RELEX. Kasvu ja kansainvällistyminen

Transcription

1 RELEX Kasvu ja kansainvällistyminen Mikko Kärkkäinen

2 2 RELEX as a company today RAUTAKESKO OY RELEX provides comprehensive solutions for supply chain management and optimization Forecasting and demand planning Store replenishment and inventory management Actionable analytics and reporting Wide international customer base Over 70 customers using the solution in 14 countries Customers in retail, wholesale, and manufacturing Market leader with a clear technology edge Market leader in Northern Europe Gartner selected cool vendor in In-Memory the only one in the supply chain domain The fastest growing supplier of SCM solutions within the EMEA region on Deloitte s Technology Fast Team of over 100, offices in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Norway, and the UK Growing, profitable, cash-flow positive Strong experience in retail supply chain Forerunner in tackling special situations such as assortment changes, campaigns, and seasons during the life-cycle of goods Capabilities are best harnessed in complex, multi-tier environments with a considerable risk of spoilage or obsolescence London Oslo Frankfurt/ Wiesbaden Stockholm Helsinki (HQ) Tens of warehouses, hundreds of stores, millions of SKUs, and billions of euros are managed with RELEX s solutions.

3 Background: Michael, Johanna and Mikko working at HUT (Helsinki University of Technology) on high level reseach on retail supply chain Among global leaders in building SCM theory E.g. Johanna and Mikko had 10 publications in global leading SCM journals compared to 15 of the whole MIT staff* A significant international market gap was identified European level benchmarking on best practices in retail forecasting and replenishment Need to change the world Academia not fast enough: desire to drive change faster than through research *) The State of Supply Chain Education Revisited and Updated, Soonhong Min, The University of Oklahoma, 2007

4 4 The story of RELEX 2006: Three researchers from HUT set up a software company : Bootstrapping and developing the company : Growth and early internationalisation : Expansion in Europe 2015-: Taking the company to the next level Milestones and key events: Initial funding with 100 k loan First software version with two outsourced companies First software customer First sales to Enterprise size customers Customers bring the pressure to develop a multi-purpose solution and increasing processing performance Separate R&D established First Swedish and Nordic references Starting to launching in the UK and Germany Initiating RELEX proprietary database development program (FASTORM) A third complete rewrite of the solution Growth to dominance in Finland and the retail market leader status in Sweden Establishing market precense in Germany and the UK Opening office to Norway late fall 2014

5 5 International market represents the majority of new business First international sales effots and first office to Sweden Selected due to swedish speaking members in the founding team Culturally very similar easy and cheap to go to Second offices to Germany and the UK Selected as the biggest retail and wholesale markets in Europe Started with both simultaneously to hedge risks Also deemed culturally more similar than for example France Ability to find personnel to lead the attacks to the countries

6 6 Lessons learned In international expansion it helps to be clearly superior as a solution Locality and/or big brand is a big competetive advantage in enterprise software Good local salespeople are key for fast growth in a region Took some time to learn this, should have hired salespeople earlier Invest enough when building a presence to a market It seems that you have to anyhow spend at least the same amount of money, by investing more you get things done quicker Might be worthwhile to focus investments and effots in a reference business Building international business is fun Tekes NIY-funding eased making the investments to internationalisation