Cision’s Digital Transformation Is Complete
Sale of UK print monitoring business is approved by the Office of Fair Trading Friday September 18, 2009: Cision, the leading global provider of media intelligence services, has today received approval from the Office of Fair Trading to sell its traditional UK print monitoring business to Durrants, a leading company in the UK media monitoring market.
The sale and resulting UK restructuring is a key part of Cision’s transformation towards an all-digital business. Cision is focused on providing integrated services for PR professionals that reflect changing media consumption habits and in particular the increasing importance of online media. Details of the transaction will be finalised over the coming weeks. In the meantime, a joint Cision/Durrants transition team is working to ensure a seamless transition for UK customers moving to Durrants. Cision UK will continue to offer its remaining 2,500 customers a complete offering through CisionPoint, its new integrated offering that provides the world’s largest media database, as well as advanced international distribution, monitoring and analysis capabilities. Media monitoring for CisionPoint is provided through internet sources, electronic feeds from news aggregators and, in the future, a strategic partnership with Durrants. Commenting on the sale of its traditional UK print monitoring business, Cision’s UK Managing Director, Giselle Bodie said: “We’re delighted about the OFT decision. After the sale Cision will continue to provide customers in the UK with media monitoring, planning, distribution and analysis services most notably through CisionPoint. We’re transforming our services and our business to reflect the enormous changes in the media landscape so that we can meet the changing needs of our customers.” -ENDS- About Cision AB Cision (www.cision.com) empowers businesses to make better decisions and improve performance through its CisionPoint software solutions for corporate communication and PR professionals. CisionPoint was named the 2009 CODiE Award winner for Best Online News Service by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA). Powered by local experts with global reach, Cision delivers relevant media information, targeted distribution, media monitoring, and precise media analysis. Cision has offices in Europe, North America and Asia, and has partners in 125 countries. Cision AB is quoted on the Nordic Exchange with revenue of SEK 1.8 billion in 2008. About Durrants: Durrants (www.durrants.co.uk) supports each stage of the PR process with specialist data and applications that permit journalist identification, press release distribution, media monitoring and evaluation. The award winning service provides access to a 40,000 record journalist database, monitoring from more than 11,000 UK print and web news sources as well as media evaluation options that are within the budget of every customer. Durrants is a private company, backed by Exponent Private Equity. Note to Editors: Traditional print monitoring refers to the process of finding customer mentions in the hard copy press (newspapers and magazines). This is typically done through a process of scanning the publication into a computer to create an image of each page and using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to automatically convert the page into searchable digital text. This text is then matched to customer keywords using Boolean search technology and then reviewed by human editors for relevance prior to distribution of the clip to customers in whichever medium they require (web, email, print or fax). Until 2007, Cision’s print monitoring business in the UK was operated under the brand name Romeike. For More Information Britt Collins UK Marketing Manager Direct: +44 (0) 20 7689 1110 Email: britt.collins@cision.com Or Giselle Bodie Managing Director Direct: +44 (0) 870 736 0010 Email: cisioncomms.uk@cision.com
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