Home >> Latest ArtCAM News >> Delcam wins a Queen’s Award for international sales success for the third year running
On 21st April, Delcam, the UK’s leading developer of CADCAM software will be presented with the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category in recognition of the continuing growth in world-wide sales of its Power Solution software. This latest recognition of the company’s successful development and commercialisation strategies follows its receipt of Queen’s Awards in the Innovation category in 2003 for its ArtCAM engraving and routing software and in 2004 for its PowerINSPECT inspection software.
The Queen’s Awards are the UK’s most coveted commercial awards, with only a small percentage of those who enter each year measuring up to the demanding standards required to win an Award. Delcam is obviously extremely proud of its exceptional achievement in receiving an Award in three successive years. "It is an endorsement of the commitment and skills of our staff in developing excellent products and promoting and selling them worldwide,” said Delcam Managing Director, Hugh Humphreys.
"Our development staff work extremely hard to overcome the technical challenges they meet when helping our customers to automate their processes, increase their productivity and improve their quality,” added Mr. Humphreys. "Similarly, our sales and marketing personnel are constantly travelling around the world to increase our exports, often spending weeks at a time away from their homes and families.”
The Award has been granted in recognition of Delcam’s consistent sales growth over the six years from 1998 to 2003. The company achieved record sales in each of those years, during which time it saw its exports almost double to more than £15 million. Subsequently, Delcam achieved a new record for monthly sales in December 2004, which contributed to even higher annual sales during last year.
A further landmark was reached during September 2004, when Summit Auto Body Industry, Thailand's largest supplier of pressed automotive parts, became the 10,000 th customer for Delcam’s software. The company supplies pressings to most of the major car companies in Thailand.
High level of investment in product development
Delcam has consistently invested around half of its revenue from software sales in future product development as the company seeks to further increase sales by having the best products in all of the sectors in which it operates. As well as boosting new sales, this constant investment has encouraged a growing number of customers to take out maintenance agreements and so ensure that they continue to receive the latest versions of the software.
Extensive reseller network
The company has also invested heavily in the development of its international reseller network. Following the recent appointment of its first Sales Partner in Slovenia, Delcam is now represented in 61 countries and has made sales into more than 20 additional countries. Subsidiaries have been established in the major industrial countries, including the USA, Japan, Germany, Italy, France and Canada, and in the most important emerging markets of China and India.
Successful diversification strategy
Over the period covered by the Award, Delcam has continued to grow its business outside the mould and die area, both in other areas of toolmaking, in particular press tool manufacture, and in other industries, such as the production of components for the aerospace and autosport industries. The use of CADCAM techniques is well-established in all these areas but Delcam has also been successful in other industries where the technology is not so familiar, in particular, footwear, jewellery, signmaking and ceramics.
The latest stage in this process has been acquisition of the US-based CAM software specialists Engineering Geometry Systems, the developer of the FeatureCAM CAD/CAM software line. FeatureCAM is used primarily for automated machining rather than tooling manufacture. The software range includes turning, wire-EDM, and mill-turn packages, areas that Delcam’s established systems did not cover.
Increased focus on sales to larger companies
Delcam has also put more focus on sales to larger organisations as well as to smaller and medium-sized companies. It has seen particular success in the automotive industry where its customers include Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Toyota, Hyundai and many others.