Case Studies

Industry: Medical Devices
Function: Marketing & Sales
Location: Domestic

A $100MM business unit of a global medical device/ pharmaceutical giant was a newcomer to a market segment dominated by entrenched, deep-pocketed global competitors such as Johnson & Johnson and Bayer.

Working with our client’s marketing department and marketing/technology services providers, we designed, implemented and managed integrated marketing programs, a CRM system and a series of targeted marketing projects. To make these programs successful, we worked with our client to:

• Identify priority marketing objectives, and key customer needs, in their “complex sale” retail environment;
• Aggressively develop new product and services offerings, designed to deliver information, influence, and leverage for our clients sales force with regard to their target customers;
• Design structured processes to collect more market intelligence, convert this market intelligence into meaningful management information, and use it to develop subsequent programs; and
• Managed the cross-organizational business team, covering sales and marketing, IT, finance, vendor-partners, and IT/ systems development.

The goal was daunting—carve market share directly from the segment leaders in a flat market—and our client realized steep gains by taking share from market leaders over a three-year period, using the key programs we worked with them to design and implement.

Industry: Specialty Chemicals
Function: Executive Management, Commercial Operations
Location: Global

A $2.5B global chemical company was formed by spin-off/ sale from GE to private equity in 2006 – selling three "pieces" of GE's Advanced Materials business. The PE firm "bought out" the existing joint venture partners, combined them with the wholly owned subsidiary, and sought to create "one" global company - with one rationalized supply chain, a strategy for marketing and customer engagement, and an integrated set of global corporate functions.

We worked with the CEO. exec team and other "insiders" to put in place a global management structure for this firm--its first--and to manage the project plan to achieve key results:

• Deliver the short-term productivity improvements (about $10MM) from functional, geographical, and resource consolidation,
• Design and implement a new business-planning and follow-up performance-management approach for business leaders;
• Spec new roles, and organize existing talent to locate the right talent in key positions,
• Build a strong global marketing function (for the first time) and
• Communicate the process, plan and outcomes to the company.

After delivering the productivity improvements, the team has followed up to help the newly formed marketing groups outline their plan for growth, and get started on effective execution to achieve needed growth outcomes. In addition, the business will be focusing on the processes and “new behaviors” to drive successful profitable growth, at the global “corporate-optimal” level.

Industry: Transportation Equipment
Function: Design/ Engineering/ Marketing/ Sales/ Customer Service
Location: Domestic US

One of the major global vehicle providers of distribution and logistics equipment needed to defend its slim lead with regard to its information-management products – products that make the vehicles themselves more valuable to its customers, help customers to eliminate waste in their operations, and justify the “premium brand” image (and higher purchase prices) of our client’s equipment. In addition, it needed to take rear-guard actions to prevent current-customer dissatisfaction with the base-level first-generation product – and quell risks of defection.

In a dramatic shift in our client’s new product development approach, we supported the key business functions in rethinking their competitive position, product positioning, and key feature set – as well as driving ideas for changing their process for product development, launch, and post-sales support. We designed and facilitated strategic conversations that brought together disparate functions within the company, earlier than ever before in their history, to share their perspectives on customer needs – and helped the group to determine collectively what its first-best next steps might be to both defend the current business, and stake out exciting new territory for the future.

While the follow-up work for this client is still in process, early reports suggest fundamental changes in collaboration and engagement across key players and functional silos – and the promise of exciting new prospects for business innovation, and product design and development processes for the company.