With businesses facing more and more challenges by the day, the need to find growth areas within your chosen sectors has become even more important.
For life sciences, pharmaceuticals, automotive and e-commerce, the DACH region, consisting of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, is a growing market actively looking for innovative solutions to push the sectors forward. In fact, in 2020 companies supported by Enterprise Ireland had exports from Ireland to DACH totalling over €1.8 billion.
One Irish company that has seen the opportunity within the DACH region is Cubic Telecom, a business that produces an innovative platform called PACE to bring 24/7 connected software in cars to a new level. The opportunities for such a platform are huge – in 2019, the global connected car market was valued at $63.03 billion, and it’s projected to reach $225.16 billion by 2027. Not surprisingly, as the centre of the automotive industry in Europe and home to many world-leading car makers, the German market has a significant share in this growth.
But when entering such a huge market as the German automotive industry, research is vital to ensure that any partnerships formed are strategic and sustainable – as Cubic understood from the very start. This is where Enterprise Ireland, and specifically its Market Research Centre and the Enterprise Ireland team in Dusseldorf, were able to help.
“We did not simply select Germany as a generic target market,” Cubic Telecom CCO Gerry McQuaid says. “We looked at the world’s biggest automotive manufacturers and decided which companies we wished to build a partnership with. This naturally led us to Germany, the home of some of the world’s top auto manufacturers.”
“We were very careful to take the time to understand what is required to do business successfully with large prestigious German companies and we had excellent support from the Enterprise Ireland team in Germany.” Cubic Telecom CCO Gerry McQuaid
Platform for success
Cubic Telecom’s solutions are indispensable for the whole range of services used by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) through the connectivity of cars, including entertainment, safety, driver assistance and vehicle management. Specifically, Cubic’s PACE platform enables cars and other devices to automatically connect to high-speed local mobile networks around the world securely and compliantly, while the PLXOR solution offers a single view of how content services are consumed across global fleets. And, its newest product, INSIGHTS, provides the business intelligence needed to see exactly how a fleet is performing, with real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities.
Already, Cubic has enjoyed much success, connecting over 7 million devices and vehicles in 103 markets across Europe, North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, Africa and Asia-Pacific. The company’s major opportunity in the automotive market is in its current partnership with the Volkswagen Group; already the company has established roll outs with OEMs like Skoda or Porsche, with more models to be added.
“We were delighted to partner with the leading automotive brands within Volkswagen Group and this partnership has been an intrinsic part of developing our business success in Germany,” says McQuaid
This strategic partnership was carefully planned and researched by the Cubic team. From their initial introduction into Germany, the Enterprise Ireland office in Germany supported Cubic’s progress within the automotive industry. With important connections across the German automotive and future mobility ecosystem, and a comprehensive overview of the economic landscape, the German office can advise companies not only in the early phases with finding the right approach and direction, but also with advanced business development when pivoting new sub-sectors or intensify current activities.
Guidance from the German office proved very supportive for Cubic when it was entering the market in the early days. It now provides German brands such as Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche with a fully digital experience for their drivers.
Enterprise Ireland’s Market Research Centre also played a key role. Client companies can use the centre to gain access to company, sector, market and country information needed to explore opportunities and compete in international markets. This allows companies like Cubic to assess and validate a market before developing an export strategy with support from the local office.
In fact, the approach proved so successful that Gerry recommends it to any company seeking to enter new markets. “Start by considering the needs of the customer you are selling to, what solution you are selling, who you need to sell it to and what markets those target customers are in. Then leverage the Enterprise Ireland regional offices to get introductions to the people in that market who you need to meet.”
