Conexa is a small successful and innovative New Zealand company that punches well above its weight in the global internet e-commerce arena, achieving 100 per cent year-on-year export growth over the past three years.
The Auckland-based business, which has evolved out of the old Government Stores Board, provides technology, strategies and solutions which help companies extract the maximum value out of their procurement and supply relations – an outcome achieved with no capital outlay on behalf of the customer.
In the past few years the privately owned company has become Australasia’s leading procurement service provider, with over 63,000 overseas trading members with transactions in excess of $7 billion passing through its system annually.
“Executives are now starting to understand that business performance is about mastering the processes between their own business and those they trade with,” explains CEO Brent Baldwin. “We target this critical point by providing rapidly deployable and highly affordable technology and IP which both streamlines and automates these trading and procurement processes. Conexa offers both the buyer and the seller internet based tools which deliver enhanced visibility across their entire supply chain.”
In a major coup and against fierce international competition, Conexa recently won a global deal with oil company BP. At the other end of the client spectrum it helps small enterprises keep their business viable by providing technology and services that allow them to trade in the new world of electronic commerce.
“It’s a huge challenge to deal with the different needs and expectations of such a wide customer base. However, all our customers have one thing in common, a need to reduce the cost of trading products and services across complex trading communities.”
Mr Baldwin expects sales growth to accelerate over the coming years, naming Conexa’s key strengths as its smart people, smart business model and smart commercialisation of intellectual property.
“The important factor for us is that we are creating profitable growth versus simply growth alone. We are one of the few procurement service providers in the world that is actually profitable and we put this down to providing not just leading edge solutions but rather providing value based innovation. It must represent value to our customers or they would only use us once and then move on.”
Conexa’s business model allows it to secure ‘anchor tenants’ within trading communities and then use these to drive their customers or their suppliers into the Conexa trading network. From there it creates an increasing number of trading links between network members, further adding value to Conexa trading network membership.
Mr Baldwin says Conexa’s marketing budget is “very modest” compared with its international competitors. Instead of trying to out market them, it uses the concept of viral marketing to drive both awareness and growth. Typically an anchor tenant starts this process.
To successfully compete with conventional major software providers Conexa is leading an emerging industry trend of renting rather than selling business software.
“Our model directly links customer charges to customer outcomes rather than expecting customers to invest big amounts in software and infrastructure as our competitors do. We encourage our customers to deploy our solution as widely as possible throughout their organisation but they still only pay on usage and results. Licences with Conexa are a metaphor of the past.
“Typically we can connect major businesses to our network and start generating benefits in between two weeks to two months. Our competitors often take years to deliver benefits and still charge for their software on the basis of the number of users accessing the solution.”
Conexa has 52 staff based in New Zealand and Australia. Until recently Australia has been its predominant export market; however with new contracts it now has customers in more than 100 countries around the globe. Significant markets going forward will be Asia, the Middle East and the Americas.
Over the next two years Conexa projects its exports will increase at the rate of between 150 and 200 per cent per annum as it focuses on growing its footprint and establishing a global distribution network. Mr Baldwin says Conexa’s success is all the more pleasing because it comes off the back of the difficult dotcom years, 2002-2004.
“We managed to successfully navigate our way through that period and today we are leading the way in making it both easier and less expensive for companies to trade across the globe.
“Our advice to New Zealand companies looking to get into export would be to take small cautious steps. We’ve found that doing business internationally is very rewarding but the cost of a sale can be very high and time lines longer than you would expect.
“The ultimate risk is spreading yourself too thinly and losing everything, however this can be mitigated by careful management and thorough research. In the final assessment, it does take a little luck, and as we say at Conexa, ‘the harder you work the luckier you get’.”
Image: Brent Baldwin, CEO, Conexa and Conexa staff.
Contact: Brent BaldwinChief Executive OfficerConexaPhone: +64 9 915 7770Email: brent.baldwin@conexa.comWebsite: www.conexa.com
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