OFFSIDE GAMING
Do you have what it takes to make B2B successful?
Matt Jellicoe, CEO of Offside Gaming, asks what does it take to make an online business-to-business operation work?
A
plethora of online business to business operations have launched in the last couple of years from both new ventures and existing operators. However it still seems as if 90% of business to buiness
deals founder in reality. There are still many new entrants eager to invest in this space without sufficient knowledge and many fairly experienced new ventures struggling under increased competition and legal issues thrown up in Europe and the US. With the failure rate so high and the pareto principle (or 80:20 rule) so apparent what are the key principles of getting B2B to work for your business?
Whether a software company or an operator
moving into the B2B space, everyone is trying to achieve the same thing - to grow profitable long term businesses. However despite a fairly straightforward strategic objective it is amazing how many different ways there are of going about it.
…be prepared to get stuck in and drive the venture forward if things don’t go according to plan
Software led companies; The pure software model is likely a relatively easy
deployment where the software company charges fees to cover its input and protects itself with on-going monthly maintenance fees or monthly minimums. The reality is, however, that any operator entering European markets in the current time really has their work cut out. There seem to be many suppliers out there currently whose model is more based on
30 MAY 2011
getting £100k up front for a platform build, covering themselves with high monthly charges, with the majority of clients burning out after 6 months. And here lies the fundamental issue. In today’s
world launching an e-gaming business is tricky. You really have to know what you are doing. Too many suppliers are willing to ‘sell’ without too
much analysis of the strategy of their intended partner. Questions need to be asked like; What is their strategy? What is their business plan? What is the finance and what are the team like? If you want a partner for the long term it is really important to do full due diligence on them.
There are still many new entrants eager to invest in this space without sufficient knowledge and many fairly experienced new ventures struggling under increased competition
This becomes particularly apparent in Europe with
so many markets on the verge of regulation. Any software company selling gaming software into a soon to be regulated market likely has little interest in your long term business model and more interest in short term build fees.
Operator models
The other issue is that once a client is live what kind of support are you willing to give them. For example some of the ‘operator’ led B2B operations have full marketing support, CRM, affiliate support
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