PHOENIX, Nov. 27, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE/Korea IT times) -- Proof announced today that its founder and CEO Mark Stouse has been named to the prestigious Holmes Report Innovator 25 List.  This year marks the second time that Stouse has been named to the list.

A video accompanying this announcement is available at

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e30b6906-f9fd-4a19-92cf-68dca74d03a2

Images accompanying this announcement are available at

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/1feefd55-7487-4450-b267-c5233e39c399

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ca4f09ec-6084-4ba6-bbb1-32c21d8c1cf2

“Innovation solves a keenly felt problem at the right time and in a way that surprises and delights people,” said Mark Stouse, CEO of Proof and the recipient of The Holmes Report’s Innovator of the Year Award in 2014. “For many years, business leaders have wanted to know what they were getting for their marketing and PR investments. For just as many years, marketing and PR leaders have wanted to be able to answer those questions, but couldn’t. Today, when business leaders see Proof, their reaction is often ‘bingo, that’s exactly what we need,’ particularly given their concerns about rampant ad fraud, unproductive spend, and a softening economic picture. The Proof team has been working on this business problem for years, well before our company existed. I’m honored to be named to the new Innovator 25 List, but the truth is that this recognition has been earned many times over by every person in the Proof team.  We very much appreciate this recognition.”

Launched in 2017, Proof is a powerful new business impact analytics software solution that allows networks of people and teams to collaborate securely across organizational lines in order to federate their data and rapidly compute their end-to-end financial and business impact, including return on investment.

Proof gives business leaders and their organizations longed-for clarity around the business and financial impacts of investments in marketing, communications and other functions. These insights often are complicated by siloed data, overwhelmed data science teams, and the need to factor in the extended time lag that often exists between an investment and a return on that investment. Proof is not martech, but marketing and PR are two major use cases for the solution. Operating in the cloud, Proof takes data from one technology stack – HR for example – and correlates it with data from another stack – such as marketing – to compute time to impact and strength of impact, as well as show the “ripple effect” of multiple correlated relationships that extend across time and space.  In contrast to many heavily biased attribution models, Proof delivers fully computed marketing and PR attribution across programs, channels, roles, organizations and campaigns.

Chris Talago, Oracle vice president of communications for EMEA and APAC, is a long-time supporter of Proof and a member of the Proof Customer Council.  “Rooted in more than a decade of award-winning work, Proof Analytics is a transformative software solution that proves the business impact of marketing and communications. Since its launch just 10 months ago, Proof has been recognized by industry analysts, customers and business leaders for its innovation and technical excellence. Congratulations on such well deserved recognition!”

Proof helps major brands understand the business impact and financial return on their marketing and PR investments.  A fully democratized data analytics solution amplified with targeted AI, Proof rapidly federates data siloes while preserving the individual’s or team’s sense of ownership of that data.  The solution includes a very straightforward interface that maintains individual involvement in the analytics process without requiring them to learn data science skills.  The result is that people bond with their data and the analytics process in a highly positive way that centralized data science approaches often unintentionally block.

Kelli Parsons, chief communications officer at United Technologies, said: “Knowing what we really get out of big investments in marketing and PR is a longstanding frustration for many business leaders. During the past decade, Mark Stouse and his colleagues at BMC and Honeywell worked to conquer the math, logic frameworks and visualizations necessary to answer this question to the satisfaction of some of the toughest CEOs and CFOs. Mark and his team have parlayed those innovations and learnings into Proof Analytics, a uniquely people-centric analytics solution that combines rapid data integration, advanced pattern recognition, and automated analytics to help business and functional teams know what to invest in, how much to invest, and what the business impact is – even in long-cycle situations. Proof deserves to be elevated and honored for a series of game-changing innovations that deliver real accountability for impact while transforming marketing and many other functions into jet engines of growth.”

As C-suite pressure on marketing and PR continues to escalate, Proof’s innovation is right on time. “Bob Beauchamp is a long-time technology CEO, chairman and board member of Fortune 100 companies,” said Kyle Brantley, chief operating officer at Proof. “Bob recently published an extended editorial in The Holmes Report about marketing and PR transformation, in which he wrote: ‘Boards, CEOs and CFOs see a budget request as an investment deal: in return for X dollars, the business unit or functional team usually promises to deliver more revenue, better margins, accelerating cash flows, and brand accretion.  We can’t fund everything, so it’s our job to rank every one of these investments. But here’s the problem: Determining that stack rank is very tough if we can’t connect investment to incremental value.’  Proof exists to make that connection to incremental value very real so that companies can determine how much to spend, what the expected return will be, and how long it will take to get it.”

