Opening up a new target industry with a modern, target group-oriented approach – GWS

Open communication, high speed and a lot of expertise for GWS.

Initial situation:

As part of its corporate strategy, GWS aimed to open up a new target industry internationally. This project presented the GWS marketing team with the challenge of adapting the communication and customer approach to the new target group and designing it accordingly. First of all, the specific target group had to be identified – questions such as: “Who are the relevant buyer personas?” “What are their pain points?”” Which approach is best suited?” “What is the optimal customer journey from the prospect to the existing customer?” kept GWS Marketing busy. In addition to addressing the target group, GWS saw the opening up of the new target industry as an opportunity to modernize its Internet presence for this sector and thus create a pilot project as a pioneer for the entire company. GWS relied on external support to implement the fields of action that had been identified. Since the marketing department had no previous international experience, it wanted to draw on the expertise and experience of a consulting company for its project – also in order to gain valuable insights and learning effects in relevant fields, such as the creation of professional content for predefined buyer personas.

Cloudbridge Consulting had been known to Thomas Junglas (Senior Director Marketing & Partner) and Kira Pohlkamp (Product Marketing Manager International) for many years. The marketing manager appreciated Cloudbridge’s experience, especially in consulting in the Microsoft environment. GWS thus chose Cloudbridge as their strategic partner for the start of the new market segment without a selection process.

Implementation:

The implementation of the project to address the target group followed a clear project planning. For this purpose, the individual project components were put together in packages, the processing of which followed a clear procedure. The distribution of tasks between Cloudbridge and GWS was also clearly defined and communicated. In addition to a methodical approach, it was particularly important for GWS to work with a partner who approaches the task from an external perspective, who thinks “outside the box”, and who provides innovative and creative impetus. Together with GWS, Cloudbridge developed a clear target picture, sorted and structured diverse information and documents, identified relevant buyer personas, and developed customer journeys that focused on communication with content relevance away from pure “software features & functions”. GWS quickly had the feeling that this work would also make a lasting contribution to remaining successful in the future.

As a special highlight, the marketing managers emphasize that the theoretically developed concepts were also validated in practice on the advice of Cloudbridge. For this purpose, Cloudbridge visited an exemplary customer in the target market together with GWS. In a discussion lasting several hours, the concepts developed were confirmed and received an additional valuable fine-tuning.

GWS describes the collaboration with Cloudbridge as thoroughly positive. Kira Pohlkamp particularly emphasizes the commitment of the project managers, the open communication even in the event of time delays, and the flexibility in the event of change requests or internal deadlines. Cloudbridge’s Microsoft experience also made the difference for the GWS marketing team during implementation: Topics, technologies and processes were already known to Cloudbridge – so tasks could be handed over more quickly and handled with expertise in an uncomplicated and fast way. “Cloudbridge’s experience in the Microsoft environment immediately created trust in us, which was confirmed throughout the entire collaboration, both in terms of content and interpersonal skills,” says Thomas Junglas.

Success and added value:

The results of this successful collaboration are clearly visible after the completion of the project. Kira Pohlkamp cites the now clear definition of the buyer persona in the new target industry, the pain points identified, and the required value-added communication as valuable results that can now also be subsequently taken into account and integrated by the entire team in communications planning. GWS also considers the defined customer journeys as a “guideline” for content marketing in the coming months. Concrete results of the project can be seen above all in the area of strategic content marketing. For example, GWS can now draw on four bilingual white papers, one for each buyer persona, which can now be actively promoted and used for lead generation and international positioning. The initially formulated goal of modernizing the Internet presence for this industry and making it more creative and innovative was also fulfilled: A completely redesigned microsite was created for GWS, which has so far met with very positive feedback from customers both in terms of content, not least because of the video content made available there, and in terms of structure and visuals.

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This is how it continues:

Thomas Junglas sees the project with Cloudbridge as a new impulse: on the basis of the content developed in the project, GWS now wants to further expand its marketing activities in the target industry. The positioning of GWS is now to be consolidated through the active marketing of the new microsite, as well as the expansion of awareness measures (for example on social media). But not only the marketing in the new target industry is to be expanded: GWS now wants to transfer the knowledge gained during the pilot project to other industries and topics in order to be able to realize a complete relaunch of the online presence in the medium term. This sustainability of the joint project is particularly valuable and convinced those responsible: “Next time, we would again choose Cloudbridge as a strategic partner.”

Facts & Figures about the GWS:

  • Founded in 1992
  • Innovative merchandise management systems and integrated solutions for retail and service companies
  • > 450 employees
  • 6 locations in Germany
  • Turnover 2018: > 61 Mio. €

Company description:

Gesellschaft für Warenwirtschafts-Systeme mbH (GWS) was founded in 1992 and offers its customer groups innovative merchandise management systems and integrated solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (SCM) for retail and service companies. More than 1,300 companies use GWS products.