Interlink wants to stay lean and mean

Start-up Interlink Computer Communications (outside Israel it is called easyClient Software) very recently closed its most important sales agreement ever. The ABN AMRO bank listened to the company’s sales pitch and was won over. Today the bank uses the technology of the small Israeli company to construct some of the information systems on its internal portal.

”We discovered ABN AMRO completely by accident,” says InterLink founder (and current president and CEO of easyClient) Ilan Hadas, “but there’s now no doubt that ABN AMRO is our best reference.”

Why did ABN AMRO choose Interlink’s solution out of all the available solutions for its prestigious IT division? For a very simple reason – the available alternatives were expensive and take a long time to implement. Interlink enables new applications to be constructed on the basis of an enterprise’s existing infrastructure. These applications can be operated both inside and outside the organization. For example, Interlink can be used to build an internal portal, to which customers, employees, and partners can be hooked up.

The platform is capable of reading data from diverse systems and transmitting them to destinations through various types of communications (Internet, cellular, etc.). For example, ABN AMRO customers holding a number of accounts can receive one uniform, concentrated picture of their accounts. The bank has many, widely scattered systems: mainframe computers, Oracle servers, and information received from third parties, such as share trading data. Interlink’s system is capable of converting the information from each system that it enters into a new “language,” which can be displayed all together.

Another solution enabled by Interlink’s technology involves telephony companies’ customer service centers. The customer calls customer service when he wishes to ask questions about his bills. Sometimes, in order to clarify the situation, the system must obtain information from ten different billing systems: the billing systems for overseas calls, cell phone calls, local calls, SMS, and so forth. Interlink is able to link the diverse systems to the CRM systems and expedite the query processes.

Hadas praises his creation, asserting that Interlink’s solution significantly shortens the process of constructing new systems in an enterprise. “We showed ABN AMRO a prototype within six weeks,” Hadas says, “and the system was ready to operate within six months. The price was a quarter of what ABN AMRO was about to pay at the time. ABN AMRO’s satisfaction even led to another order for Interlink from a bank in the same group.”

Looking for partners who are also competitors

ABN AMRO may be an excellent reference, but Hadas is not counting on this kind of marketing. He is currently looking for business partners, such as large software houses and integrators, that will allow him to expand his customer base. So far, Interlink has signed cooperation agreements with Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HWP), i2 Technologies (Nasdaq: ITWO), Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), and Siebel Systems (Nasdaq: SEBL).

Concerning the agreements with Oracle and Siebel, Hadas comments, ”Integrators aren’t always the best business partners. Our partners also produce software; they aren’t merely integrators making a living by the hour. In one sense, the integrators also compete with us, but they need solutions like ours to make their solutions cheaper.”

Interlink’s main competitors are not necessarily creators of similar solutions; the company encounters competition from the IT divisions of organizations, which need to justify the large-scale investments in them. They are also the ones with a crucial impact on the decision of whether to invest money in technology. Hadas says that Interlink deals with this sort of competition by giving an organization’s IT division the feeling that it is getting tools that will not only allow it to work on the new platforms, but also to benefit from the tool’s capabilities when they deal with other applications.

By using this trick, Interlink does not deprive the IT divisions of the chance to be the organization’s main provider of solutions. “Our goal is to prove together with the organization’s IT division that it’s worthwhile investing a week’s work,” Hadas says. Within this time, we manage to surprise the customer and show him a working application. Then it’s easier to convince them that it’s essential.”

The challenge – to take advantage of the competitors’ weakness

Hadas founded Interlink in 1994 as part of E&M Computing, which manufactured communications components at the time. In 1998, the company’s business model changed following the Internet hysteria, and the company began to develop the products that it is now marketing.

At the beginning of 2000, Sadot R&D Fund (LSE: SDT) and Ophir Holdings invested $3 million in the company. Hadas is now trying to raise $3-5 million in a second round in order to achieve a more substantial presence in the US market.

Interlink’s development center, located in Israel, has 15 employees and another six in the US work on sales promotion and support.

”We’re ready to stay lean,” says Hadas, referring to the financing round’s chances of success. “We’ll operate in our current format for a long time yet. Our sales forecast for next year is clear. We’ve been cautious this past year, and we’re adapting our expenses to the pessimistic forecasts. At the same time, our challenge is to penetrate the market as fast as possible and exploit our competitors’ weakness, and the financing round could help us get there quickly and in good shape.”

Published by Israel's Business Arena on January 1, 2002