The Unexpected Customer – RI Adopts WizFolio, Software For Academics

Sometimes a product you have built may have unexpected usages. For patent search and management software company, WizPatent, their third product, WizFolio, was developed with scientists and academics in mind. However, one of their latest clients turned out to be a high school – Raffles Institution.

Web-Based Reference Management Software, WizFolio

Launched on 18th May 2009, WizFolio is a web-based reference management software that makes the citation process easier when writing research and academic papers. Usually a messy process whereby researches do manual copying and pasting into separate documents and finally into their papers, journal reference and citation management software help ease this process.

Here’s a short video that helps explain what WizFolio does:

In short, bibliographic data, videos, patents, and selected information from any webpage can be grabbed into your WizFolio account, PDFs can be upload and their reference details are automatically retrieved, bibliographies can be formatted and citation styles changed on-the-fly.

Within 1 year of WizFolio’s release, it has already over 10,000 individual users worldwide.

The “Expected” Customers

In Singapore, WizFolio was introduced to local universities and academic institutions. To date, the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technologically University are both using the software.

Internationally, Scholars Portal has signed up with WizFolio for a trial, meaning that 21 universities in Ontario, Canada are using the product.

And The “Unexpected” One

WizFolio came out just in time when teachers in Raffles Institution (RI) identified a missing gap in the Singapore education system: the need to teach responsible and scholarly writing. RI has tried other software but they found WizFolio to be more user-friendly and complementary to their teaching objectives.

While the high school market was not exactly one of the first few markets WizFolio targeted at, the adoption by RI has helped WizPatent pave the way for other high schools to use the product.

A Takeaway For Other Entrepreneurs

For other entrepreneurs, the WizFolio experience is an example of how your actual customers may not actually be ones you targeted in the first place. In the case of WizFolio, the situation is not as extreme as having the product dissed by the target market and taken up by unexpected markets, but the point remains.

So while you may be marketing and pitching to people or organisations you think would best be able to make use of your product, always be aware of secondary or tertiary communities who may also be able to adopt it. You might find yourself opening up a whole new revenue source there.

Company

Set up in May 2004, WizPatent Pte Ltd was set up by Dr Casey Chan and Wade Fallin. Their first two products are both patent search and management software: WizPatent Manger and WizPatent Express. Read an interview SGE did with Casey back in 2006.

Image courtesy of Jinx!.

Related posts:

1. In Conversation With Casey Chan, WizPatent and WizFolio