for the Kronos PR team. At the core of this solution was an LP&P media measurement database custom-designed to help capture and analyze all the articles specific to Kronos and their named competitors. 

With this customized tool, LP&P was able to develop and present a detailed, quarterly presentation that determined not only how much coverage Kronos was garnering, in comparison to its competitors, but also how much of the new positioning achieved the preferred messaging. In addition the presentation produced charts and data on a multitude of different criteria including what types of stories (news, features, exclusives)  were achieved, and whether or not the coverage was positive or negative.

LP&P tracked and analyzed more than 500 clips per quarter over a two-year span and was able to leverage the data to closely track the progress of the PR program. In addition to quarterly analysis, LP&P also provided a year-end perspective of the program for a broader view. LP&P also leveraged the report results to make recommendations and to focus the PR program on critical areas where competitors were gaining ground, such as executive visibility and better customer success story placements.

The Results:

As a result of hard work by the LP&P team over the past two years, the most notable stat for FY2008 positioning was the number of instances in which Kronos was referenced as a time and labor or time and attendance provider.  In Q1 4.5% of clips positioned Kronos as a TL-TA provider, but in Q2 we saw a huge dip of 2.7%, bringing the total down to only 1.8%.  For the most recent quarter (Q3 FY08) we reported that there were no time clock, time and labor solutions or time and attendance mentions. LP&P was able to greatly improve Kronos’ positioning message pull-through by ninety-four percent in just two years.  LP&P was also able to achieve this even as the company went private after nearly fifteen years of being publicly traded on the NYSE.

The measurement reports were also used by the PR team to communicate their results to all levels of the organization, including the executive bench and the board of directors.