Spanish IBM Business Partner Innova Estudi Soft improves products and expands sales opportunities with guidance and support from IBM

IBM ISV & Developer Relations

Business Partner: Innova Estudi Soft SL

How IBM Business Partner benefits helped Innova Estudi Soft’s business:

• Developers gained expertise and kept current with products and technologies using technical resources.

• Telemarketing campaign yielded 10 active leads and new business opportunities worth USD$160,000.

• Event participation led to a new business partner relationship.

In 1996, Innova Estudi Soft SL opened its offices in Figueres, Spain, with a name and a philosophy rooted in its founders’ dedication to innovation, quality and continuous improvement.

An Advanced IBM Business Partner, Innova Estudi Soft provides business software and services for a cross-industry mix of customers, primarily those in the energy and utilities, manufacturing and telecommunications sectors. Key products include Digitalizacion Documental (Documentary Digitalization) for document management and Adelia Studio for business application development.

Alba Sanchez-Cabaces, manager of marketing at Innova Estudi Soft, said that even before becoming an IBM Business Partner in 2005, the company has always offered its solutions on an IBM platform. “We feel that IBM provides the best quality and our customers recognize the IBM brand. The IBM Business Partner logo on our Web site and in our catalog shows that we have a strong relationship with IBM and gives us instant credibility.”

That relationship also gives Innova Estudi Soft developers access to technical resources that help them continuously improve their solutions using up-to-date knowledge of IBM products and technologies.

“And, our use of the IBM marketing benefits has helped us gain a better position in the Spanish marketplace,” Sanchez-Cabaces said. “The increased awareness of our company increases the sales potential of our products and services.”

Among those initiated in 2008, a single marketing activity resulted in opportunities that are expected to yield USD$160,000 (122,430 Euros) in revenue for Innova Estudi Soft in 2009.

IBM platform provided base for solutions

Innova Estudi Soft’s Digitalizacion Documental solution helps businesses create a paperless environment where information from heterogeneous sources is captured in digital format and integrated into departmental repositories with controls for document access, workflow and management. Highly customizable, it uses IBM Lotus® Quickr® or Lotus Domino® Document Manager for team collaboration and document management capabilities, depending on individual customer requirements. The solution runs on Windows® operating systems on IBM System z® servers.

Adelia Studio is a suite of products that help software developers design and develop business applications. Based on fourth-generation programming language (4GL), it provides functionality and management for the entire application life cycle, from design through maintenance, and can significantly reduce programming efforts, time and costs. Adelia Studio products are built on IBM DB2® Universal Database™ and WebSphere® Application Server and run on Windows and Linux® operating systems on IBM Power Systems™ (System i®, System p® and BladeCenter®), System x® and System z servers.

Gained practical IBM product expertise

Innova Estudi Soft employees keep up-to-date on IBM products and technologies using technical resources provided through the IBM Business Partner program.

The Digitalizacion Documental developers spent several days on-site at the IBM Innovation Center in Barcelona, Spain, where they received training on IBM Lotus Quickr. The IBM Innovation Center staff shared expertise on Lotus Quickr functions and capabilities and gave practical advice for installing, configuring, integrating and troubleshooting the product in an operational environment.

For day-to-day support, Innova Estudi Soft employees regularly sign in to the online IBM Virtual Innovation Center where they find live, one-on-one assistance for troubleshooting and problem resolution, along with up-to-date information and self-paced training on IBM products and technologies. The knowledge and expertise they gain is applied in their new product development and in improving existing solutions.

Personal guidance helped marketing efforts

Though the number and variety of marketing and sales benefits offered through the IBM Business Partner program is vast, Sanchez-Cabaces is able to navigate through them easily. An IBM marketing resource manager (MRM) provides her with personal guidance and support in setting business objectives and in identifying, understanding and using the benefits and tools that can best help Innova Estudi Soft meet its marketing goals.

After helping Sanchez-Cabaces build a marketing plan, the MRM made sure that Innova Estudi Soft’s solutions were listed in the IBM Global Solutions Directory and Business Partner Application Showcase, giving exposure on the ibm.com Web site to customers and IBM sales teams and executives. The MRM also enabled Innova Estudi Soft on the IBM Global Partner Portal, which provides a single interface where Business Partners can engage IBM in every step in the sales process, from opportunity identification to fulfillment.

Recommended by the MRM, Innova Estudi Soft ran a combination direct mail and telemarketing campaign in 2008, targeting director-level decision-makers in several hundred companies throughout Spain.

“Our MRM was involved in the campaign from the beginning to the end,” Sanchez-Cabaces explained. “He helped us design the mailers and create a strong message using the Campaign Designer tool. And, he coordinated our work with the telemarketing firm to build a prospect list and set up the campaign,” she said. The campaign resulted in 18 good leads for follow-up by the Innova Estudi Soft sales team. Ten of those contacts are active opportunities that Sanchez-Cabaces expects will earn about USD$160,000 (122,430 Euros) worth of new business for Innova Estudi Soft in 2009.

The MRM also arranged for Innova Estudi Soft to participate in a “Maximize your Relationship with IBM” event held in Barcelona in the spring of 2008. These events are designed to show IBM Business Partners how they can use their benefits to reduce development costs, get to market faster and shorten their sales cycles. Innova Estudi Soft gave a presentation on Adelia Studio and testimony on how IBM benefits have been of value in the company’s marketing efforts.

“After our presentation, we were approached by another IBM Business Partner from the Canary Islands,” Sanchez-Cabaces said. “We have now established a business relationship and are planning projects to deliver our solutions jointly,” she said. Both companies look forward to more opportunities for new business as a result of their collaboration.

“Being an IBM Business Partner,” she noted, “gives us a potential for success that we could not achieve on our own.”