The concept of an outsourced CMO was quite attractive,” said Mr. Jandrell. “We could extract a huge amount of value from Stijn’s experience but we wouldn’t be burdened with a heavy cost. For me, it was an absolute no brainer.”

Fraxion (pronounced Fraction) provides spend management solutions that help organizations control and manage how they spend money. The company’s cloud-based platform allows users to quickly make requisitions, set budgetary and compliance guidelines, and automatically and confidently authorize expenditures. 

Originally established in South Africa, Fraxion recently merged with Seattle-based eRequester. But before the now new and larger company could establish itself in the North American market, it had to better define itself and its offering.

Having someone who didn’t have a horse in the race, who had no previous allegiance to either of the two organizations, gave us an element of impartiality,” said Mr. Jandrell. “Stijn was able to remove internal biases that existed. He was able to call on credible, market-tested experience to position us for launch.

“Kalungi has a recipe booklet, if you will, for what a company like ours needs to do, and in what sequence, to define our brand and bring products to market. This was huge. Equally important were his marketing resources that we could draw upon with his team at Kalungi. And his willingness to mentor and bring up to steam our in-house marketing people.” 

As separate companies, both Fraxion and eRequester had invested in marketing activities that explained what their products did rather than how they benefited end-users. Stijn helped the new company stress the importance of the benefits users derive from Fraxion’s solution and how it’s different from anything else on the market.

The long and short of it,” continued Mr. Jandrell, “is that before we hadn’t been able to articulate our story as well as I would have liked. Now we’re telling our story from the customer’s point of view, not ours. And clearly stating what makes us unique amongst our competitors.

“For me personally, there’s a lot of comfort in working with Stijn. It’s more than the guidance he provided for us; it’s his actual doing. He went out of his way to leverage his relationships to get us a seat at the table, to help us reshape our view of how we partner with some of the other ERP vendors out there. That was fantastic.”