25 Ways Autodesk Software Partners Can Grow - Business Advantage
25 Ways Autodesk Software Partners Can Grow25 Ways AutodeskSoftware PartnersCan Grow“This is a great collection of bestpractices all Autodesk partners canand should use to grow theirbusinesses. They are sure to find atleast a few new effective high ROIapproaches. Not enough Autodeskpartners get help to take theirbusiness to the next level throughprofessional market research andconsulting. Autodesk has a lot ofexperience working with BusinessAdvantage with over 200 researchprojects already delivered. Irecommend Business Advantagefor any partner looking for newgrowth opportunities.”Jim Quanci, Director,Autodesk Developer NetworkWhite PaperHow to Gain Business Advantage andGrow?Executive Summary:This White Paper outlines 25 ways for Autodesk SoftwarePartners to grow their businesses; to find, build or createbusiness advantages in each and to successfully prioritizeand make investments to minimize business risk.Page 1 of 17
A Business Advantage White PaperWHY KEEP GROWING?25 WaysAutodeskSoftwarePartnersCan GrowHOW TO GAINBUSINESSA D VA N TA G E A N DGROW?Key Tip: Anotherreason to grow is toincrease thevaluation of yourbusiness. Thebigger and moreprofitable it is andthe more potentialit has for futuregrowth, the greaterthe value.Page 2 of 17“Our successful product adds functionality to specific Autodesk softwareplatforms. We and our products are components of the most successfuldesign and engineering software franchise to ever exist and a proudmember of the Autodesk Developer Network. Our business is profitableand successful but we’re running flat out to keep up with it and maintainit up-to-date ”If that quote sounds familiar, have you ever wondered WHY KEEPGROWING?Successful young businesses inevitably face the business growthdilemma – do we keep growing or not? Some wonder if they can justestablish a steady state and manage the business at a level thatsustains their lifestyle. The problem is that a ‘steady state’ isn’t possibletoday. Business is a complex system of many competing forces technologies, companies and economics - all underpinned byfundamentals such as productivity and competition increasing overtime. The result is that markets and businesses are changingcontinuously – to remain successful businesses must understand theforces acting on them and constantly adapt, refine and change – in aword they ‘grow’ and keep ‘growing’ or they get into trouble soonenough. As Clayton Christensen, author of the revolutionary businessbook, ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ put it, “One of the most consistentpatterns in business is the failure of leading companies to stay at the topof their industries when technologies or markets change.”Key Tip: Another reason to grow is to increase the valuation of yourbusiness for the time when you might like to sell it. The bigger andmore profitable it is and the more potential it has for future growth,the greater the value.In conclusion, growth is essential for your business to survive, prosperand increase in value.The obvious next question is HOW BEST TO GROW? The remainder ofthis White Paper will focus on answering that question.Key Tip: Wherever you see your next growth opportunity there areways to both maximize your chances of success and minimize the risks.
