Breathing New Life into a Commodity ERP System

Case Study Project Description

The COO of a 20 year old software company needed to find new markets for their product. While other competitors had been acquired over the years, they had carved out a small niche but their customers were migrating to the larger brand name platforms. As revenue declined employees left including their sales and marketing manager. Without resellers and a sales leader, the company seemed like it was heading into its twilight years.

Project Problem

ERP solutions for human resources, payroll and performance are dominated by the large ERP vendors. In this business, the old adage that ‘those that choose to buy IBM don’t go wrong’ seemed to dominate the purchasing decisions. How could this stable and proven software company get into new markets without being PeopleSoft or IBM? Further, the company had pursued many unrelated markets so reference clients were dotted across the spectrum of industries and geographies. There seemed to be no natural fit into any one target market despite the superb reputation they enjoyed for service amongst their great reference clients. The CEO and the COO were concerned about focusing on only one or two markets unsure as to whether they would yield any results.

Solution

The solution to this problem was to uncover what this product did that other products couldn’t do. After 20 years in business, the product had some very robust functionality and it did not price out after implementation nearly as high as its brand name competitors. Identifying what it did that other products couldn’t do, we searched for which markets had these unique few issues and needed specific problems solved. When this research was done, then we had to find the industries that had these problems where the company actually had reference clients.

From there, we helped them develop a marketing message, case studies, press releases, a web 2.0 strategy, measurement, KPIs and a lead generation system that tied together to become their call to action. We then coached the senior team in how to work with and use the message, how to build capacity to manage the growth and how to constantly evolve and improve the messaging system so that it would attract motivated buyers within two different and fragmented target markets.

Result

The time-intensive research and market focused discipline combined with a dedication to web 2.0 and public relations approach rather than expensive advertising started to pay dividends. In the first year, they achieved 400% growth in their sales calls and started winning business from much larger competitors.

It’s Not My Problem, He’s the Problem!

Case Study Project Description

The leadership team of a company recently acquired by a large multi-national was having fewer and fewer meetings. Members put off meetings, but managed to achieve results by meeting offline with each other. Cynicism was rampant. The corporate slogan was the butt of jokes. Yet they were the top producing division of the company. However, despite constant requests to expand in their territory the head office consistently refused them the capital or the time of day to talk about the expansion.

This fact sat like a lead balloon on productivity and creativity.

Of 12 people on the team, there were four separate small camps each with their own culture and competitive way of working. The camps often made derogatory remarks about the other groups and especially about one individual.

Project Problem

The head office was now demanding a cohesive expansion strategy that required they all get together to create and plan it. The regional manager attempted a first meeting, but when it erupted in insults and conflict, he asked the HR manager for a better solution. The company called upon us to see if we could unravel the problem. What we discovered through one-on-one coaching sessions was that each person blamed someone else on the team for not meeting their own unspoken expectations and standards. Since they couldn’t talk about what they wanted from each other, the resentments kept piling up.

Solution

Organizational change begins at the individual level and ripples out from there. We used our challenging form of one-on-one coaching and a series of assessments to help each member of the team uncover what was so difficult about meeting together. Many claimed that there was a bully in their midst. Others cited the wholesale changes made by their new owner without their feedback or input.

The ‘bully’ knew he was seen as such. His style of communicating was Cassandra-like, always suggesting doom and gloom around every corner rather than delivering why he thought there were problems. When he wasn’t heard, he resorted to insulting others using toxic humor in the vain hope that this approach might get his message across. He learned that he was not communicating his real concerns and that people were actually afraid of him. The day we helped him to discover how to speak to the team in a way that he could be heard was the turning point for this team to begin working together effectively.

For this turning point to occur, others had to put down their swords and take responsibility for their part in the blame game. We helped each person to focus on what they really wanted to achieve in their role, rather than on what they didn’t like that they kept recreating with the blame game. They then learned how to talk about these issues during meetings and how to use a collaborative process to share their ideas to create strategies and implementation plans.

Result

It took 10 months for their first group meeting to occur while we worked with each person individually. Fearful to trust themselves, they finally decided to attempt a meeting. We booked the team a two day retreat and managed expectations while we worked on a new vision for the entire team. After this meeting they embraced developing a new vision, breaking through old patterns and learned how to get what they needed from the head office by mentoring their direct reports up the ladder. Rather than being the black sheep in the conglomerate, after two years of re-designing how they worked together, the team finally go the funding and the go ahead for their expansion plan. At the end of the expansion they became the top performing brand and were seen as mavericks in the industry.