Premier Farnell's element14 Community honoured with 2012 Jive Award for social customer engagement

-Award underscores element14's success inspiring, educating and supporting design engineers and electronics hobbyists

LONDON, Oct. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Premier Farnell [LON:PFL], global electronics distributor and parent company of element14, the first collaborative community and electronics store for design engineers and electronics enthusiasts, today announced that it received the 2012 Jive Award in the "Engage Customers" category at the JiveWorld '12 conference in Las Vegas. The award category recognises organisations that build solutions to improve customer satisfaction while increasing loyalty and engagement.

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The element14 Community leverages social engagement to provide engineers with the tools and resources needed to simplify and reduce their design process. It functions as a centralised hub for peer collaboration, discussions, deep technical information, new product reviews, expert support, quality design services, and purchasing engineering components. As an industry pioneer, element14 was one of Jive's earliest social technology adopters, employing Jive's Social Business software in 2009 when the community began.

"We have worked hard to prove that the concept of 'community' is more than just a marketing idea, with engineers across the globe utilising the platform to collaborate throughout the design process with convenient access to experts, exclusive community member product reviews, and technical documents available for download," said Dianne Kibbey, global head of community, element14. "Not only do we have more than 120,000 registered users representing 30 countries, our participation rates have increased 40 percent in the last six months – a phenomenal testament to member engagement on element14."  

Using Jive software, element14 offers several unique design resources, including the Knode on element14, a search engine and technical library for embedded system designs that helps engineers quickly select and buy the right product, as well as access technical information throughout the design process. In addition, element14 provides direct access to new technology, such as the innovative $35 Raspberry Pi mini-computer. Since the computer's launch in February, element14 has provided community members with a home for technical information and exclusive trainings for the Raspberry Pi, which has increased participation in the overall site by 40 percent.

"The Jive Engage Customers Award was developed to recognise an organisation for building a customer service solution to improve customer satisfaction, and increase loyalty and engagement," said Sydney Sloan, senior director of customer marketing, Jive Software, Inc. "Premier Farnell's interesting and unique use of social technologies makes the company a worthy recipient of this award and Jive is pleased to present them with it."

The 2012 Jive Award recipients were chosen by a prestigious group of judges that included external influencers and thought leaders, previous Jive Award winners, and Jive senior leadership. More information about the awards and winners can be found here.

About element14
Launched in June 2009, element14 is the first information portal, collaborative community and electronics store specifically built for electronic design engineers. The community recently unveiled its element14 knode, a unique automated platform that enables engineers to quickly research, design, develop and prototype in a single, intelligent environment. element14 is an innovative offering from Premier Farnell plc (LSE:pfl), FTSE 250, a leader in multi-channel electronics distribution trading throughout Europe (Farnell), the Americas (Newark) and Asia Pacific (element14). The company had group sales of £990.8m and underlying profits of £93.3m last year.

About Premier Farnell
Premier Farnell plc (LSE:pfl) is a global leader in high service distribution of technology products and solutions for electronic system design, maintenance and repair. Its differentiated proposition includes 29 local language transactional websites, and the critically important element14 Community for design engineers – an industry first (www.element14.com). With sales last year of £990.8m and underlying profits of £93.3m the Group distributes its comprehensive portfolio of products and services throughout Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, supported by a global supply chain of over 3,500 suppliers and an inventory profile developed to anticipate and meet its customers' needs.

While global in scope, Premier Farnell recognises the individual needs of each market and has continued to internationalise its model accordingly. It trades locally as Farnell in Europe, Newark/element14 in North America and Mexico and Farnell Newark in Brazil. Across Asia Pacific the business trades as element14.

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Email: pressoffice@premierfarnell.com

European Contact:
Jen Cooke
PR Manager, Europe and Global
Tel: +44 (0) 113 279 0101
Email: jcooke@premierfarnell.com 

APAC Contact:        
Christina Loh
Communications, APAC
Tel: + 65 6671 8769
Email: cloh@element14.com

Americas Contact:
Janice Fleisher
Communications, Americas
Tel: +001 (1) 773 907 5941
Email: jfleisher@newark.com

Ken Leitch
Global Head of PR
Premier Farnell
Tel: +44(0) 207 851 4145
Email: KLeitch@premierfarnell.com