Formpipe has laid the foundation for strong, international growth
Summary
- Challenge
The IT company Formpipe has long been working with a partner strategy to reach its end customer. However, as they wanted to expand globally and meet the customer directly, a new investment in digital marketing was required. With the help of inbound marketing, Formpipe has got to know its target audience, strengthened its marketing and laid the foundation for strong international growth — with the customer in focus.
- Solution
Formpipe needed to start from scratch and get to know the target audience, the “person” of the company. They then chose to begin their journey towards smart, digital marketing together with Smarkify.
- Results
Through workshops, sales, marketing and product managers in the company were able to identify the end customer, map the buying journey and create a content plan to get structure in the work.
Background and Challenge
Formpipe is a leading IT company offering cloud services for information management. They develop products that make sure to provide the right information to the right person. The Lasernet service, an add-on product to Microsoft and business software from Temenos, can also generate reports and business documents easily for the user.
With customers in both the public and private sectors, safety and security are important components of data management. Authorities, municipalities and universities in Sweden and Denmark use their services.
Solution / About the Collaboration
The private sector deal has long been competitive and when they saw an increase in demand for the Lasernet service, they wanted to scale that business up further. To expand in the international arena, they needed to develop and broaden their marketing. The goal was to reach their end customer directly — without partners as intermediaries.
We have reason to believe that we can win more business if the end customer knows who we are. We have a very good track record on closing deals once we've outlined our solution. So now it was time to market ourselves directly to the end customer. But we didn't know exactly who it was and what their needs were. We needed to start from scratch and get to know the target audience, the “person” of the company.
“Managers can't be good at everything, they should also be allowed to ask 'stupid questions'. With Smarkify, we have been given the opportunity to get direct strategic advice where we need it. It has been a huge support for the company and it allows us to develop long-term and independently.”
Erik Lindeberg
Head of Business Development at Formpipe.
Results
Through workshops, sales, marketing and product managers in the company were able to identify the end customer, map the buying journey and create a content plan to get structure in the work. Formpipe established a first hypothesis on what challenges the end customer had and what solutions they could use to create even more value for the customer.
The future - increased confidence and increased growth
Today, Formpipe has a clear target image to reach its end customer. The digital marketing and promotions have begun and they can already see that a change is taking place within the company.
“We have become more confident and confident in what needs to be done to reach the goal,” says Simon. Smarkify has helped us get away from old habits and look beyond our own myths about our market and who our customers are.”
When Gartner, the world's leading analytics company, looked at the final results and the audience analysis, they also found that the work was well done, well documented and best practice at all levels. Erik and Simon look forward to continuing their collaboration and increasing their growth with the help of new tools.
The next step is to deploy more operational marketing efforts and develop more effective campaigns that focus on the end customer.
“We want to help our customers grow profitably and in the long term,” Niloo says. But we are not content with just one strategy and planning. Here we help all the way to business value through concrete and operational market interventions that make a difference on the last line. At the moment, Formpipe and I are working together on two different concrete campaigns to reach the end customer and I am really looking forward to many more.”
100% Honest Commitment
“Smarkify has shown an honest commitment and a strong willingness to really contribute and make a difference for us,” says Erik. There has always been a genuine willingness to help us and an empathy in the conversation.”