Elixir technology – entry

UNIVERSITY OF VAASA
FACULTY OF BUSINESS STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING

ELIXIR TECHNOLOGY – ENTRY
INTO THE MIDDLE EAST
CASE STUDY ANNALYSIS

BLAZQUEZ GORDO Maria Angeles (T94761)
CORTES Joana (T94813)
DELVIGNE Anne-Charlotte (T94824)
DUTTA Debashri M (T94893)
JACINAITE Lina (T94942)
LERENA Tamara (T94963)
LINGYTE Jolita (T94966)
ROBITAILLE Chloe (T94997)

VAASA 2010
TABLE OFCONTENTS

1. SUMMARY

Lau Shih Hor, a founding partner and a Managing Director of Elixir technology, after using a number of entry strategies to make headway into Asian markets, was considering to enter markets that were even further away. A promising market was The Middle East, since reports showed that Asian markets were slowly going there, and if Elixir technologies made a few adjustmentsin their product (which is a software for report generation). The changes in the product were that the software could handle bi-directional text handling which was useful for Arabic and Hebrew characters. The company’s competition was not yet in the Middle East and Lau believed that he could make use of this opportunity well.

After Singapore got its independence in 1965, there was deliberateplanning made for the country which resulted in urbanization and development of the country and technology was identified to be a priority and many national bodies were started in order to promote technology development.

In the beginning the company’s first investment was enough only to set up the company and they needed a revenue stream in order to finance their research and development. Atfirst they had three large clients and this helped them to stay afloat while the first product was developed. After Java Technology came out in 1995 the company came out with 3 new software pieces, two of the products were for hardcore software design and programming. The third one was more directed towards businesses and business people, and since people needed to access to information with easeElixir technology came out with a software meant for reports for enterprises and thus was born ER (Elixir Report).

The product itself was made to handle a large amount of report generation; it could accommodate many inputs and give outputs also in many formats. It could support mobile phones and PDA’s and works on any operating system. It brought a large amount of revenue, in fact 11 times as muchas before.

Since earlier products were for software and technology professionals the earlier marketing was done in newspapers and technology magazines, but as the focus shifted to corporate customers the marketing strategy was changed and building relationships became more important. Partnerships were of three times; reseller partnerships, service partnerships and OEM partnerships. There weresome characteristics which were considered relevant in a partner such as the top computer companies, which were well established and had a large market, medium sized companies that dealt with niche markets and had a greater flexibility but lower market exposure and finally small and emerging companies where the leaders were very involved and quick in their dealings, making up the lack ofresources and business contacts.

Lau considered a number of options for Global expansion like USA, where there were a number of competitors and direct client contact was the present mode of business. Asia was a good choice since the company’s home was in Asia and the competition was lesser. Europe was another option that Lau turned down since Elixir had no direct connection and Europe was an extremelylocalised market where there were different variables and conditions in every country.

The strengths that Elixir was going to use to achieve success in its Global expansion could be boiled down into two main points: flexibility in terms of choosing partners, prices, product scaling and branding, and cultural understanding: Elixir truly tries to learn about client’s culture and ensures that...