Innovapost is a major professional services and IT firm for postal companies. Part of the Canada Post Group, Innovapost was established in 2002.

Innovapost's business objectives were to:

• improve the quality of IT service delivery for Canada Post while also reducing cost

• further professionalise Canada Post's entire IT operations

• enable Canada Post to deliver new and innovative offerings to its major customers

• expand internationally by helping other postal companies achieve their business goals through the use of technology.

The challenge

The immediate challenge was to build awareness of the Innovapost brand in Europe and help develop a pipeline of opportunities.  

How Gelst contributed

Gelst helped Innovapost to articulate its approach to the European market, and then assisted in targeting postal administrations.  We did this by guiding and delivering its international market entry strategy from branding through to business development.

Gelst acted as an extension of Innovapost in Europe:

• By acting as a European marketing unit, providing operational capability on the ground. This significantly increased implementation speed for the key initiatives

• We also provided inights into and contacts in the European Postal sector and transferred this market knowledge to Innovapost's marketing staff

• Gelst's approach allowed the Senior Vice President – having agreed to the programmes – to focus on other priorities in the knowledge that these international programmes would be executed effectively.

As a key part of its strategy, Gelst planned and delivered a marketing programme around key worldwide and European postal industry events, including:

• Post Expo, the global major postal events, where we organised a special workshop in line with Innovapost's inherently innovative approach

• The World Mail and Express Awards ceremony and the Mail and Express Conference in Rome in May 2003, Berlin in May 2004 and Paris in May 2006.

Results

Innovapost has built high-level relationships (CEO downwards) with all major European postal services, facilitating its pipeline building effort.

Innovapost's brand has made measurable advances within the target audience where the organisation has become known as an innovator and thought leader that delivers results. This has been confirmed by a dramatic increase in responses from top-level invitees to Innovapost's worldwide marketing events.

What they said about Gelst

'Gelst conceived an unusually innovative workshop ensuring Innovapost stood out as THE innovative company in a field already crowded by System Integrators and postal consultants.' David Allum, Senior Vice President.