25 Ways Autodesk Software Partners Can GrowHOW BEST TO GROW?Successful businesses devote a lot of effort to increasing theirprofitability, regularly exploring dozens of ideas including reducingcosts, creating new products, addressing new markets, adding newchannels, launching new marketing campaigns and many more. Theproblem isn’t usually a lack of ideas, rather it’s how to prioritize andexecute the most beneficial ideas.The Ansoff MatrixFortunately, Igor Ansoff, a Russian/American mathematician appliedhis work to the world of business and famously created a very usefultool to help us. The ‘Ansoff Matrix’ was first published in the HarvardBusiness Review in 1957 and has been widely used ever since tosimplify thinking and organize growth ideas into ‘existing’ or ‘newproducts’, each in ‘existing’ or ‘new markets’. In its simplest form thematrix illustrates four ways a business may grow, and the risksassociated with each option.This white paper will apply Ansoff’s matrix to the question of HOWTO GROW AN AUTODESK SOFTWARE PARTNER’S BUSINESS? Butfirst here’s a description of how the matrix works.‘Healthy growth is notengineered. It is theoutcome of growing thedemand theoutcome of havingsuperior products andskills the reward forinnovation, cleverness,efficiency, andcreativity’Richard RumeltYou start in the lower left quadrant with your existing products(and or services) serving your existing markets. From a riskpoint of view the safest thing to do is to stay in that quadrantand continue to penetrate that market – you know it, youalready have success in it.However if that quadrant can’t provide the growth you needyou can add another quadrant. For example the upper leftquadrant, by applying your existing products to a newmarket. There is increased risk because you have new marketsand customers to understand, with different needs,expectations and dynamics.Alternatively you could add the lower right quadrant bydeveloping a new product for your existing market but thatcarries the increased risk of the new product not provingcommercially successful. Both these quadrants are ‘adjacent’ towhere you are now and hence are seen as relatively low riskbecause they partially repeat while changing just one variableof your already proven approach.Finally you have the riskiest option, the upper right quadrant,where you diversify to target a new market with a newproduct. It’s risky because it changes both variables at oncebut that, at times, can be highly successful too.Page 3 of 17
A Business Advantage White PaperAPPLYING THE MATRIX TO GROWING ANAUTODESK SOFTWARE PARTNER’S BUSINESS"A man grows mosttired standing still."Chinese ProverbQuadrant Application Examples for Autodesk Software Partners"You miss 100% of theshots you don't take."The matrix above notes a few examples of growth ideas in eachquadrant. In the remainder of this White Paper we’ll go into these andmany more ideas with suggestions for implementation in ways thatminimize business risk.Wayne GretzkyAlways seek to improve your competitive position, and be tenaciousand patient in staying long enough to collect your winnings. Lookbeyond this year's budget and try to predict where the world isheading. Prepare for what the competitive landscape will look like inthree or more years. Grow only when you know that you have forgeda winning competitive/business advantage. Whether that plannedgrowth is built around a product, a service, or both, if your businessmodel has not yet proven worthy of scaling up don’t bet on a growthstrategy - don't scale prematurely as it will be costly!Page 4 of 17
25 Ways Autodesk Software Partners Can GrowMarket Penetration QuadrantThe goal in this quadrant is to use your existing market and productexpertise and resources to increase your market share with yourexisting products in your existing market. Here are some ideas to dothat.1.Grow your sales teamMore ‘feet on the street’ should mean more sales but consider thesequestions:Do you have a proven and predictable direct sales process(including sales management) that you can scale up byexpanding your team? If not create one before hiring orexpanding your direct sales team and subdividing territories.Do you have a proven and predictable lead generation andnurturing process that you can scale up to support anexpanded sales team? If not consider obtaining some shortterm sales specialist consultancy advice and help with leadgeneration.2.Add new direct sales channelsSimilarly are there new sales channel you can profitably tap? Forexample expand your direct sales by adding a Major Accountsprogram (for help with profiling major accounts see the BusinessAdvantage White Paper, ‘Open Up New Business Streams with KeyProspects’. Another alternative could be the addition of online sales.3."Even if you're on theright track, you'll getrun over if you just sitthere."Will RogersAdd new indirect sales channelsAnother way to gain more ‘feet on the street’ is to add channelpartners as additional sales resources. By choosing channel partnerswho already have trusted sales relationships with your targetcustomers you can ramp up sales