WDA have delivered a global rebrand project for a leading software business based on Pride Park.

The new positioning will enhance Strumis’ emphasis on directly benefiting its clients’ bottom line results by bringing better order and control to their business systems and processes. The positioning also reinforces Strumis commitment to the Structural Steel Fabrication Industry.

‘Bringing Structure to Steel’
The new positioning ‘Bringing Structure to Steel’ will additionally help unify communications globally and is accompanied by a brand communications platform developed to ensure Strumis can consistently but flexibly communicate its brand message – and critically within that its brand and bottom line delivery difference – to a wide audience of both existing customers and those new to Strumis. A new visual toolkit has also been developed to leverage this new positioning and platform.

Strumis Managing Director Simon Inman presented the new strategic brand positioning and platform at the company’s global sales conference held at the group HQ in the UK to key Strumis managers from countries including the US, Canada, China, India, Australia and the Middle East.

“This was a strategic exercise,” explained Simon “which aims to create a clearer positioning for Strumis ‘the brand’ together with a flexible and targetable brand platform which supports all our future product development and marketing plans.

Going into this process the consensus was that whilst we’re great at doing what we do, we’re maybe not as good at explaining that to everyone within the market! For that reason we didn’t just want a lick of paint or any old ’tag line’. This was about delving into our DNA and uncovering the things that differentiate our offering and clearly resonate with our audience.

Our global HQ in the UK is the company’s cost centre, being the place where all the software development takes place [Strumis employs a much larger team of specialist developers than anyone else in the sector]. For this reason It’s easy occasionally for us as a business to get caught up on the technicalities of the software we create and develop. Of course we are extremely proud of all that code! Likewise the software solutions we offer are we believe the best on the market today. A claim we feel is backed up by the fact that we enjoyed 47 active ‘swap-outs’ from competitor software last year alone. [To date Strumis are not aware of a single swap-out going the other way]. Indeed we are especially proud of our 3D BimReview module and our unique mobile app technologies. We also have an all in one license model which customers love.”

Bringing an expert external perspective
However after enlisting the help of renowned UK branding experts WDA, Strumis began to reappraise its proposition. WDA’s external perspective and insights suggested that perhaps Strumis weren’t really  in the software development business at all.

“Working with WDA we realised that the technicalities and features of our software were only part of the story, and due to the rapid rate we are developing new components, a (very fast) moving feast. When we really started to think about the Strumis brand offering from the industry’s perspective, it became clear that we are actually in the Steel Fabrication Business Solutions business.

The bottom line for our clients, and the reason so many remain loyal (and so many switch over) is that ultimately our solutions create highly desirable commercial business benefits – directly boosting revenues or profits – most often both.

They do this by connecting, streamlining and simplifying clients business systems and resources. And this is at the heart of what we offer – whether customers are big or small, whichever software edition or modules they use and wherever in the world they are located – Strumis brings the same core commercial advantages,  the same significant client rewards  and the specific business benefits  required.

We have truly brilliant solutions for businesses from small fabrication shops, right through to the giants. Of course their needs vary considerably, but we realise that whilst on a different scale [and often achieved in a different way] both customer groups are essentially partnering with Strumis for the same reasons: We understand their sector better than anyone else; and our solutions bring structure to their systems – which in turn cuts costs and increases efficiencies, effectiveness and profits.”

Taking ‘New Strumis’ out to market
In addition to the global rebrand WDA have created a host of ‘route to market’ collateral both digital and tangible, from stand and launch campaign (including animation) for the recent NASCC Steel Show in Orlando Florida; to assistance with the launch of the company’s most important software release to date – V10.