Highlights:
An assessment of the client’s ability to achieve corporate objectives in marketing
Our strategic experience re-focused this software company’s marketing efforts
Class Software Solutions (formerly known as ESCOM, and now part of The Active Network, Inc., based in San Diego) has successfully developed and marketed software for local government Parks and Recreation facilities for over 25 years. The company leads the market with over 500 customers in Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand, and has achieved an enviable position within the Parks and Recreation market.
However, the executive team recognized the need to expand into new and adjacent markets to fund future growth, and had defined the following objective: To develop an empowered marketing group with the focus, competencies, best practices, and processes necessary to drive the company’s quest to achieve market dominance.
Class Software engaged Hale! Marketing to evaluate potential opportunities, provide strategic direction, and develop Class Software’s marketing capability. The marketing capability assessment was one of the initial projects.
The assessment objective was to gain an understanding of Class’ capabilities in six broad ”knowledge areas” and identify capabilities that needed improvement given the current situation and growth objectives. From initial discussions, we selected the six areas of: strategic direction, leadership, strategic development of people, customers and business environment, planning, and execution. Each of these six major areas were broken down into sub-sections. A question set was selected and developed. We then used three reviewers in several workshop sessions with different participants to perform the assessment, and score each of the sub-sections.
The results of the marketing capability assessment were then compiled and presented graphically, in tabular form, and orally, with specific recommendations. A short list of “must do” items were identified for management’s action. The assessment was useful in identifying specific actions for improvement specifically with respect to Class' management of marketing, in providing a capability baseline against which future reviews could be performed in order to assess progress, and in identifying areas for closer review in the future.
