In 1993, entrepreneurship fever struck the R&D labs of Singapore's Information Technology Institute. First to be spun off as a commercial entity was Elixir Technology Pte Ltd. Today, Elixir offers a commanding suite of software tools designed for end-to-end integration of the business intelligence lifecycle. It has reporting tools for operational needs, OLAP tools for management and analytical reporting, tools for aggregating disparate source data and a dashboard front-end for visualising complex datasets.
"The size of the local market was just too small," said managing director Lau Shih Hor. "We knew our product needed to appeal to a wider audience." With that in mind, Lau's team set out to create a country-neutral product that can be easily adopted internationally. This vision served the company well; today, 70 per cent of its revenues are from the overseas market.
Elixir's prudence extended to finances as well - it didn't overspend in the days of the dotcom boom when everyone was judging a company by its "burn rate", or how fast it spent money. It also paid attention to forging complementary business and technology partnerships. It formed one with Sun Microsystems under the Infocomm Local Industry Upgrading Programme (iLIUP) by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). Sun wanted solutions and products running on Java and Elixir wanted to build its products to work on a widely accepted and robust platform.
IDA's iLIUP program catalysed and strengthened the relationship. Valuable technology resources and information, including access to Sun's hardware labs was made available to Elixir under the iLIUP arrangement. Lau especially appreciated the marketing and branding support provided by Sun. Sun also played an invaluable role in referring Elixir's solutions to Sun's own customers.
Currently, Elixir's partnership with Sun grew even deeper and stronger under IDA's Overseas Development Programme (ODP). Just like the iLIUP program, ODP has a programme manager that is based in the country of cooperation to function as the local liaison between the partners.
"This manager is absolutely critical to how well the partnership works," said Lau. "He or she can be a real catalyst in getting the right people, in the right places. There are plenty of opportunities to cross-sell."
Lau has some words of advice for the aspiring entrepreneur: "Finding the right partners is critical. It can really shorten the time it takes to position your product in the marketplace. It's all about cultivating an alliance with your partners so you can ride on the shoulder of giants. They will bring you along whichever market they go into. In order for a synergistic partnership to happen, remember to give back. Learn to ask: 'What do you need from us?' Help them sell their products. Practise the pull-through effect: when you close a sale, you pull them through and into the deal as well, and everyone ends up winning."