When I was responsible for factory automation software at Austria's largest industry enterprise, marketing was dependent. Factory automation software is not a product it is a technology stack. It needs a partner who makes / contracts the factory. It was the Factory Engineering and Contracting Division of our enterprise … They did the total-solution marketing.
To sharpen your tools sell them individually
But I knew from the beginning that I need a clever make and buy mix. After I have decided to make high level Computer Aided Manufacturing technologies, I learned swiftly that I need to market them independently from the total solutions. Only if this tools are good for any factory they're good for "our" factories. We outlicensed our innovations.
We inlicensed Computer Aided Engineering and Design tools as well as resource and production planning systems. And again, I decided to offer them independently on the market of discrete manufacturers.
So, I became a system integrator, solution marketer, own-innovation marketer and re-marketer. Without forgetting:: I'm here to serve our factory providers with the best possible technology stack.
About 25 yeas ago I started my own business and decided to build it based on symbolic computation.
Inlicense and outlicense
And I decided it shall utilize Wolfram Technologies (Mathematica). Uni software plus became a Wolfram partner and consequently sold in the Wolfram business development framework. But we refined it for our selected market segments.
Out of "nothing", we sold the fist unlimited site license to a university world-wide. At a time when the symbolic computation market was in its infancy - not a bad start 23 years ago.
But, we still were rather project than product people and conducted quite a lot industry projects atop Wolfram technologies. For process and manufacturing industries, energy suppliers...even music industries… Based on our special solution marketing.
A short story of being lucky
About 18 years ago, partnering with…UnRisk makers and owners...MathConsult, we were lucky to be asked to develop some convertible bond valuation tools for a London based trading desk (of an American bank).
This was the start point of the UnRiskVerse. Over the years UnRisk has built a comprehensive technology stack for derivative and risk analytics products. About 13 years ago, the first UnRisk has been taken to a financial institution. We enjoy now 100+ clients…
Where I learned to market the all new product?
Just about everywhere I could. What I did before did not really help. There is no history of the new.
I knew that UnRiskers, known as coal faced mathematicians, are not only exotic makers, but suffer also from the provenance paradox: quant finance tools are from NY or London, not Linz - the steel town, right?
No, this is the differential advantage, I was sure: cross-sectoral numerics, symbolic computation, simulation, parameter identification… steeled in complex industrial systems will enable us to make finical technologies swifter and with less effort...
I talked to seasoned experts, Paul Wilmott, … and quickly learned: you may have the technology that fits to the purpose, but quants, traders, capital managers, risk managers, auditors … think differently about the same thing.
Would they all think, we stand on their side?
Risk management is about knowing how to manage risk
Maybe not, we thought and decided to establish the UnRisk Academy. It packages know how and provides the views behind the curtain.
Who ever is interested, quants, risk managers, capital managers, traders, auditors, … competitors or users of competitive systems…we welcome them in our courses, workouts…where the Academy advisors expose methodological and technological risk and traps and explain how to avoid them.
Insight selling
From the marketing standpoint we turned solution selling into insight selling and we are not afraid to push potential clients out of their comfort zones.
Understanding is one thing. Doing it well another. There is no systematized marketing of innovation, but if you teach you get into the discussion about reasons keeping financial experts awake at night.
It's not the mathematics, data, use patterns … that makes UnRisk compelling. It's the trust that it is made by people who are highly committed to make the black box white.
The four-P marketing, product-people-price-promotion, turned into solution-access-value-education marketing.
Understand the rules so you can break them
Business is about innovation and marketing. For success you need to optimize your market risk. That is often counter-intuitive.
I've run through the processes and know the autodidact's dilemma. I offer a process. It's often about understanding the rules in order to break them ...
We can start discussions via email - if I believe in you and your innovation, we can enter into a profit sharing relation…or anything else that fits to your business. Anything.
