I had an interesting discussion with a long-time fellow traveller in the Irish tech scene yesterday. When my first business was 4 years old, we were his first customer to get him started. This business competes in a commodity service space against very large competitors. The reason I bought from him then is still the same reason when the company is selling its offerings today; that is ‘trust’ in the level of service and reliability.

So how does a small company internationalise commodity service and beat the big boys?

Two areas to think about:

1) Sectors Specialists
In a small geographical market, specialising on specific industry sectors may not provide enough market to sustain and grow your business, so you provide your services to many sectors within your region. When going international, unless you’re a big brand with deep pockets you need to focus on specific sectors and understand the key business issues in those sectors and how this relates to the service you provide. Being able to provide some specific features and knowledge that shows your specialist focus will make you stand out and beat generalist players.

2) Partner for Market Access and In-market Capability
Seek the type of partner that makes sense for your business. In reviewing the customer journey of what you sell from Gaining Awareness to Customer Support, what elements are imperative that you should keep and what elements can a partner provide with in-market credibility?

In my friend’s example, we discussed him seeking partnerships that bring proven relationships with his target customer base that can bring his business qualified leads and even assist in the delivery and support. The prime supplier-customer relationship will need to be retained.

In a bizarre mix of partner roles Referral and Support Partner responsibilities were discussed. Of course a referral partner network could be established with a separate support partner network could be progressed also.

Bottom line, partner according to what you need across your entire customer journey.

talk soon, Donagh Kiernan, www.maidsfield.com

When you are selling something that asks a company to change how it does things, it adds a complexity to the sale. Depending on the depth of the change required, the buyer has to involve more people in the buying decision.

In forging Strategic Partnerships, change is expected on many fronts from both companies. The promise of joining forces is evaluated and the joint opportunity sometimes requires much investment in time and money to make it happen.

When you are selling a product that fits well with a company’s existing product portfolio then less change is asked for and a faster decision can be expected. For example a client company has a product for Enterprise Systems Data Migration that works well with the large ERP and CRM systems such as Oracle and SAP. An ideal partner fit here are the System Integrator companies that implement Oracle and SAP Enterprise Systems.

The tactical part is that we are not asking them to change their business to resell our product. We are selling a product that fits in with their existing business process. This means that the sales people can understand and explain it, the implementation team can see how it can ease their burden or reduce their costs and the CEO of the company can deliver a more effective service or make greater margin on their business.

A comparison between Strategic Partners and Tactical Partners like Resellers or System Integrators:

The estimated times here depend on so many items and none more prominent that the market opportunity you are meeting or responding to. The more immediate the opportunity, the faster the Time to Revenue and the faster you start making a return.

Another item is cultural fit – How fast can the relationship develop for the companies to start working together? This takes longer for Middle East and Far East companies where relationships develop slower and look to the more longer term.

There is more to consider here, but thats for another day.

It’s a story we hear many times. Technology has being developed because it’s technically ahead of what is being done elsewhere. Then comes the challenge of finding what market it fits into and what possible business needs it can solve. How do we commercialise this technology?

This is also typical of college research projects. The focus is more on making the technology better and not on providing a better solution for a defined market need. There is always room blue-sky or basic research but it always helps to have some awareness on where it can link to market needs.

The search, identification and the resulting commercial alignment effort can produce many potential commercial paths which may or may not include the initial vision of the project. This often results in wasted time and money unless the possible commercialisation paths are identified early in the project so as to adjust the project direction appropriately.

From a commercial point of view, how do you make a success of this project? How do we commercialise this technology research project? Some thoughts that may help:

1) Is there an immediate market for your technology?

a) Who will buy and why? How many and how much?
If it is clear that there is an immediate market for the project’s resulting technology, then it should be easy to answer;
- who exactly will be interested in this technology?
- why will they buy it right now so that it is an immediate value to them?
- how much will they pay and how do you justify the value proposition?
- how many such opportunities are you likely to win in the market against the competition?

b) Is it a product, technology or IP?
If you have a patent and a prototype, then this may only count as IP (Intellectual Property) as the technology may need to be completely redeveloped to suit the licensee’s purpose.

2. If there is no obvious immediate market then ask; What was the Vision of the future in conceiving the project?
a) In what future does the technology fit?
Describe how the market would use your technology and how things will be done

b) Why will people use it?
Understand why your technology will be used ahead of other ways of doing the same things.

c) Who will you be competing with in this future?
In this future what or who are the likely competitors of your technology?

d) Are those competitors here today?
Do these competitors exist in the market today and why are they not doing what you’re doing? Is it in their development roadmap?

e) Could you help these competitors meet this vision?
Rather than waiting the 5 years or so to compete with the current market leaders, could you help them realise this future vision with your technology. This would likely make a great partnership of their market presence and your technology.

3. To evaluate further, what are the components or layers of your technology?
The secret value may be in a sub-part of the overall project. As we see sometimes, we may build terrible cars but fabulous engines. What are the fabulous engines in your project?

a) Review each component for all its possible Uses or Applications

b) Review the market opportunity for each Use or Application

Commercialisation of technology research is never straight forward but the rewards maybe in the hidden value and that there are many opportunities in licensing your technology by analysing it a little differently.

Once you have identified the a market, then comes the search for the technology or commercialisation partner.