Evoxe relies on IBM Business Partner benefits to close a deal, generate leads and expand abroad

IBM PartnerWorld

Business Partner: Evoxe BV

How IBM Business Partner benefits help Evoxe’s business:

• Trade show generated 15 leads and sale worth 100,000 Euros (USD$134,000)

• Co-marketing funds subsidized trade show exhibit costs

• Technical resources let Evoxe confirm software copy protection strategy

• Partner ecosystems can help market solution abroad

With its innovative newsroom groupware solution, Evoxe BV, an IBM Advanced Business Partner based in Reeuwijk, The Netherlands, has captured most of the domestic broadcast market—and now has its eyes set on expanding abroad. With just two full-time principals at the company, Evoxe has used a wide range of IBM marketing and technical resources to succeed at home—and is counting on its IBM relationship to help win new customers worldwide.

So far in The Netherlands, IBM has helped Evoxe close a deal worth 100,000 Euros (USD$134,000), generate valuable leads and build relationships with other IBM Business Partners that can prove vital to future growth. By the end of 2009, Evoxe hopes to complete its first sale outside its home country.

“A small company like ours needs to team with IBM as much as possible and draw upon their resources to grow,” said Jan-Willem van Dalfsen, chief executive officer, Evoxe. “We need a big name like IBM behind our solution to show that it’s credible and trustworthy.”

The Evoxe NIS 4.0 Newsroom Groupware solution provides a single interface for journalists, producers and technicians to manage workflows used in producing news for radio, television and the Internet. NIS assists in writing scripts, producing rundowns, media asset management and many other aspects of broadcasting from story inception, through development and production, up to the point of actual transmission.

NIS runs on the IBM Lotus Notes® platform, which provides a database large enough to handle an immense news dataflow. “You can easily keep a couple years worth of wire feeds in Lotus Notes—and it features a powerful text search function, which is crucial in a newsroom,” van Dalfsen said. “Notes also enables rapid application development, so we can quickly build something the customer wants.”

Trade show generates 15 leads and a customer win

Evoxe participates in IBM PartnerWorld®, which offers a rich set of benefits to all IBM PartnerWorld members who want to team with IBM to build their vertical market capabilities, expand their partner network and attract customers in the markets they serve.

IBM helped Evoxe exhibit at a major industry trade show in 2008—the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC)—which generated 15 leads for the company and one closed deal. IBM reimbursed Evoxe 25 percent of its costs to rent space at the show and connected Evoxe with another IBM Business Partner that loaned it the hardware necessary to demonstrate the NIS solution.

Evoxe also found five integration partners through this event. These partners—primarily companies that produce video, editing and playback technologies—are vital to Evoxe success because customers considering NIS want a solution that interfaces with these other systems.

IBM played a crucial role in helping Evoxe close its 100,000 Euros (USD$134,000) deal with a major regional broadcast company in The Netherlands, which came from a lead at the trade show. “The IBM sales team in Amsterdam got us a special price on the Lotus Notes licenses to make the solution affordable to our customer—and that’s what allowed us to close the deal,” van Dalfsen said.

Building a reseller network to expand abroad

To help build its business abroad, Evoxe recently hired a part-time marketing expert to create a marketing plan and materials and develop reseller channels throughout Europe. Evoxe has applied to receive co-marketing funds from IBM, available through IBM PartnerWorld, to subsidize this initiative.

As an IBM Business Partner, Evoxe plans to tap into IBM’s global network of resellers and develop relationships with local IBM sales teams worldwide to help find new customers and drive business. To further enable sales abroad and receive co-marketing funds, Evoxe has closed an OEM agreement with IBM that will allow it to bundle NIS with Lotus Notes software.

As part of its effort to build ecosystems to sell IBM and Business Partner solutions, IBM connected Evoxe with a major hardware distributor (the same one that provided servers for the trade show) to co-market with in pursuing new usiness abroad. “This relationship could be crucial to helping us package deals and grow the business internationally,” van Dalfsen said.

To make the most of IBM Partner benefits and pursue its growth strategy, van Dalfsen works with the IBM marketing resource manager (MRM) assigned to Evoxe. A dedicated specialist, the MRM provides one-on-one support to navigate, understand and use IBM marketing resources.

Currently, the MRM is helping Evoxe acquire co-funding to support its marketing activities and advising the company on other PartnerWorld benefits that will help it meet its business objectives.

IBM Innovation Center provides expert advice on code development

Evoxe has used a range of technical resources available to it as an IBM Business Partner. Van Dalfsen visited the IBM Innovation Center in Amsterdam, where he consulted IBM engineers on developing copy protection code for NIS. Building copy protection into its product is crucial as Evoxe begins to market NIS abroad, where copy infringement will pose a greater threat.

At the same IBM Innovation Center engagement, IBM advised Evoxe as to how to implement the MOS protocol—an industry standard for exchanging data between a newsroom computer and other editing systems—in NIS.

As Evoxe works to achieve Ready for Lotus Notes certification, which will give the product added credibility and put it in the Lotus® solution guide, the IBM Innovation Center is available to provide technical assistance and validation.

“The IBM Innovation Center will even replicate a customer infrastructure and run it at no charge,” van Dalfsen said. “If we don’t have the equipment to test our solution on a particular customer environment, we can turn to the IBM Innovation Center.” Evoxe has not yet had to use this IBM Innovation Center offer, but it could prove important as the company expands abroad and potentially encounters unusual customer infrastructures.

One other PartnerWorld technical benefit that Evoxe used is the IBM Software Access Option, which gives Evoxe access to a variety of IBM software products to use in developing customer tools. Evoxe principals also took courses to enhance their LotusScript® and Java™ programming skills.

Strong partnership provides confidence to grow

As Evoxe looks beyond The Netherlands and embarks on its next chapter, its IBM partnership is more important than ever. “You need programs like PartnerWorld to take the next step,” van Dalfsen said. “It would be impossible for the two of us to do this alone.”

With only a few direct competitors to its newsroom solution, and a world of untapped opportunity in the global market, Evoxe sees enormous potential for growth.

“For a small company like ours to go abroad with such a specialized solution, it’s nice to have such a big company like IBM to support us on every front,” van Dalfsen said. “With the marketing, technical and funding resources IBM provides—and our access to IBM sales teams and its network of resellers—there are countless possibilities for success.”