Sample Consulting Engagements: From Insight to Action

“As independent experts, with the benefit of being objective and politically neutral, ITSMA provided a valuable injection of external information and sparked new thinking.”
—Tony Cooper, Marketing Consultant, EDS, an HP Company

Outside assistance is often the best way to accelerate a new era of growth, focus, or organizational change, but only if you know for sure that you’re tapping the right people with the right experience and approach for the job. No one knows the IT services and solutions marketplace better than ITSMA. We’ve been analyzing trends and performance, identifying best practices, and generating new ideas about marketing and selling in the services and solutions space since 1994. We’re dedicated to applying that experience to help the top companies in the industry build their services and solutions businesses, strengthen brand differentiation, and improve marketing and sales performance. It’s what we’re focused on. It’s what we do.

The following sample engagements illustrate several of the ways we’ve helped technology leaders gain competitive advantage.

Account-Based Marketing

For a large professional services company, we designed a comprehensive program for their top accounts in the U.K. We focused a thought leadership campaign around the most important social and business issue in the country, which led to our client’s visibility increasing exponentially. The company is now viewed not only as a thought leader, but also as a highly proactive corporate citizen.
We developed a key account-planning model for one of the leading IT companies in the federal government market. The company used the model to create greater integration across business units, which led to higher solutions sales.

Brand Positioning and Development

For a major outsourcing firm, we built a brand map to help redefine the company, its value proposition, positioning, personality, and differentiation. The firm used the map to drive all brand and positioning messages: corporate-, product-, and services-wide. We also provided guidance and assistance with their internal branding campaign, which allowed all employees to “live the brand.”
Leveraging our outstanding research department, ITSMA assisted an IT professional services company in determining a new corporate name, brand architecture, and messaging, as well as a brand implementation strategy. Working with us, the company rolled out the brand to its employees, customers, prospects, and critical industry influencers. Over the course of the next year, the firm increased its overall revenue by nearly 20%, the ultimate goal of the rebranding campaign.

Go-to-Market Strategies

For a large IT solutions company, we developed a complete go-to-market strategy for its Asia-Pacific operations.
For one of the largest data storage companies, we worked with the Services Marketing team to create a new set of value propositions that reflect the important role of services and solutions. They discarded traditional product messaging and went-to-market with the new, services- and solutions-oriented value props.

Portfolio Assessment and Rationalization

We evaluated a networking storage company’s services portfolio and compared it against top competitors’, identifying differentiators, areas where the company needed to be more competitive, and gaps in the portfolio.
For a large hardware and services company that specializes in the financial sector, we evaluated its entire services portfolio and provided a rationalization strategy. The evaluation included a full assessment of solutions capabilities and a series of recommendations on what the company needs to do to become more adept at developing solutions.

Sales Enablement and Services Sales

For a large networking company, we built a directory of collateral and sales tools that allows the sales force to find the right information quickly and easily. The directory has not only allowed sales to spend more time selling, but it has also been extremely effective in guiding the sales rep to the most appropriate tools for the buyer’s stage in the purchase cycle, the type of offer, the buyer’s industry, and the buyer’s technology adaptation stage and preference.
We worked with key stakeholders in the global services marketing group at a technology manufacturing company to develop and deliver courses on how to build services selling skills.

Solutions Marketing and Strategy

For a rapidly growing software company, we helped the marketing team develop a common perspective and definition for solutions, allowing everyone on the team to get on the same page about their goals and visions for the company. They applied their newly created definition to all existing marketing programs, which sparked substantial change and a new, more focused approach.
For a leading IT company, we worked with the entire regional marketing staff to determine how to create programs that would cut across discrete sub-business units and product groups. The result was a shift in working relationships, a more collaborative offer development process, and joint go-to-market strategies.
Recognizing the value of becoming a solutions provider, a large telecommunications and networking company enlisted our help as they formed a Solutions Council. Not only did we assist them with defining their roles and responsibilities and building a solutions development process, we also helped them evaluate potential new solutions, stressing the importance of gaining customer and cross-organizational input early on in the process.

Thought Leadership Marketing

For a large software company we conducted research and analysis on the key topics and themes target executives wanted to hear about and what format and vehicles were of greatest interest. The project helped direct investments in the most relevant topics and uncovered areas that hadn’t been considered.
For a mid-sized consulting company we helped develop a more formal and consistent thought leadership development and dissemination model and process

Value Proposition Development

For a mid-sized IT services provider, we conducted value proposition workshops for multiple practice areas to help refine their positioning and differentiation and to help make their messaging more consistent, easier to communicate and more relevant to their target clients.
For a large software company, we helped develop and review a new positioning for the services organization. Using ITSMA’s value proposition development model we led numerous workshop to develop the initial propositions and then helped test and socialize them internally and externally before recommending the final messaging architecture.

For references and more information, please contact us at +1-781-862-8500, or info@itsma.com.

ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions. As part of our annual client program we work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services firms to generate new business, strengthen customer loyalty, and increase brand differentiation. Through research, consulting, training, and community we provide the insight companies need to improve marketing impact, sales performance, and business results. ITSMA is based in Lexington, Massachusetts, and has offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Japan. Learn more at www.itsma.com.