faster than building thoserelationships directly. There’s no guarantee of success when embarkingon a channel partner recruitment drive, particularly if this is your firstindirect selling venture. Your reputation is potentially at risk and theplanning, research and selection phases are as crucial to yourprogram as the correct partner support and management proceduresfurther down the line. To mitigate risk review the Business AdvantageWhite Paper, ‘Growing your Business the Indirect Way’ for tips on howto best prepare for and plan a channel recruitment. For example, oneway to mitigate risk is to use a specialist company experienced inchannel recruitment projects to ensure your channel partner recruitmentcampaign is focused, accurate and cost effective.Page 5 of 17
A Business Advantage White Paper4.Increase advocates and referralsHow many of your customers are advocates for you? How many aregiving you referrals? Customer Satisfaction Research ensures youunderstand your customers’ perceptions, key drivers of loyalty, whatelse they need and how to build the relationship from customer topartner to advocate. For guidance on Customer Satisfaction Researchsee the Business Advantage White Paper ‘A Guide to MarketAnalysis’.5.Increase your marketingMore marketing to generate more leads but also to increase exposure– you probably have a great reputation with your customers but howwidely is that known and appreciated in your market?Do you have up-to-date knowledge of which attributes of yourproducts and services drive buying decisions and controlcustomers’ willingness to purchase?Do you know your current market share and how it is trending?Do you know how your product compares to its competitors infunctionality, in ranking by the respective users for usability,functionality, performance, price, ease of use and more?"The highly comprehensivenature of the informationavailable in the CAD/CAMUser Database hasenabled us to selectcompanies for ourmarketing campaign whichprecisely match our targetmarket."If your answer to questions like these is ‘no’, then find out beforeallocating increased marketing spend – read the guidance in theBusiness Advantage White Paper ‘A Guide to Market Analysis’ thencommission some market research and find out.Before scaling up your current marketing activities analyzetheir effectiveness then invest in improving them before scalingup the most efficient ones.After that consider new types of marketing that may berelevant to your existing market, for example Social Media oran Annual User Conference (and by the way beforeorganizing new events see the Business Advantage WhitePaper, ‘Event Attendance – How do you increase the numberof quality attendees?’).Managing Director,Academy6.Find more people like your current customersWho better to sell to than people and companies similar to yourcurrent customers? That seems obvious but most businesses don’tsystematically analyze their customers and then target by SIC code,company size, locations, buying cycle, market changes, job title, etc.Do you have an up-to-date analysis of your customer profiles?For help with profiling see the Business Advantage WhitePaper, ‘Open Up New Business Streams with Key Prospects’.Page 6 of 17
25 Ways Autodesk Software Partners Can GrowHave you used it to systematically find and contact newprospects? A methodology called Target Name Research(TNR) is applied to gather ’hard to get’ information whichcannot be sourced from traditional marketing lists. Forguidance on this topic see the Business Advantage WhitePaper, ‘Getting to the RIGHT People’.7.Understand why people buy from your competitorsMany businesses fail to achieve their full potential because theydon’t appreciate and respond sufficiently to the threat posedby their competitors to their customers. Knowing what makesyour customers buy from your competitors enables you to movea step or more ahead of them. Don’t settle for just competing –take the lead and neutralize competitors’ strengths while bettermeeting your customer’s needs to achieve these benefits:More focused and effective sales vs. competitorsIncreased market share, sales and profitHigher customer retentionSee Business Advantage’s article, ‘Ethical Approach to CompetitorAnalysis’.8.“If you don’t help yourcustomers reach greaterheights, who will? Yourcompetitors ? “Don SchultzUnderstand your competitors’ strategyTo compete successfully you have to know ‘who’ and ‘what’ youare up against! The ‘who’ are your competitors. With an indepth analysis on your major competitors, or new playersentering your target markets – such as their structure,products/services, strategy, strengths and weaknesses,opportunities and threats – you’ll be able to focus yourresources where they will have the most impact.Understand competitors’ objectives and strategy anddevelop your own accordingly, for example their Cloudor Mobile strategies or distribution strategies or theirpricing discounts and payment terms then optimize yourownDevelop achievable sales targets by understanding thescale of competitors’ operations and turnoverIdentify relative market positions, each competitors’market share, the split of competitors by productDevelop a marketing communications strategy withmessages that resonate effectively against yourcompetitors‘ messagesPage 7 of 17
