Asian Century Solutions
Assess, Launch and Grow Your Business in Asia

ACS Case Study - KACE Networks

How Asian Century Solutions Assisted KACE Networks
Made the Asian Pacific Market Profitable in Just Three Months


Challenge: KACE Networks is the leading systems management appliance company. KACE was establishedin 2003 and its first full quarter of selling was Q1 of 2005. Asian Century Solutions (ACS) began working with Kace in January of 2007, when KACE was still a fledgling company in the US, with just a two year track record in the US market. At that time, KACE had no partners, customers, or brand in Asia. KACE’s management team felt that their offering had promise in the Asia Pacific market, but they did not have the internal resources, experience or relationships necessary for accelerated success in Asia….and they didn’t dare take their eye off the ball of their growing home market business.

What ACS Did: ACS provided KACE with an outsourced Asia Pacific sales, marketing, and technical services organization along with the strategies, local relationships and daily focus necessary to break through the market inertia that faces all new market entrants in Asia. ACS approached Asia Pacific market development for KACE in three phases: assess, launch, and grow.

  • In the assess phase, ACS analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of competitive offerings in 15 countries, developed a channel-centric strategy, identified likely channel partners, researched customer requirements and points of dissatisfaction, and determined the technical skills necessary to support both partners and customers in the region.
  • During the launch phase, ACS hired local technical staff for partner enablement, support, pre-sales demonstrations and proof of concept deployments. ACS’s business development and technical staff worked together to recruit, enable and support the initial business partners in the region while directly managing the first few sales campaigns.
  • In the grow phase, ACS established a two-level distribution system in established markets, recruited resellers in new markets, and continued to drive both revenue and technical skill levels and sales resource commitment levels throughout the channel.

ACS Results: Within 3 months, the Asia Pacific market was profitable for KACE. Within 9 months, the Asia Pacific market was contributing significantly to KACE’s quarterly global performance. Within 18 months, KACE had over 40 partners in 12 countries, and counted leading organizations from multiple vertical and national markets as happy customers.

Today, KACE has an extensive network of trained and focused distributors, consultants and reseller partners across 15 Asian countries, and the Asia Pacific region’s pipeline is over 10% of the company’s global revenue targets. After just over 18 months of selling, ACS’s staff have sold and implemented KACE solutions to over 30 customers, including the following high-profile local and multinational organizations in the region: Telenor, Ufone, Askari Bank, Atlas Bank, Starwood Hotels, Young & Rubicam, Hap Seng, Philip Capital, Asia Life, Indonesia Post Office, Indonesia Department of Justice, Kuwait Finance House, Honda, Soneri Bank, Melbourne IVF, Coal Services, ChinaTrust Bank, and eServ Global. The pipeline today contains late-stage opportunities with major airlines, taxation bureaus, automotive manufacturers, food and beverage distributors, stock exchanges, call centers, multinational banks, and multinational hotel chains.

Now that KACE’s business is established in Asia, KACE is ready to “leave the nest” and take its business to even higher levels with its own dedicated organization. The new sales and technical teams will be able to focus on existing opportunities and channels from day 1 and will be able to leverage the existing momentum rather than starting from a stand still.

“Considering the size, diversity and complexity of the Asia Pacific region, I must say that I was surprised by the degree and speed of success ACS was able to achieve. I thought it was going to be much harder and slower going, and I am sure it would have been if we approached the market on our own. ACS was the catalyst that provided the experience, relationships, market knowledge, and daily focus we needed to kick start our business in Asia”, said Rob Meinhardt, CEO of KACE Networks.

“The ACS team functioned like a seamless extension of our own organization. Thanks to ACS, we now have a great foundation from which a dedicated team can build. ACS told us that they would help us achieve our first million in revenue in the region before opening an office or hiring an employee, and that is exactly what they did.”, said Chris Moore, VP of World Wide Sales at KACE Networks.