Gaining confidence in the Middle East market

While WinScribe had been gaining traction on its own, the Beachheads influence resulted in a sharper focus, a swifter route to market, and access to a much higher level of decision-maker among potential clients.

Philip Vian landed in the Middle East in August 2007, determined to find a lucrative niche for New Zealand company WinScribe.

He knew the region had a buoyant legal profession and various governments were turning their thoughts to healthcare and how to improve it for the population – this made the Middle East a fertile hunting ground for a Kiwi company specialising in a dictation system used by doctors, lawyers and police.

Mr Vian, WinScribe’s Europe, Middle East and North Africa chief executive, visited a number of countries, talking to potential customers and looking around for potential sales partners.

He started to get some traction, but it was when the company was accepted into New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE)’s Beachheads programme that WinScribe’s opportunities really opened up.

“We’d learnt to crawl, we’d learnt to walk but we couldn’t run that marathon and that’s what they helped us do. It definitely took us to a new level.”

Dr Shane Reti, a GP and dermatologist who is currently the International Programme Director for the Division of Clinical Informatics at Harvard Medical School was assigned as WinScribe’s Middle East Beachheads advisor.

Well-connected in the health sector in the Middle East, he knows which countries are allocating funds towards healthcare and which ones are likely to at some stage in the future.

“His networks have revealed which countries have money at the moment,” Mr Vian says. “We have been able to match our work to the requirements of the Arab countries.”

Dr Reti has also managed to get Mr Vian and his team in front of a much higher level of client than WinScribe would have ever expected.

Through regular one-on-one consultations with Dr Reti, WinScribe was able to distinguish which of Mr Vian’s early Middle East strategies would work, which wouldn’t, and, most importantly, why.

This stock-take resulted in a much swifter route to market than if Mr Vian had continued trying to figure out the nuances of the Middle East for himself.