Irish companies find OpenWorld to be the ideal place to make valuable connections, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

FOR THE 12 Irish companies who headed to San Francisco with Enterprise Ireland (EI) this year, a huge event like OpenWorld is all about connections.

“It’s kind of the medieval idea of a market town: the buyers and the sellers come together,” says Mark Simons, business development director of Rockall Technologies, which provides software for the financial services market.

Donal Cullen, chief executive of productivity software company Spanish Point Technologies, says, “You have to get to the market and that’s what this is about. You have to come here, understand the customers – an event like this satisfies a lot of needs.”

Over the past year, EI worked with Oracle and Microsoft in Ireland to develop a programme to bring Irish firms to each company’s major business event in the US. At OpenWorld, EI brought companies out to focus specifically on the sales channel for the first time, says Nick Marmion, west coast manager for software and services for EI.

They looked for Irish companies with established sales and some UK sales experience, but that might not have tested US waters. EI was unsure how many companies would be interested, but was “pleasantly surprised”.

All of the companies utilised the EI group stand, but several had their own booths as well. EI paid for the group space and registration costs, and companies paid about 50 per cent of their costs.

“Coming to these events is a massive eye-opener for what their companies could be,” says Paul Browne, senior development adviser, EI. “You get clients on the stand, networking events and introductions.”

Companies also liaised with consultants on how to work the sales channel and to navigate Oracle internally to develop partnerships. “The key thing is to open the door to bring companies out here, and then have them hit the ground when here to get opportunities, and exploit them.”

According to Rockall’s Simons, “The challenge for a small Irish company when attacking the US market is visibility. This gives us visibility. You meet a lot of analysts, the press and also partners.”

Meeting analysts was especially useful, he says. “You need those guys covering you, because the clients talk to them and you need to be on their radar.”

Barry Yelverton is director of Whitehouse Consultants, which provides expertise on Oracle JD Edwards products. He values OpenWorld for three things: providing “new customers and generating leads; the learning factor – all the new announcements and being able to get that first-hand; and then networking, both people within Oracle and their partners.”

This year’s event provided all three.

Jason Keogh, founder and chief technology officer of inventory analysis software company iQuate, is an OpenWorld veteran.

He has been coming to the event for three years. Why?

“Very simple: the people that you meet here.” Keogh made a last minute decision to attend for the first time in 2009, and says “the size and scale of it was an eye opener”. Attending was also a wise investment: “We spent about €12,000 and made back about 10 times that directly from leads here, so it was an easy decision to come back in 2010.”

He says in total, about €500,000 in revenue for the company “is directly attributable to partnerships we’ve made here”. He even found the company’s chief executive, Paul Sutton, at OracleWorld.

Where Keogh’s first year was mostly spent on the booth, this year he has primarily been attending private events and meetings, he says. “The more you come, the more you have to do. You know people, meet people, and reconnect with people.”

Security management software company Vordel markets a product that is complementary to Oracle’s Fusion applications and has a strategic partner relationship with Oracle, but this year was the first time Vordel has had a booth at OpenWorld.

Hugh Carroll, Vordel’s vice president of marketing and operations, says the Vordel team were encouraged by the reception they received. “We’d give it an A+,” he said. What’s it like to network for four days in a row? “There’s little sleep, let’s put it that way. You’ve got to see, and be seen and heard.”