Proof helps business and functional leaders make that connection explicit through an award-winning secure data federation architecture that’s coupled to an automated computation and pattern recognition engine. Proven logic frameworks and libraries of data “recipes” support an unlimited number of “cause and effect” attribution dashboards, all while making it easy to customize the system and add more contextual data.

“The business wants and needs accurate analysis delivered quickly,” said Tom Bishop, chief technology officer at Proof. “Human-powered data science often doesn’t understand the area of the business they are analyzing well, and in many cases their otherwise excellent work takes too long to get to the decisionmakers to be of practical use.  Proof was architected and automated to deliver the right set of analytics quickly to every member of the team.  This means that customers can achieve a lot of value very quickly and without a lot of complexity. In fact, Proof delivers enough value in the first 90 days of use to pay for itself many times over. If a customer doesn’t see that sort of value, the license is free for the next year.”

Diane Kegley, Proof’s new chief marketing officer, said: “Proof is so proud to be recognized for our hard work and innovation. We owe a lot to CEOs and CFOs at many different companies who helped us develop the system now known as Proof. In fact, it was Bob Beauchamp and Kia Behnia at BMC Software who first recognized the importance of our earliest work with a special innovation award in 2009, when our founders Mark Stouse, Kyle Brantley and Tom Bishop were in top technology and marketing roles there.  We also owe a lot to our partners, two of whom are also in this year’s Innovator 25: Allison + Partners and W2O Group.  We have all come a long way, and we’re looking forward to 2018!”

Brent Diggins, managing director of measurement and analytics at Allison + Partners, said: “I see a lot of analytics software, but only rarely do I see a solution of such strategic importance as Proof.  Every client’s business is different, but they all want to know what financial return they’re getting for their investment dollar. Very soon, any agency that can’t answer these tough questions will find it very difficult to win or retain clients. That’s why our team is working with Proof, and we are thrilled to see them recognized in the Innovator 25.”

Donovan Neale-May, founder of the CMO Council, said: ““Proof has delivered a powerful suite of self-service analytics that compute business impact and how long it takes to generate that impact, all embedded in a highly collaborative platform. Marketing teams now can plan, execute and prove their business and financial impact with precision, predictability and profitability.  I particularly like the way they have crowdsourced the collective perspective of so many top business leaders to build a platform that meets the needs of the business as well as marketing and communications.”

Joe Paluska, chief marketing officer for One Concern, said, “I’ve been on the journey with Mark Stouse and his team since Day One, and they deserve enormous credit for building an analytics platform that people and teams can use to prove their business impact.  Proof has defied the odds and the naysayers – some of whom should have known better – to bring data science to the dark arts of marketing, PR and other business functions. If you’re not using Proof, you’re flying blind through the Himalayas without a map or a watch, with all that means for the likelihood of a safe arrival at your destination.”

Recent Analyst Commentary

451 Research principal analyst Keith Dawson and analyst Scott Denne wrote in a September 5, 2017 report that “Proof's analytics exchange is not the answer to every problem, but it is the answer to a very important one: how to quantify the results of marketing expenditures. CMOs need ROI data to justify their requests for funding to their C-level colleagues, and to know what campaign levers they should be pushing given the short time horizons they often face. Proof Exchange [data federation architecture] is an innovative way to collaborate between owners of internal and external data silos that provides detailed cause-and-effect and time-to-value analysis.”  For more of what they wrote about Proof, subscribe or sign in to 451 Research.

Supporting Video and Material

Aaron Strout, CMO at W2O Group, added: https://www.youtube.com/watchv=u7OJ9PfLl4U

Mark Stouse, W2O SxSW 2017 | Why Your Current Approach to Analytics Will Get You Fired

Christopher Engman, chief revenue officer at Climeon, said:  https://youtu.be/aUGt7Qh2s7Y and https://youtu.be/1XDmCMZ6TEk

Rob Katz, CEO at Webonise Labs, said: https://youtu.be/lM3R8Q5-U6o

Ed Davis, president and global leader, Fifth Ring, added:  https://youtu.be/Cid9tMqMAGs

VentureBeat: Proof Lands $2 million to explain cause and effect of your marketing spend

Mark Stouse talks to Anoop Sahgal at CMO.com about what led him to Proof.  http://www.cmo.com/interviews/articles/2013/6/4/bmc_software_mark_stouse.html#gs.IXMq8FE

About the Innovator 25
The Innovator 25 recognizes extraordinary innovation that increases the impact and value of marketing and communications. Since launching in 2013, it has honored 25 individuals each year in North America, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.

About Proof
Proof is a powerful new business impact analytics software solution that allows networks of people and teams to collaborate across organizational lines in order to rapidly integrate their data and jointly validate their end-to-end financial impact. Visit proofanalytics.ai or @proofanalytics for more information or to schedule a custom Proof demo using your own data.

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Emily Brady
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