A Business Advantage White PaperStrengthen your products/services Sand marketingstrategy according to how your competitors and theirproducts are perceived by customersThe ‘what’ is your competitor’s product. A gap analysis onproduct features enables you to:Implement product or service improvements to counterstrengths/weaknesses and innovations in their productportfolioPosition your products/services more appropriately andsuccessfully9.Change your pricingWhen did you last increase your pricing?Do you know your optimal pricing?"Business Advantagedelivered exactly what wewanted. The project metall our objectives - wegained important insightsinto the needs of ourcustomers, and to themarketing practice andplans of manufacturers.The research reallycrystallized the businessopportunity for us andconfirmed the direction weshould be taking ”Senior Product Manager,AutodeskPage 8 of 17Do you know the price elasticity and demand curve ofyour products?In today's economy and competitive environment, the importance ofgetting your company's pricing strategy right has never been greater.Through Pricing Research you will know your price elasticity, optimalpricing, demand curve and the attributes that drive buying decisions.For an introduction to the methodology of pricing research see theBusiness Advantage PowerPoint, ‘How to Research Pricing Decisions’.Get the facts then make better pricing decisions that ensure you:remain competitively priced to optimize revenues andmaximize profitsestablish the value of add-on benefitsensure prices match your brand positionencourage customer loyalty by offering appropriate discounts10.Purchase a competitorThe fastest way to gain market share is often to buy a competitor. Forexample is there a competitor ahead of you in Cloud (and Mobile)Web services adoption and market share? The problem with thisapproach is that when you buy a company, especially a publiccompany, you usually pay too much. Commonly a premium is paid( 25%) plus fees. Unless you get the chance to buy a company forless than it’s worth or you are especially positioned to add more valueto that target company than others, don’t try to grow in this way –typically no net value is created. On the other hand if and whenopportunities arise to buy competitors for less than they are worth toyou be ready to consider it and move fast. If you don’t have M&A(merger and acquisition) experience ensure you have professionaladvice on the process and execution especially if the target companyis in another country.
25 Ways Autodesk Software Partners Can GrowMarket Development QuadrantThe goal in this quadrant is to use your existing product resources(existing product team and expertise) to scale cost effectively andtarget a new market or new market niche with your existing product.This is a less risky way to grow because it makes use of existingproduct expertise but risky because it targets a new market in whichyou may have little or no expertise. It is also risky because there arefewer possible economies of scale from a marketing and salesresource point of view. Here are some ideas for growth in the MarketDevelopment Quadrant.11.New geographical markets locally or internationallyA successful business will have extensive knowledge about theircustomers and competitors - that is a fact. If you are looking at a newgeographic region (whether another office location in a country or inanother country) in which to launch a new product or service,conducting a Market Analysis is essential to determine if there is aneed, and to determine the best approach to fulfilling this need. Fordetails of a recommended approach see the Business AdvantageWhite Paper, ‘A Guide to Market Analysis’ but ensure you identify,understand and appreciate:“You are not heremerely to make a living.You are here to enablethe world to live moreamply, with greatervision, and with a finerspirit of hope andachievement. You arehere to enrich the world.You impoverish yourselfif you forget this errand”Woodrow WilsonWho you are targeting and why they will buy your product –including new customer personas around which to planThe market size and segmentationCompetitor analysis and benchmarking12.Communicate to the RIGHT prospectsYour marketing team will be under pressure to demonstrate a returnon investment within a specified timescale. Part of the budget must beallocated to quality lead generation. Once you have decided whichcompanies within which sectors within which countries you wish totarget, we move on to the next key stage.Target Name Research starts by considering specific roleswithin those organizations that are the right decision makers inthe purchasing process for your products, solutions or servicesbut the process of obtaining the contact details for those rolescan be extremely difficult, time consuming and, ultimately,costly. See the Business Advantage White paper, ‘Getting tothe RIGHT People’.Page 9 of 17
