CIsion Communications Cloud is used for identifying key media and influencers, connecting with audiences, monitoring traditional and social media, and analyzing outcomes.
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Piano Analytics
Score 8.1 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Piano Analytics, formerly AT Internet, provides digital analytics to help customers measure their audience, optimise their digital performance and create value. From data collection to exploration, activation, and the sharing of actionable insights, the Piano Analytics Suite is designed to provide reliable high-quality data to enhance decision-making company-wide. Adapted to e-commerce, media, finance/banking, and corporate websites & mobile apps, the vendor promises an easy-to-use solution…
For a small start-up, the cost-benefit to add lift to press releases [and] particular milestone accomplishments is definitely there with the Cision [Communications] Cloud. Much of what we do, by necessity, is done internally without the benefit of outsourced press folks, so the Cision [Communications] Cloud ease of use and reporting is very important.
When it comes to web analytics AT Internet is well suited. We introduced AT Internet in 2017 after an evaluation project with other professional analytics solutions. Starting with our corporate website we quickly rolled it out to our customer experience platform, our webshops, and our corporate intranet based on SharePoint 2013. Especially the use in our intranet brought significant improvements over the standard analytics features SP 2013 is offering. The ATI tag systems with their flexibility allow us to include company-specific properties and thus making it possible for us to analyze our intranet usage on segments such as locations, branches, and so on.
Their upgraded press release templates and ability [to] pull in an entire, completed release makes the [process] faster and easier, and allows for more graphics, such as company mastheads, [are done well].
The media tracking offers the ability to find relevant placements across the entire country.
The journalist database streamlines the process of finding relevant reporters to directly connect [to] on news releases that are relevant to their beats.
The process of setting up, creating, and distributing a release is seamless, easy to use, and not labor-intensive.
In the media influencer database, the classic Cision allowed us to do a zip code radius search to really drill down to the neighborhood level. That's because we do localized media advisories and press releases for events at neighborhood schools. One part of a big city like Chicago really doesn't care what's happening in another part of Chicago that's too far away. The zip code radius search was a feature in the classic Cision but not with the current Cision Communications Cloud. We've asked for this to be restored several times, but nothing's happened. In fact, we were told to use DMA — which actually goes wider in a search (bigger than a city), not more narrow as needed. This reflects a basic misunderstanding of what we need.
Another missing feature involves a merge field when sending out an email press release through Cision. This is the "select insert field" button in the upper right that's used to personalize a release with the media contact's name and other information. This is key for localization of the release. Many media outlets won't run a release unless it's local. While "county" is a feature in the influencer database when putting together a media list in Cision, "county" is not available to insert into a press release as a merge field. Counties are important because this is how many newspapers and health departments are organized and identify themselves. I've asked for this to be implemented, to no avail. As a workaround, we've had to use "contact city" or "outlet city."
After refining a media list in Cision using filters, I've had to download the list and take it offline to see the big picture, screen for duplicates, etc. While there is a button on the bottom left intended to help with this, it doesn't do the trick. That's because there may be multiple contacts with the same email address. In addition, one media contact may represent numerous media outlets, so this same contact could show up several times. It would be nice to have a better way to see the whole list online and eliminate both duplicates as well as those who previously opted out.
Integrations with outside vendors: there are many ways to integrate data from outside vendors, however you can't display this information in every application unless you create a custom field, which can sometimes be limiting.
Access rights: there are two places to assign access rights and each place has slightly different functionality. You can get really granular with what each person has access to, but it is easy to miss a check box and have to go back and correct it.
Visualizations across applications: there are some really cool visualizations in the oldest application they support that includes predictive traffic estimates, automatic multi-period variations, etc., that aren't available yet in the newer applications.
While I am happy with the product performance overall, TrendKite's recent merger with Cision is cause for concern. When we first signed on with TrendKite, I spoke with several users and the best response I received was that the company was a startup and we could expect there to be hiccups along the way as the company grew and the platform got more robust. That has certainly been the case. However, now that they have merged with Cision — a company that has grown too fast, has not focused on improving its product and has poor customer service — I have concerns that TrendKite will lose some of the qualities that have made it a great company and great product to work with.
I gave this rating because I think that AT Internet is a good tool, user-friendly easy for onboarding and simple dashboards, however the majority of people use Google Analytics, especially media agency, it is easier for them to use Google Analytics.
The flexibility and customization of Cision Communications Cloud (TrendKite)* is among its most important features. Changing the dashboards, using keywords in the saved searches to pull out the best stories and the integration with marketing automation tools gives me confidence that I will able to continue using this tool well into the future. The future implementation and integration of the media contact database will complete the suite, making list management and email marketing programs much smoother. *This review was written before Cision acquired TrendKite. TrendKite is now part of Cision Communications Cloud.
Overall the experience is very good, it's quick, relaiable and does everything I would want. The only problems I have are matching the correct stats to what I want. It can be painful trying to find the right thing and the explanations are not always the clearest. That's the only issue i've found though.
I don't have any exemple in mind where AT Internet interface hasn't been available, i have always been able to use AT Internet when i needed it. The only issues to notice is that it happens sometimes that real time or D-1 datas are partially delayed.
Generally, Cision performs well day to day, but it's got some annoying bugs that slow down usage/require user workarounds which is inefficient. More seriously, a few months ago, as a result of a major system upgrade, certain critical functionality was not working and I was unable to use the service for more than a day when I had time-sensitive work to execute
For Cision TrendKite in particilar, support always responded, but it was sometimes slow. For some of our booleans and search queries, we would need help refining and excluding terms/phrases that weren't relevant to our client or campaign. This sometimes took 1-2 days just to get a response back, which sometimes was too late when a last-minute report was due. This was only with the support staff, not necessarily our customer success manager or sales rep.
I have not used the Support Team thereby I am unable to review how their Support Teams works. However, in an instance where I had an issue, my concerned department contacted their support team and I was provided with the solution of the problem I was facing within a short span of time.
The in-person training unfortunately does not match to our expectations, was too much focus on digital basis and not on AT Internet functionnalties and how to use it. We paid for one day and only 15 minutes at the end was focused on our real needs in terms of media analytics.
The online training sessions available for the Cision Communications Cloud are helpful and informative. There's more than one option - initially, I signed up for the live webinar classes on basic functions and that is what I recommend other new users do as well. If I have specific questions or something I want to learn more about, I can search the online database and find article or online training videos to get the information I need.
It's a similar product. I think Meltwater sells itself as being a bit more niche, but I have not found many significant differences between Meltwater and Cision. Meltwater's sales process is a very high pressure and their prices are inflated.
AT Internet shows a deep understanding of our business objectives and provide us with ideas on how to solve them. They grant us enough time to try their tools and to be sure the tools are helpful. The data we've got in the Analyzer was manually checked and it was completely correct. Their roadmap was clean and aligned with our strategy
Regarding AT Internet possibilities, it could be adapted to small or large organizations, easy to set up. We can add sites in makets that we launch e-commerce.
Unfortunately, I do not have precise results to give, but the statistics provided by AT Internet make it possible to carry out in-depth analyses and to make good decisions.
You just have to know how to find the information and interpret it.
