impROV – delivering results through indirect international marketing
A previous winner in the Small Company category of the Scottish Offshore Achievement Awards, Aberdeen-based impROV Ltd stepped up a gear at this year’s ceremony and picked up one of the genuine “blue riband” awards – the Export Achievement Award, sponsored by “The Press and Journal”.
For a company which was only established in 2002, it was a historic achievement, and one which vindicates the bold development strategy of the founding directors.
“Necessity drove us to consider exporting even before we established the business,” admits managing director Alan Duncan, pictured (left) receiving his award from Deputy First Minister and Enterprise Minister Nicol Stephen.
“Our team had considerable prior experience of the global subsea intervention market, and we believed the North Sea had passed its peak in terms of demand for such technology, with a degree of rental market saturation in the case of some tooling.”
“Nonetheless, we were confident that a healthy international demand existed for a specialist business which genuinely understood how to exploit the technical interface between subsea production systems and the remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) used to service them.”
impROV has gone on to develop an impressive range of subsea intervention tooling systems and engineering expertise based on this understanding of the market. (“The deeper the water and more remote the location the greater the demand for project-specific tooling,” notes Alan Duncan).
One Subsea Torque Tool, for example, enables operators to perform multiple tasks with a single ROV dive, without having to recover the ROV to change tools. In deepwater regions in particular, such versatility can realise significant vessel time savings, and this tool is already in heavy demand in West Africa and the Gulf of Mexico.
Impressive growth
In only four years, impROV has built overseas business to over 80% of turnover, and has seen impressive growth of over 50% year-on-year over the same period. Alan Duncan has little doubt that this performance vindicates the company’s export planning process.
“From the onset, we decided to track overseas business opportunities by field development rather than by country,” he notes. “In particular, we targeted fields with a well count of six or more, which are more likely to generate project-specific subsea tooling sub-contracts.”
impROV went on to develop an effective “hub and spoke” internationalisation strategy, with formal “hub” operations in locations where “Tier 1” customers require support for their decision-making facilities, and “Spokes” facilities delivered through a network of sales and service agents for satellite operations or for “Tier 2” customers.
“Hubs” established to date or in the development pipeline include Aberdeen, Houston (May 2006) and Norway (2007), with an ambitious target to have a “Spokes” network of fully-resourced agents in place by 2007 to cover Angola, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, France, Italy, Libya, Nigeria and Singapore.
The indirect route
impROV describes its overall export strategy as “indirect”, tracking major subsea projects by field and operator on a global basis and deliberately activating relationships as a trusted sub-contractor to the local manufacturers of subsea production systems.
“In essence, we build on our expertise to establish strong customer technical support relationships before any tooling purchase decisions are made,” explains Alan Duncan. “This may be a more subtle export approach, but it definitely delivers good long-term results.”
“We don’t care where in the world our Tier 1 and 2 customers are working – we track them within our agreed classification criteria and deliver effective support which is tailored to suit each new potential application.”
impROV is pleased to record its debt to Scottish Enterprise Grampian for valuable market development grants which, in the early days, enabled the young company to operate on a fully international basis.
“I personally believe that nothing represents a better use of a sales and marketing budget than establishing close contact with customers in their place of business, wherever that may take you,” confirms Alan Duncan.
impROV now has its sights set on achieving turnover of £20 million by 2010. With such a classic, level-headed approach to “working the world”, one suspects that further business achievement awards may well be picked up along the way.
For further information about impROV, visit www.improvltd.co.uk
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