Success Stories

We know that successful ventures are not islands. They rely on a number of interlocking dependencies based on a sound business strategy, key assets, organizational support, funding, brand focus, market need, development process and executive collaboration.

While we have many great conversations, not every business is suited to do business with us. Our ideal clients have a sincere need to drive business value and sustained long-term benefits. While some of our work provides upfront benefits, we don’t believe in working on one-shot-wonders and we don’t pedal the latest gadgets… unless we know those elements have direct impact on strategic goals.

As business professionals we understand how industries and corporations tend to fall into a comfortable lull. In today’s economic and technological shift, the tactical and strategic elements of the business have become disconnected. Between budget cuts and talent loss, many companies find themselves scaling back on future initiatives and support of functional departments.

Some criteria

  • We serve midsize and enterprise business markets, although there are exceptions. We provide a range of scaling options to meet your needs through our packages and consulting services.
    Our projects typically start in a budgetary range of $25k to $250k.
  • You want to move forward and break traditional business models.
  • You want to redefine a new edge both internally and externally.
  • You want to not only maintain revenue, but grow areas of revenue opportunity.
  • You don’t want to read the news, you want to break the news.
  • You want to develop tools and processes that speed decisions,
    build trust and leverage intellectual power.
  • You require data based analytics and behavioral statistics for business case development and investment planning. 

You know

  • That you need maintain your talent and industry positioning.
  • That things are changing and your business needs to maneuver.
  • That you need to invest in your future with strategic insight and tactical focus.

 

Global Telecommunication Firm

The Challenge

As a Fortune 500 organization, units suffered from multiple process changes involving mid-sized or enterprise accounts with processing time extending from five, to ten, to over twenty-six days.  The process included over 2500 sales personnel, 400 account management staff, 200 product development team and hundreds of thousands of client accounts.

The root problem was not a very high-tech one: its origin was in the simple fact that over fifteen departments needed to mail physical and digital approvals across several layers of internal departments. Each communication created a delay in processing between hours and days, with individual communications adding up into weeks of time and large numbers of human generated errors.

The Solution

To combat the problem, data was collected across multiple departmental groups to define the exact nature of the processes involved and to gain stakeholder approval for streamlining the communication. The implemented solution was a Microsoft based Sharepoint and Outlook mail application that minimized platform and user training problems, while maximizing multiple touch points and internal professional networks to identify the exact personnel dealing with accounts in process.

The Result

A reduction in account processing time from an average of 23 days to 9 days, creating a two week buffer that allowed nationwide offices to redirect workload and maximize labor hours. Long term impacts included reducing account errors by nearly 80% through eliminating contamination touch-points and producing an annual cost savings of over three million dollars.

 

NATIONWIDE INFORMATION SERVICE

The Challenge

Finding more benefits from existing company assets is a “Holy Grail” of moving a business into a competitive online space. This project dealt with a business solution provider that targeted federal, state, local and government contractors, with core products focusing on helping companies market and sell into markets across the United States.

The Solution

  • Created a competitive audience matrix for re-purposing state and federal information into an online aggregation portal to attract visitors via search platforms.
  • Restructured site URLs to attract ideal contractors and government services to the site. Developing additional blog strategy to re-target proper audience and attract appropriate online audience.
  • Worked with internal stakeholders to adjust long-term strategy for reaching target audience and for streamlining online benefits. Proving keyword and audience database that represented the top 100k keywords relevant to the contract industry, used to initiate efforts to displace other competitors on top search related traffic sources.           

The Result

Prevented client from launching a six figure project that was targeting an incorrect audience and had multiple technical errors in current structure. Project analysis provided entirely new target for online search engine optimization process, creating a 300% increase in traffic over six month period, while dropping bounce-rate of visitors by 15%.

NATIONAL REAL ESTATE PORTAL

The Challenge

A leading news and education resource for real estate professionals in the United States, driving industry partnerships with such organizations as the National Association of Realtors, Yahoo Real Estate and Zillow. Project was focused on proper resurrection of lost online audience, in addition to developing options that supported offline magazine advertising products and increased online / tradeshow revenue.

The Solution

•   Redesigned site to increase usability by web visitors, which decreased bounce rate by 21% and increased average page views by 1.8 per visitor.

•   Restructured offline advertisement packages to work in conjunction with online sales deliverables, targeting top partner brands and leveraging technical assets (eventually leading to integration of several real estate communities.)

The Result

Created several online advertising test products, including:

o   First ever national real estate syndication site that allowed for sponsored news articles to reach top search results, finding adoption in over sixteen states.

o   First ever mobile video blogging platform that integrated software and hardware services into a single point of syndication that targeted audience benefits on YouTube and video aggregation sites.

o   Completely restructured the page URL of client documents to attract top search engine rankings on Google, promoting over 14,000 pages from the secondary index of Google and having them properly score on the first page. The end result was a 100% increase in traffic over six months, with a %30 reduction in visitor bounce rates.

