MarketFirst helps leading manufacturer of consumer electronics and components improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and reduces cost per lead
ATLANTA, February 20, 2007— CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation (NASDAQ: CHINA) and a global provider of industry-specific enterprise software applications and consulting services, announced today that its Pivotal MarketFirst marketing automation and lead generation solution has saved Sharp Electronics Manufacturing Corporation of America more than $1.6 million in operating costs.

Pivotal MarketFirst has significantly improved the effectiveness of Sharp’s marketing and lead generation processes, while reducing the cost per lead through automation and shifting from print advertising to web-based and email campaigns.

Sharp Electronics informed CDC that it has seen significant results since implementing Pivotal MarketFirst including:

Reducing cost per lead from $76 to $8;
Saving $420,000 over four years by reducing advertising agency fees by using Pivotal MarketFirst to automate tasks that the agency was performing manually;
Labor savings of $70,000 annually due to MarketFirst’s automatic lead assignment capabilities;
Additional labor savings of more than $17,000 annually due to MarketFirst’s automatic lead response emailing capabilities.
Sharp Electronics currently uses MarketFirst for automated lead capture and rankings from its Website, phone calls, trade shows, events, and inbound and outbound telemarketing; lead qualification and dissemination. They also allow dealers to access lead information directly from the MarketFirst “dashboard”; creating Web pages that serve as scripts for the telemarketers; communicating with dealers; surveying and communicating with customers; and online registration for trade shows, events, training classes, seminars, and Webinars.

“With MarketFirst, our dealers view Sharp Electronics as having both “state-of-the-art” products and “state-of-the-art” marketing, making us an organization that has excellent, accurate, and timely marketing programs and campaigns,” said Jerry Ganguzza, Sharp Electronic’s associate director. “Proactive planning and communication with Pivotal was the key to a smooth implementation. I would highly recommend that future MarketFirst customers use Pivotal’s professional services organization for help in implementing the solution and building their initial campaigns.”

“Pivotal MarketFirst is a highly efficient marketing automation and lead management solution that enables marketers to streamline and maximize the effectiveness of the most complex multi-channel campaigns,” Mark LeVell, director of Pivotal MarketFirst. “The system is designed to help marketing organizations fine-tune their operations, gain visibility into the detailed performance metrics of each campaign, and measure the effectiveness of each marketing dollar. For Sharp Electronics, a successful, well-planned implementation, with our expert resources taking responsibility for many of the critical functions, enabled significant cost savings and improvements in effectiveness to be achieved by their marketing team. We are proud to be an integral part of the marketing success at Sharp Electronics.”