A Business Advantage White PaperBuying existing prospect data – see the Business AdvantageWhite Paper, ‘7 Key Things to Think about When SelectingProspect Data in the CAD/CAM Market’.13.New business modelsNew business models can dramatically drive new growth. For exampleyou’ve observed how Autodesk’s Subscription Program has contributedmost of their growth in the last 10 years such that it now contributes 40% of total revenue. Equally important is the ‘booked but not yetrecognized’ revenue. How would you like to start each fiscal year witha lot of ‘to be recognized’ revenue already in the bank? Could youtoo create a term based recurring revenue stream to deliver growth,security and predictability like that to your business? Pay-as-you-gomodels like subscription or rental or SaaS are attractive to customersand often easier to sell. More recently Autodesk’s Suites have startedto drive their next phase of growth too – can you emulate that too?Whether those particular new business models make sense for you ornot, the point is that new business models can contribute dramaticallyto accelerating a company’s growth trajectory. Research whether anynew business models could achieve that for your business. Again lookat competitors, similar companies to your own in other markets orsuccessful models from other industries.14."Business Advantage'sresearch into potentialcustomers around the worldhas provided invaluablemarket intelligence tosupport our marketingstrategy. Their researchexperience, marketunderstanding anddedication to satisfying ourneeds has producedactionable data of excellentquality."Marketing CommunicatonsDirector, Scientific GamesPage 10 of 17Which market segment/s will you compete in? Or will youtry to create a new segment?Segmentation is a way of dividing up a market. Wikipedia definesMarket segmentation as ‘a marketing strategy that involves dividing abroad target market into subsets of consumers [or businesses] who havecommon needs.’ Market segmentation enables products to bedesigned, positioned and marketed to specific customer segments,addressing the needs or desires that are believed to be common tothat segment, and in ways acceptable to that market segment. As aresult businesses engaged in a market will develop different ways ofimagining market segments, and create product differentiationstrategies to exploit the segments as they see them.Successful market segmentation guides you to which segments toaddress and how best to address them or whether to try and define anew segment. Corresponding product differentiation can provide abusiness advantage through more effective matching of the targetcustomer and product. For more details see Segmentation in theBusiness Advantage White Paper, ‘A Guide to Market Analysis’. In anexisting market the objective is often to take as much market share aspossible from the existing competitors. When re-segmenting or tryingto create a new segment of a market, by definition there are nocompetitors at first but you have to educate the target customersabout the new issues that define the new segment.
25 Ways Autodesk Software Partners Can GrowMarket Development Case Study - SSI“To know how best to growSSI we needed up-to-datemarket research. In decidinghow to do that research ourchief concern was that acompany from outside theshipbuilding industrywouldn’t be able to help usask the right questions in ourspecific niche. BusinessAdvantage was able toreassure us in advance andthen delight us in theexecution of our marketresearch.The result is that welearned and confirmed muchabout our market,knowledge that is nowhaving an impact on ourstrategy and priorities goingforward.”Darren Larkins, CEO, SSISSI develops Autodesk based solutions for the shipbuilding andoffshore industry. SSI’s flagship software is ShipConstructor , anAutoCAD based CAD/CAM suite. These solutions take advantage ofthe native DWG format and the global pools of experience providedby the world’s most popular CAD platform. SSI combines this withindustry specific standards, terminology and best practices. ITexpertise is also applied to ensure the ability to share engineeringdata with other business processes and applications.ProblemTo best grow SSI we needed to better understand our worldwidemarket trends and growth, especially in emerging shipbuildingcountries (new markets). Because we sell primarily through resellersmuch of our market knowledge is filtered through each local partnerwhich can make it difficult to get a broader, non-partisan view of themarket. Therefore we decided to commission some professional marketresearch and use the results to guide our strategy and priorities,especially against our competition. We have deep knowledge of‘Shipbuilding’ as a discipline but not of ‘Market Research’ as adiscipline. As we’ve grown as a company we’ve realized that havingthe right people on the right jobs is a key factor in success or failure ofa project. Largely because of that realization this became our firstprofessional market research project. This is not
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