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Camilion Solutions accesses IBM resources to identify opportunities, shorten sales cycles, and bolster its business case
Retiring baby boomers are generating dramatic demographic shifts in the insurance market. Pressure is increasing on large insurance carriers to be more customer-centric by developing a wider selection of products for a progressively more segmented market.
This burgeoning trend represents a major opportunity for Camilion Solutions, which provides product development solutions for insurance organizations. The Camilion solution, ProductAuthority, is an enterprise-level application that helps customers automate and streamline a repeatable product development process so that they can develop and launch insurance products faster.
"It typically takes carriers years to bring a new product to market, so by the time they roll it out, the consumer may no longer require it. Our solution enables them to bring the product to market in a matter of months," said Tim Attia, senior vice president of strategic relationships for Camilion.
The company counts among its customers the world's largest insurance carriers, and its marketing sights are set on penetrating the top 50 global insurance carriers.
Top priorities for Camilion include accelerating its own time-to-market and expanding its reach into enterprise-level carriers with more than US$1 billion in revenue. The IBM marketing and technical resources available to Camilion as an
IBM Business Partner has helped them attain both goals.
"We're an IBM Business Partner because IBM is very strong in the insurance enterprise space," Attia said. "And offerings like IBM Sales Connections and resources like the IBM Innovation Center have helped us smooth and speed the sales cycle."
An Advanced IBM Business Partner, Camilion is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and has qualified for optimized benefits in the insurance industry of the IBM PartnerWorld® Industry Networks, which offers a rich set of benefits to all PartnerWorld members who want to build their vertical market capabilities, expand their partner network, and attract customers in the markets they serve.
IBM WebSphere® is integral to ProductAuthority, and access to IBM Sales Connections provides Camilion with a natural link to the IBM WebSphere sales team. "Sales Connections allows us to engage the IBM sales teams and ensure that everyone is pulling in the same direction," Attia explained.
"For instance, if the WebSphere team is already with a customer and negotiating a larger enterprise license, we can help them make a stronger business case for the upgrade," said Attia. "They, in turn, can help us by positioning their product in the most cost-effective way possible, allowing us to make a strong argument for lower total cost of ownership."
Attia attributes an average two-week reduction in account qualification time to this enhanced interaction with the responsible IBM sales team.
Camilion leverages remote access to IBM Innovation Centers for testing the performance and scalability capabilities of ProductAuthority with specific IBM technologies. This allows Camilion to show target accounts detailed performance metrics for the particular Camilion and IBM solution being proposed.
Technical teams from Camilion work with IBM architectural and IT consultants from a wide range of IBM products—DB2®, AIX®, WebSphere Application Server, and IBM Power Systems servers. Those IBM teams provide both Camilion and the prospect with expert guidance on configuring and tuning every IBM element within the solution.
"The IBM Innovation Center is a great resource for easing enterprise IT planning," said Attia. "It's invaluable for us because it provides the means to test in a flexible environment with the latest IBM technology and allows us to provide our customers with factual evidence of our support for IBM technology."
Camilion has also leveraged the IBM Global Solution Center in Dallas, Texas, which provides the opportunity to bring customers on-site for "real-world" demonstrations. "The Global Solution Center is a customer-facing venue where IBM showcases the capabilities of its technology working with ours," said Attia. "It's a place for us to show a day in the life of product development and for demonstrating vision," he said.
Leveraging the Global Solution Center, Camilion has increased the number of demonstrations of its products to prospective clients by 15 percent, Attia said.
Other IBM Business Partner benefits leveraged by Camilion focus less on strengthening a business case to a particular target account than on an integrated demand generation campaign, comprised of tradeshow and conference participation, webcasts, and print advertising.
Camilion regularly engages its IBM marketing relationship manager to discuss potential co-marketing opportunities. In fact, by virtue of the marketing development funds made available to Camilion since the relationship began in 2006, the company has been able to expand these demand generation efforts by 10 percent.
Camilion was also invited to participate in the 2008 IBM Financial Services Center Kick-Off, which generated five qualified account leads and provided valuable access to IBM sales and development teams, Attia said.
Founded in 2001, Camilion considers itself an agile, entrepreneurial company vying for the attention of the largest enterprises in the world. This underscores the strategic importance of being an IBM Business Partner for Camilion Solutions, according to Attia.
"IBM PartnerWorld Industry Networks has enabled Camilion to reach top-tier insurance carriers with credible claims and demonstrable capabilities in half the time it would take us using just our own resources," Attia said.
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