Case Study: Turning Around a Declining Business to Deliver Sustainable Growth

Client Challenge

A large global software company faced a steep decline in its $60M mid-market service desk business, with annual revenue dropping by over 20%. The business struggled with:

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  Product Quality and Market Viability: The business faced challenges across both its mid-market and small-business solutions. The mid-market product suffered from the premature release of a major update that introduced significant UI and functionality changes. However, key features were incomplete, and the lack of rollback options left customers unable to revert to previous versions, further eroding trust and satisfaction. Meanwhile, the small-business solution faced security flaws and outdated architecture, with no major updates in six years.
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  Operational Transition and Support Challenges: The timing of a cost-efficiency-driven transition to offshore support coincided with the release of major product changes, overwhelming the new team and resulting in customer dissatisfaction.
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  Strategic and Organizational Misalignment: The business, which had been acquired, was never fully integrated into the parent company’s culture and processes, leading to inefficiencies and misalignment with broader organizational goals. A lack of unified strategy left the products without a clear role in the company’s portfolio, limiting their market positioning and growth potential.
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  Declining Customer Confidence and Market Reputation: Customers expressed frustration with incomplete features, unmet promises, and competitors providing more robust and reliable solutions.

The Solution

Before addressing product-specific fixes, it was critical to resolve a broader issue: the company had acquired multiple products but failed to integrate and position them effectively. Without a clear strategy, both customers and employees struggled to understand each product’s role in the portfolio, leading to confusion, inefficiencies, and gaps in market positioning. The approach focused on aligning these products strategically while resolving critical security, performance, and customer experience issues.

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  Mid-Market Product: Stabilizing Operations and Rebuilding Trust

  • Defined a Clear Recovery Plan: Aligned cross-functional teams to prioritize resolving product quality issues and restoring customer confidence. Adopted a 'Maslow’s Hierarchy Mindset' to address critical issues first and build trust incrementally.
  • Introduced Agile Release Cadence: Launched a 90-day release cycle, resolving 90% of Severity 1 defects in the first release and addressing Severity 1 and 2 defects before any new features, providing customers with visible progress and reassurance.
  • Strengthened Customer and Partner Communication: Developed a proactive communication plan to transparently share progress and set clear expectations, boosting trust and satisfaction. Provided partners in Europe with early access to the product roadmap and progress updates, ensuring they were prepared and aligned for effective sales and implementation.
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  Small-Business Product: Modernizing and Securing

  • Mitigated Security Risks: Replaced over 50 outdated OEM components with best-of-breed components from enterprise products. This approach leveraged existing resources to address vulnerabilities, ensure compliance, and avoid the need for additional development budget. Additionally, a revenue-sharing model offset the costs of new components, reducing third-party components to 30 and significantly lowering royalty expenses for the company.
  • Balanced Modernization and Cost Efficiency: Unified R&D and Support teams to ensure seamless collaboration, enhancing their effectiveness and maximizing resource efficiency during modernization efforts.
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  Strategic Alignment Across the Business

  • Unified Product and Go-to-Market Strategy: Clearly defined each product's role in the overall company portfolio to improve internal coordination and market positioning.
  • Engaged Leadership Support: Maintained alignment with senior leaders through regular updates and progress reviews.

Measurable Outcomes

The strategy delivered tangible and transformative results:

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  Revenue Stabilization and Growth

  • Achieved flat sales growth for the small-business product within three quarters, reversing a prolonged decline.
  • Reduced the mid-market product's sales decline from over 20% annually to low single digits within the same timeframe, demonstrating significant stabilization.
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  Improved Renewal Rates and Customer Satisfaction

  • Small-Business Product: Achieved a significant improvement in Support CSAT, reaching 89% following the release of the updated product version, reflecting increased customer satisfaction and confidence in the solution.
  • Mid-Market Product: Improved Support CSAT and renewal rates through targeted product quality enhancements and proactive engagement, restoring trust among a previously dissatisfied customer base.
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  Enhanced Cross-Functional Collaboration: Facilitated cross-functional alignment by introducing shared KPIs and leading regular strategy sessions, driving a culture of collaboration and sustained operational efficiency.
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  Proactive Market Positioning: Proactively positioned the business to seize market opportunities by enhancing product quality, communication, and support. This strategic approach fostered sustainable growth and competitiveness in the marketplace.

Why This Matters for You

This case study demonstrates how aligning teams across the complete customer life cycle, resolving customer pain points by prioritizing the most critical issues first, and implementing a unified product strategy can drive measurable growth. By adopting these principles, your organization can:

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  Align cross-functional teams around a shared vision that spans the entire customer lifecycle—from product development to go-to-market strategies to post-sales success.
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  Improve customer retention through proactive engagement, product reliability, and customer-centric strategies.
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  Enhance communication across the organization and with partners to foster collaboration, increase efficiency, and drive alignment on strategic goals.
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  Develop and implement scalable processes that adapt to evolving market demands and ensure operational excellence.

Next Steps

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  If your organization is navigating challenges with underperforming products, misaligned teams, or unclear strategies, this approach can transform your business into a growth engine by turning obstacles into opportunities for sustainable success.

  Contact me today for a personalized consultation and explore how tailored strategies can unlock growth for your business.