 

INTERNATIONAL HOSPITALITY AGENCY

The Challenge

In a development project for an international hospitality agency with quarterly revenues in excess of $150m, our team consultation process brought actionable insights in the first fifteen days of engagement.

The Solution

•Identified a corporate exposure representing a $24m risk vulnerability
($160M lifetime customer value)

•Uncovered a corporate communications gap reflecting vulnerability between claims and actual capabilities.

•Provided competitive intelligence that validated product line performance improvement opportunities, identified new positioning and product line extension opportunities.

•Uncovered a significant competitor vulnerability and sales opportunity that presented a 15+ million channel revenue.

•Delivered an assessment of products and delivery mechanisms, modifications for existing products to increase current margins and improve client side performance, a methodology for new product development and analysis, and proposals for two additional flagship products and customer value chains.

The Result

Proposed new process for using social media mechanisms to enhance product development and customer integration. Created product development and resource process review to enable internal resource allocation and planning.  

MAJOR PRIVATE EQUITY FIRM

The Challenge

Our client, a benchmark financial group with over 500 million in managed investment came to our team to create a solution: provide a private social network and news site that allowed portfolio company stakeholders to communicate radical market shifts that were happening on a daily basis.

The Solution

Using a content management system and analytical integration, information was aggregated into a dashboard to provide relevant insight on mission critical topics. The core foundation was put in place under the understanding that dozens of highly trained and knowledgeable CEO’s were being faced by market conditions and new obstacles that they had not seen before. The private network allowed peer-to-peer communication with other seasoned CEO’s facing similar challenges, knowing that like-minded lessons could be shared to avoid costly pitfalls and allowing teams to maximize unknown opportunities.

The Results

By sharing daily updates portfolio executives could reduce burn rates, allowing the portfolio to sustain longer without re-investment during the economic shift.

The effective exchange of intellectual property across companies brought immediate value: highly valued employees that could not be maintained at one company could find suitable homes within other portfolio assets, consultants and agencies doing work for any portfolio could have peer reviews on performance (allowing portfolio companies to benefit from outstanding shared resources or avoid bad vendors), and executives within small teams and isolated silos at the company level could communicate like-minded problems (CEO to CEO, CMO to CMO, CFO to CFO.)

At the investment level, valuable insight of changing market conditions allowed funding for umbrella support that any singular portfolio company could not afford alone. Investors also had the ability to learn from “crisis market events” in a quick and streamlined manner, allowing them to communicate sudden changes to other portfolio companies and isolate risk.

SOME OF THE TEAM

Stu Wiley – an expert with evangelist and community marketing using new technologies, with over 20 years helping clients such as AT&T/Cingular, Microsoft, Lexus Interactive, T-Mobile, Intel, Travelclick, nfospace/Motricity, VirginUK, MSN and MSNBC to success in product development, customer engagement, international marketing, partnership programs, and internet engineering. His history includes senior domestic and international marketing and product development roles for Microsoft – in Windows, web platforms/dev tools, developer relations, TechEd and MVP programs.  His team consists of former CMO’s, Fortune 500 Brand Managers, Agency Directors, Research Analysts and internationally recognized Social Media technologists. 

Barry Hurd – a thought-leader in social media business application, building case definition and bottom line results with online media and social communities. With over 15 years of online business development, analytics and brand management experience, he is recognized as a top expert in the uses of what is now known as “social media” to reach audiences around the world. Past projects have included NIKE, REI, Readers Digest, TMP Worldwide, TravelClick, Monster.com, Verizon Superpages, Intuit, RISMedia. Barry is a principal at 123socialmedia in Seattle, and co-founder of the Seattle Social Media Club.

Jeff Rea – a specialist in startup and early stage companies providing executive leadership in roles ranging from product and brand development, marketing, sales and CEO. Jeff has over 30 years of Sr. executive experience in consumer goods marketing and branding at Miller Brewing, Whirlpool and Frito-Lay. Clients include fortune 500 corporations and start-ups such as Athena Partners (bottled water), Grace’s Kitchen (frozen gourmet meal solutions), Sensa Networks (online training for the food service industry), and EcoMedia LLC (environmental media)

Dave Swartzendruber – a strategic sales and start up executive with over 15 years experience in the technology services field with expertise in full cycle service models. Dave has worked with AT&T Wireless, Avaya, The Boeing Company, Classmates.com, Clearwire, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Leapfrog Online, Microsoft, Royal Philips Electronics, Safeco Insurance, Tesoro Petroleum, T-Mobile, TravelCLICK, Washington Mutual, Weyerhaeuser.