Accounting Hub / IFRS 17 Software Provider
Sales as a Service: Accounting Hub / IFRS 17
The client was a small, niche vendor in the Accounting Hub / Sub Ledger market. Competing with the major ERP players such as Oracle, Workday and SAP. A Senior Sales Consultant was retained in the Sales as a Service model to augment the existing sales team in London.
Country / Region:
EMEA
Client Product
Accounting Hub/Sub Ledger solution
G2M Service:
Sales As A Service
Category:
Insurance
Requirements
The requirement consisted of 2 phases.
Phase 1: Re-establish Financial Services go-to-market in EMEA. Test Banking and Insurance verticals for appetite for the Accounting Hub/Sub Ledger solution.
Phase 2: Having validated that Insurance representing the biggest opportunity that the business had seen for years (IFRS 17). The goal was to work to create the go-to-market messaging and go out and acquire a charter client in EMEA.
Engagement with the Banking Sector at that time revealed that there was as always, interest in the idea of finance automation and transformation but without the regulatory drivers there was little consistent demand.
The insurance sector was just starting to interpret the impact of IFRS 17 and with a demand for granular accounting and calculations such as Contractual Service Margin (CSM). We recognised a perfect fit and made a intentional move to focus on Insurance.
Approach
Worked with the product/pre-sales and marketing team to test and develop the messaging, engaging across a range of insurers in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Austria and the Nordics. At that time every insurer was keen to talk about the requirement and there was much education to be done.
We needed to find an early adopter to work with and a firm who was willing to work with a niche player rather than one of the larger incumbent providers such as SAP, SAS, Oracle and Moodys.
An engagement started to mature in the Netherlands with a large life insurer. This sub vertical was one of the more heavily impacted due to the long dated nature of their policies. The prospect had an existing ERP vendor in place and therefore the competition already had an advantage. However the insurer and my customer were a perfect match both culturally and functionally with the product. After a 18 month sales cycle and a hard fought battle with the incumbent vendor the charter client was secured. We continued to work to expand the footprint in the Netherlands and after a sustained campaign two of the largest life insurers were signed as clients which was a major success all round.
Results
Following the successful execution of the IFRS 17 campaign two of the largest life insurers were signed as clients which was a major success all round. We won the “Deal of Year” award from the software customer for the initial charter client win.
