Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

I posted, early in January, about where our bus is headed (you might refer to this as our Vision).  I have progressively refined this, since then, to improve the clarity of this core message.

For those who are interested, I have also started posting more details about some aspects of this Vision – as falling under any of these core headings.  This post provides more details under the first heading.

As part of the navel-gazing we have been doing recently (to coincide with our 10th birthday, which is rapidly approaching) we have been contemplating this question.  For us, there are plenty of opportunities (some mutually exclusive – at least for a company our size).

Being New Year’s Day, I thought it would be of interest to you to post a few comments about where our bus is headed into the future. Call this our very own New Year’s resolution.

A.     Where we are at now

Since we opened our doors at the beginning of 2000, we have steadily grown our client base – by growing our product range and by continuing to find more clients interested in our first products that make the electricity market understandable.

The chart below shows a story of where we are at, roughly speaking:

It really is a tale of two stories:

1)  About half our revenue comes from a group of valued clients that we value very much.

2)  About half our revenues come from a “long tail” of clients who all also enjoy our software.

Our clients range from a number of Australia’s largest organisations (companies and Government departments) down to single person consultancies.  It includes most of “the usual suspects” (in relation to the electricity market) and a number from left-of-field.

Our clients span 4 continents, but most of our revenue is still earned in Australia, at this stage.

We believe that our clients really do love the software and service we provide (many have been with us for many years), though we will be doing additional work to confirm this inference in 2010.

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B.     Where we are headed

With the opportunities we wish to pursue, we see major opportunities to grow our revenues.

We see it plausible, though definitely challenging, that we can grow our revenues to 20x their current level over the coming years (well within 10 years).

We see this will be done by working (simultaneously) on both ends of our client distribution curve above.

1)   A longer “long tail”

There is much we can do to grow our customer base.

In parallel with the above, we see it as plausible that we can grow our # clients to 20x their current level over the coming years (well within 10 years).

We have already identified a number of options available to us, including:

(a)   We currently serve a number of large industrial energy users in Australia – we can continue to expand the number of energy users we serve across Australia (but this will require new services to be developed);

(b)   We can progress from electricity into related commodity markets;

(c)  We can progress from power generation into other heavy industries;

(d) We can progress from the Australian National Electricity Market into other electricity markets internationally.

We have been involved in the market of Ontario since 2002 as a test case for whether we can serve markets internationally.  Though we have made some mistakes, we have learnt enough to see that it is possible for us (though challenging).

There are pros and cons of each potential expansion route – meaning that we will need to test each option out with some prototyping and experimentation.

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2)   More revenue per client

In parallel with this, we will also be seeking to increase average revenue per client.

We have already made some headway in this respect (through a combination of improved marketing, and development of new products for specially identified niches).

We will continue down this path in the coming months and years…

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C.     Can we get there?

Yeah, I know, this will be a bit of a challenge for us.  Or, to put it in other terms, this is part of our “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” (BHAG).

Based on where we have travelled over the past 10 years (including a few obligatory detours) I believe that our vision is plausible, though very challenging.  Certainly something worth getting out of bed for in the morning.

Stay tuned, on this blog, for future updates to our progress.

Oh and, by the way, as I have noted before, I agree with Lars Rasmussen when he noted that we won’t need a detailed map.

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Tags: business growth, management of software company, Marketing & Sales, product development, strategic planning, vision, where the bus is headed

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 12:00 pm and is filed under 03 - Product Development, 04 - Sales & Marketing, Company Results, Vision. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.