Our Role Supporting Export and Trade

Written by Lucy Price on August 27th 2020.

Becoming an Export Champion

Earlier this year, DriveWorks VP and CO-Founder, Maria Sarkar was appointed Northern Powerhouse Export Champion for 2020.

First launched in the North in 2013, The Export Champion programme is a key part of The Department for International Trade’s (DIT) Exporting is GREAT campaign.

The campaign aims to spark a movement around the UK of companies selling their products and services overseas.

Export Champions are appointed to represent a wide range of sectors throughout the region.

In her role as Export Champion, Maria is working to share more about our achievements in export and inspire other companies in the region to consider exporting as a realistic and successful opportunity for growth.

With a growing demand for British products and access to international markets, there is an increasing opportunity for UK businesses to succeed through export and international trade.

Northern Powerhouse: Support for UK Exporters in the Tech Sector

As part of her role as Export Champion, Maria was recently a guest speaker in a Department for International Trade webinar supporting other UK exporters in the tech sector.

In this webinar, Maria not only shared our story of successfully exporting our technology overseas but also shared some case studies of our own customers who have added a DriveWorks configurator to their website, opening up their products to new markets and increasing sales.

Successfully Exporting Overseas

DriveWorks was founded in 2001. Our software is used by businesses of all shapes and sizes from across the world, in a wide range of industries and market sectors. Almost 80% of our revenue now comes from overseas.

We have built a strong channel, with an international network of over 100 Value-Added Resellers across 53 countries, who work with us to sell and support our software.

Companies using DriveWorks range from SMEs to multi-nationals and globally recognised brands.

On a daily basis, we are supporting this channel with meetings, training and learning materials to ensure consistent quality.

We work hard to ensure our software is easy to use and can be supported no matter where you are in the world.

Think Globally – Act Locally

Through our integrated network, we have successfully built a strong global channel to provide support for our software worldwide.

Our established network of Value-Added Resellers has given us a global presence without having to have offices and employees in every country.

This global network has given us access to a customer base of over 100 SME’s and multi-nationals across lots of different industries in countries around the world.

This network has proved especially useful to us when trading overseas as it has created a point of contact for each of our DriveWorks customers, providing them with someone who speaks their language and is also on their timezone.

To help our resellers be consistent no matter where they are in the world, we have created lots of resources to train the trainer.

This includes everything a reseller could possibly need to present a class on DriveWorks – whether it is in Germany, Brazil, Australia or anywhere in the world.

Ensuring that our customers get a consistent experience whenever they use our software.

A Global Resource Library

A phrase we often refer back to at DriveWorks is helping others to help themselves.

And to be successful in exporting worldwide, we believe encouraging learning and knowledge sharing plays a key part.

At DriveWorks, we pride ourselves on being transparent. We have made sure all our information and resources can be easily accessed online at any time, by anyone.

We have worked hard to create a vast global resource library that provides anything from training and demos to our online documentation.

Making sure customers can always get help and access information without having to wait to speak to somebody is really important to us.

Through our website and online demo site – DriveWorksLive.com, users can access an abundance of interactive examples or sample projects allowing them to deep dive further into the technology and explore what can be achieved with DriveWorks.

Our community website is a user portal where we promote knowledge sharing. Containing lots of resources and a forum, our community creates an opportunity for our network to learn and share.

We are constantly reaching out to people whether it is our reseller channels or the end-user themselves, these online platforms give us the opportunity to stay connected from anywhere.

Supporting the Future Around the World

We have established an education program around the world, as well as supporting our role in sponsorship and CSR.

We work hard to inspire the next generation and encourage young people into digital career paths, as we understand they are going to be the future users of our software.

In the UK, we are proud to be STEM ambassadors and members of the Warrington Pledge, as well as working with local colleges and universities to support the future of digital.

Further afield, we continue to support education with our free DriveWorks training and certification programmes for anyone with access to SOLIDWORKS.

We are also proud to be part of the FIRST® Robotics Competition, supporting teams in the US with useful resources, learning opportunities and new skills.

Adapting to Global Changes

This year the world around us has changed in many ways and we have had to find ways of adapting and accepting the ‘new’ normal.

Prior to the global pandemic, we would attend trade shows and events all around the world as a way to visit our resellers, meet customers and showcase our software.

As things began to change and we moved into this new era of working from home, we committed as a company to come out of this stronger.

As a result of this, we had to re-imagine our annual reseller and customer event to become Digital DriveWorks World.

Instead of furloughing our team, we worked from home to recreate the event as an interactive, knowledge-sharing virtual experience.

To open up digital communication throughout the event we encouraged the use of video and online conversations between our delegates and the DriveWorks Team.

The event was a huge success and we received more (virtual) attendees from around the world than ever before, allowing us to promote the benefits of automation and digital selling to a greater audience.

Selling Digitally

COVID-19 has brought about many challenges for businesses across the world.

We are already seeing that for most businesses there is less opportunity for selling face to face. And while things start to get moving again, it seems the way we work may have changed forever.

Throughout the pandemic, we have seen that companies who are smart, agile, and open to change are more likely to survive. We have already seen many businesses are embracing digital as a result of this.

DriveWorks enables companies anywhere in the world to sell online and sell digitally.

We are huge advocates for anything digital and the ability for UK companies to bring wealth and business back to the UK through export.

Start Selling Online

Build an online configurator with DriveWorks to stay ahead of the competition, reduce costs, and win more business.

Try our online DriveWorks product configurators examples and see how easy it is to sell online, anywhere.

Example Configurators