IBM PartnerWorld

Business Partner: Bronze Drum Consulting

Bronze Drum Consulting gains $210,000 in new

business with IBM PartnerWorld benefits and resources

Information technology is both a

powerful value-add tool for achieving
business objectives and a resource
requiring continuous maintenance
and support. Companies of all sizes
grapple with this dual nature and the
impact on the composition of their
IT staffs, but the issue is particularly
acute for small and medium
businesses (SMB).

Lacking the resources of their larger

counterparts, SMB companies
are compelled to choose between
organizing their staff around routine
IT management duties or freeing them
to exploit IT for maximum business
Bronze
Bro
B
Br
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ro Drum
advantage. Increasingly, they are Consulting®

offloading their IT maintenance and

How IBM Business Partner Benefits helped
support to third parties. Bronze Drum Consulting business:
• Telemarketing campaigns generated new business worth
That trend toward outsourcing
Bronze
Bro
B
Br
ro
ro Drum
Consulting
$150,000 and qualified
®
opportunities worth $600,000
represents opportunity for Bronze
• IBM Sales Connections resulted in $60,000 win
Drum Consulting, an Advanced IBM
Business Partner, headquartered in • A sophisticated marketing plan

New York, New York. Bronze is both • Critical consultation and training provided remotely via
an independent software vendor and a IBM Virtual Innovation Center
regional systems integrator for IBM.

“Our MRM helps us
develop our marketing
plan with IBM marketing
benefits at its foundation.
We have a much more
strategic approach to
the market.”
Brian McCallion,
president,
Bronze Drum Consulting
The primary configuration and
deployment solution of Bronze Drum
is DeployAgility, which accelerates
IBM WebSphere® application
deployment throughout a business.
Bronze Drum is also a provider of
software and services relating to
Lotus® collaboration offerings and
server consolidation.
As an IBM Business Parter, Bronze
Drum has taken advantage of
marketing benefits and technology
resources to improve and expand
its business. Marketing campaigns
generated new business worth
$150,000 and qualified opportunities
worth $600,000. IBM Sales
Connections yielded a $60,000 win,
an IBM marketing specialist helped
Bronze Drum develop a marketing
plan and the IBM Virtual Innovation
Center provided Bronze Drum
with consultation and training on
technology matters. Bronze Drum
officials meet with an IBM Sales
Connections client executive monthly
to review sales opportunities.
In late 2008, as the full impact of
the economic downturn set in, Brian
McCallion, president of Bronze Drum,
augmented the Bronze Drum portfolio
with what he calls a “counter-cyclical”
offering from IBM, one that enjoys
more demand as economic conditions
worsen and one that produces
immediate savings for SMB
businesses. That offering is the IBM
Express Services™ Portfolio.
“Marketing IBM technical services
helps us meet that IT outsourcing
need among SMB,” McCallion said.
“With IBM specialists taking care of IT
management, our customer can focus
its staff on optimizing the business
value of IT,” explained McCallion,
who sees strategic advantages for
his five-person company as well.
“The IBM service offering mitigates
the cyclical nature of our business
and, bottom line, gets us in the
door and introduces Bronze Drum
Consulting as a resource for smart
technology ideas,” he said.
McCallion added, “IBM Sales
Connections helps us establish a track
record of success with IBM, gets us
noticed by other IBM sales executives
and Business Partners and helps us
establish productive, long-term selling
relationships with IBM.”
Using the IBM offering as its entrée,
Bronze Drum engages the company
on its areas of specialization.
McCallion said his company converts
30 percent of its IBM services
customers into Bronze Drum software
and services customers.
PartnerWorld® benefits form In another campaign, 1,000 phone
foundation of marketing plan calls were paired with direct mail
invitations, produced through IBM
Bronze Drum, an IBM Business Partner
Campaign Designer™, to encourage
since 2002, serves healthcare, retail,
attendance to a Webcast spotlighting
banking and professional services
IBM technical services. “IBM manages
businesses throughout the East Coast
everything – compiling lists; providing
of the United States. The company
the telemarketing team; customizing,
became an Advanced PartnerWorld
printing and fulfilling the direct mail;
member in 2007.
hosting a registration page and the
Webcast; and providing a presenter,”
McCallion meets with his IBM
said McCallion.
marketing resource manager (MRM)
“IBM Sales Connections
twice monthly. Beyond monitoring
“We’ve never hosted a Webcast. This
marketing efforts and identifying helps us establish a track
is an example of how our MRM got
IBM PartnerWorld benefits available record of success with
us to move beyond our comfort zone,”
to Bronze Drum, McCallion said his
he said. IBM, gets us noticed by
MRM continually challenges him to
elevate his marketing ambitions. other IBM sales executives
Noting that opportunities uncovered
by the telemarketers are viewed by and Business Partners.”
“Prior to MRM involvement, we Brian McCallion,
both inside IBM salespeople and
didn’t even have a marketing plan, president,
field reps, McCallion is leveraging Bronze Drum Consulting
because we didn’t have the resources
IBM Sales Connections to establish
or expertise. Now, our MRM helps
relationships with customers and IBM
us develop our marketing plan
reps and executives.
with IBM marketing benefits at its
foundation. We have a much more
Already, through IBM Sales
strategic approach to the market,”
Connections, McCallion introduced
McCallion explained.
an IBM salesperson into one of its
new accounts, a New York City-based
Bronze Drum began with a series
financial services company. “Together,
of IBM-facilitated telemarketing
we were able to transition the account
campaigns designed to launch its IBM
from a limited technical support
Express Services Portfolio business,
engagement to $60,000 in software,
with 2,500 phone calls being made.
hardware and services revenue for
Those efforts meant $150,000 in new
Bronze Drum,” McCallion said.
business and an additional $600,000
in qualified opportunities.
Access to training via the IBM
Virtual Innovation Center
An IBM technical manager guides the
Bronze Drum technical staff through
the range of IBM resources available
through the IBM Virtual Innovation
Center, including architectural
consulting and training programs.
“We’re integrating DeployAgility with
IBM Tivoli® Maximo, and the IBM
technical experts gave our developers
a much better understanding of its
integration points,” said McCallion,
Further, “I’ve accessed online
IBM WebSphere and Lotus sales
enablement workshops and testing
via the Virtual Innovation Center,”
he said. “It equips me to make a
more effective IBM pitch,” he noted.
Bronze Drum also earns financial
rebates through the IBM Software
Value Incentive Program, which
enables Bronze Drum to receive
incremental margin - up to 30
percent - on the IBM software deals
in which Bronze engages a prospect,
even if that prospect makes the final
purchase from another company.
“The program rewards us for doing
what we do best, which is provide
personal attention to mid-market
customers,” said McCallion. “We can
engage customers and get paid for the
value we provide regardless of whether
the customer buys software from us.
It’s less risk and it allows us to focus
on the early stages of the sales cycle,”
he said.
“These programs and the expertise of
our IBM resources even the playing
field for small firms like ours and
enable us to generate excitement
in SMB for both IBM services and
DeployAgility,” McCallion said.
For more information
Please contact your IBM sales
representative or IBM Business
Partner. Or you can visit us at:
ibm.com
More information about the benefits
and resources offered through the
IBM Business Partner program is
available at ibm.com/isv
For information about IBM Virtual
Innovation Centers, go to
ibm.com/partnerworld/iic
To find out more about Bronze Drum
Consulting, visit bronzedrum.com
©Copyright IBM Corporation 2009
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07-09
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