SourceDay

Growing supply chain software company gains industry-wide prominence

The Story

What started as an idea shared between two friends became a full-fledged business supported by key investors and millions of dollars in just a few years. The brainchild of co-founders Tom Kieley and Clint McRee, SourceDay is an Austin-based supply chain performance software company helping manufacturers, distributors, and retailers improve supplier management, automate purchase order (PO) changes and increase visibility into their direct spend and procurement. The technology also prides itself on integrating with any existing ERP system, making the transition seamless for users.

Stemming from their own professional insight into the broken buyer-supplier relationship, the pair capitalized on a lucrative opportunity to transform archaic processes that consistently cause 50% of direct spend PO lines to change. After launching the company in 2015, CEO Tom Kieley recognized the need to build brand momentum across a broader range of communications channels.

Challenge

While still at the peak of COVID-19, Red Fan Communications joined SourceDay as its strategic communications partner in August 2020. The growing startup presented goals for demand generation, sales enablement and brand awareness. In response, Red Fan’s team of experts privy to supply chain management technology proposed a plan to increase media mentions and share of voice against competitors, position Tom as a leading voice in supplier management and forge new channel partnerships. For nearly 18 months, Red Fan served as SourceDay’s strategic communications partner, driving campaign launches, conducting media interviews and overseeing SourceDay’s analyst relations strategy.

To start, Red Fan’s brand strategists guided SourceDay’s key internal stakeholders through our proven Brand Positioning and Narrative Lab to establish clear market differentiation, build product positioning and identify critical value props and specialized messaging for a wide range of audiences that included the C-suite, finance teams, procurement professionals and others. The end result included a fresh brand identity and a unique story of value creation SourceDay could take to market.

Early in the partnership, SourceDay announced a strategic integration with Coupa Software to offer supplier collaboration capabilities for purchase orders in its cloud-based platform. Red Fan capitalized on the integration and Coupa’s additional SourceDay investment in 2021 by securing multiple pieces of coverage in publications including Forbes, DC Velocity and PYMNTS. From pitching Tom as a spokesperson to conducting campaign-specific analyst relations support to placing noteworthy anecdotes like how one customer was able to save $35 million in revenue during the COVID-19 shutdowns by automating purchase-order management, Red Fan continued to increase the company’s exposure in an impactful way.

After wrapping its partnership in December 2021, SourceDay eagerly recruited Red Fan to announce its Series C funding in February 2022. Reconvening for the six-week project, Red Fan continued the story of SourceDay’s record-breaking year of customer growth, earning 40 media mentions and a 167% month-over-month coverage increase in the process.

Solution

Over nearly a year-and-a-half long partnership, Red Fan:

Created brand positioning and supporting materials that aligned messaging across SourceDay’s leadership, sales and marketing teams.
Designed and executed media campaigns to generate a steady cadence of earned and organic media mentions.
Established a quarterly cadence of meetings with prioritized industry analysts to keep SourceDay top-of-mind as an industry leader and expert resource.
Introduced SourceDay executives as thought leaders to key publications to secure interviews, commentary and contributed articles.
Evaluated and submitted for industry awards that highlight SourceDay’s growth and expertise.

Throughout its six-week funding announcement project, Red Fan:

Developed a media relations campaign for the announcement.
Drafted all PR materials, including the funding press release, company fact sheet, spokesperson bios, interview briefings, messaging and FAQs.
Managed embargoed outreach to target Tier-1, VC, tech, supply chain trade and local media, offering access to SourceDay’s CEO and lead investor(s) ahead of funding announcement.
Notified core analysts at Gartner, IDC, Forrester and SpendMatters of funding news and scheduled inquiries with analysts on behalf of Tom Kieley.

Results

Earned 167 media mentions across key supply chain, tech, business and local media. Coverage examples include Supply Chain Dive, Spend Matters and Austin Inno.
Secured interviews with Tom on leading supply chain podcast The Logistics of Logistics, the UpTech Report, a podcast covering disruptive technologies, and logistics trade outlet FreightWaves.
Submitted for multiple Gartner vendor briefings and facilitated more than 50 inquiries with Gartner, IDC, SpendMatters and Forrester.
Drafted and submitted 14 awards on SourceDay’s behalf, resulting in multiple award wins and additional earned opportunities for company recognition.
Wrote and placed four contributed content pieces for Tom.
Drafted multiple blog posts for SourceDay’s website and developed social media strategy for Tom’s personal LinkedIn.

Share this Case Study

Red Fan provided invaluable integrated marketing and communications support for SourceDay through multiple phases of our company’s growth. When the global supply chain virtually collapsed in 2020, SourceDay doubled down on our procurement-focused strategy to support enterprises throughout the world with leading direct spend software. In tandem, Red Fan doubled down on our thought leadership strategy to reinforce our expertise in supply chain resiliency. As a result, Red Fan secured coverage in dozens of SourceDay’s target media publications and maintained awareness with the industry’s most notable analysts.