The Invensys Story

The challenge

Invensys Process Systems (IPS) is a well-known and trusted supplier of automation systems to the energy industry, frequently being appointed as Main Automation Contractor (MAC) to major Oil & Gas and Power projects. Yet the company has a diverse range of services and systems to offer its customers, which go far beyond the remit of the traditional MAC. By involving IPS early on in a project and widening the scope of what IPS supplies, a customer can achieve major cost and time benefits. The challenge IPS faced was how to get this message across to senior customer executives in a direct and effective way.

Action

IPS had previously commissioned Sales Guides from Solutions for Sales (SfS), so it was a natural step for the company to ask whether the highly successful SfS methodology could be re-purposed to this particular challenge. Working in close cooperation with IPS sales, engineering and project managers, SfS quickly captured the key aspects of what was required and developed what came to be known as a Project Guide. Initially targeted at one specific major Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project, Project Guides have since been used to open up sales opportunities at two other large LNG projects.

Results

When the first Project Guide was shown to a senior executive of one of the consortium partners in the initial LNG project, the effect was startling: “Our customer retired to the back of the conference hall and read the whole Project Guide through in one sitting,” is how David Carew, Vice President, Growth Markets described the immediate impact the Guide had. “Our customer was impressed not only by the wealth of service and system offerings we could bring to his project, but also by how well we had captured his business issues and explained how we could deliver the benefits. It opened our customer’s eyes to the full potential of working with IPS as a partner.”

The key value of the Project Guide is that it succinctly explains to customer executives how a company they have known for years and recognise as being a good supplier for just one aspect of their needs is capable of bringing so much more value to their business. As David Carew put it: “The Project Guide delivers results that no amount of presentations, meetings and brochures can achieve.” Within just a few months of the Project Guide being presented to another LNG customer, IPS was in the running to be allocated a major part of the customer’s project – despite the fact that the project shareholders had previously decided to award all the automation content to an IPS competitor.

“Without the Project Guide we would never have been able to gain so much traction within these major energy projects. It has elevated IPS from being just another automation supplier working in the shadow of the main project contractor, to being a valued partner and contributor to our customers’ business.”

David Carew, Vice President, Growth Markets, Invensys Process Systems

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