Established in 2011, giosg is a Finnish company which develops and markets digital tools that allow companies to interact with online visitors and customers in diverse, personalised and creative ways.
giosg combines data and artificial intelligence (AI) with feature-rich technology to provide intuitive solutions that deliver the right online trigger, to the right person at the right time – allowing organisations to operate smarter.
Through the years, giosg has become a leader in its domain. Several well-respected real-estate, banking, insurance and e-commerce organisations have implemented the company’s solutions.
Late 2016, giosg decided to start working with Aexus as its sales partner for specific countries in Europe. Jussi Karelo (COO of giosg): “We met one of the directors of Aexus at an e-commerce event. Based on the initial discussions we had, we realized there was a nice match in terms of our plans and strategy and the background and focus areas of Aexus. Also, the collaboration model they provided was well-aligned with our thinking. This model is highly succes-driven: the remuneration is to a large extent based on the business that is generated and won by Aexus.”
In the early stages of the engagement, giosg and Aexus focused on a few segments only. Karelo: “In Finland, we had various clients in the banking, telecoms and insurance domains, so we decided to focus on these segments in our international activities as well. Aexus was able to arrange the first meetings and organize the first roadshows very quickly. We found it very exciting that our offering was so well-received internationally, even by large enterprises and brands! After having generated the first traction in the corporate domain, we decided to extend our activities to mid-sized companies as well. Companies of a somewhat smaller size are able to make decisions much more rapidly than the larger enterprises. This led to several signed deals and deployments within a relatively short period of time.”
“Working with Aexus allows us to cost efficiently scale our business in new markets.”
As the collaboration progressed, Aexus was able to work more and more independently and also take responsibility for new partner selection and onboarding. Karelo: “We changed our go-to-market to a more partner-driven model. We are now also working with agencies and resellers that include our offering in their portfolio. Aexus has taken a leading role here too. They identify relevant prospect channels, take responsibility for the onboarding and provide first level support on implementations. In the meantime, we have been able to establish a network of various highly interesting channel partners together with Aexus, whereby Aexus takes care of the local partner management and client activation activities. This significanly reduces the burden on our internal customer engagement and customer services departments. This is also highly appreciated by our customers: they can get direct support in their own language.”
Through the years, giosg has been approached by various companies that claim to have good contacts and that wish to represent giosg internationally. Karelo: “Good connections in itself don’t mean much to me. You need to be able to get things done. I have experienced that the Aexus team is very professional and sales driven. They know what it takes to accelerate sales and bring deals to closure.”
For giosg, outsourcing its sales activities has worked out very well. Karelo: “Working with Aexus allows us to cost efficiently scale our business in new markets. The ROI is much better compared to setting up our own office and hiring our own people in new territories. Besides, the overall approach and the quality of service delivered by the Aexus team has been consistently good.”