Bowne & Company NYSE: BNE) is the global leader in providing marketing communication services, investor and shareholder relations and communications services, and capital markets communication guidance to many of the world's largest corporations. Bowne specifically has a reputation for being able to adapt quickly to changing market conditions, re-orient and align their clients' marketing communications, investor and shareholder communication strategies to emerging opportunities while reducing risk (Leon, 2001). Bowne & Company excels in investor and financial reporting, and is recognized as the leader in compliance reporting. In 2009, for example the company launched two compliance software solutions, ComplianceTrak and ComplianceTrak Adviser. The company also has extensive technical expertise in the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) (Brands, 2010) that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is endorsing for real-time filing of financial results from all publicly-traded companies in the U.S. Bowne was the first to file a Form 497-K to the SEC EDGAR system in May, 2009. As Bowne is widely considered the leading provider of financial communications, compliance and financial reporting solutions, there have been many companies interested in acquiring them. Bowne and R.R. Donnelly signed an agreement in February, 2010 for the former to be acquired and the agreement is in force until February 23, 2011 (Solsman, 2010). Bowne has many unique strengths as a company and will be able to continually growing as part of R.R. Donnelly. This research proposal's objective is to identify which key success factors the company has relied on to ensure a high level of agility and market focus while gaining significant technological depth with emerging reporting standards, XBRL being the most prevalent (Brands, 2010).
Research Proposal
The Five Forces Model originally defined by Dr. Michael Porter of Harvard University is shown in Figure 1. The value of this model from analyzing Bowne & Company is how the company has been able to withstand many different competitive threats while at the same time attaining technological leadership with its XBRL-based applications and services. Dr. Porter makes the point regarding the five forces model that the threat of new entrants and threat of substitute products or services are the most influenced by technological innovation (Porter, 2008).
Figure 1: Porter Five Forces Model
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