Management consulting services for a software development company

sky gate is a software company that focuses on application development for clients located primarily in USA and Poland. Over the past 9 years, the company has grown to an 80-person team that now delivers efficient and scalable systems to both enterprise clients and fast-growing startups.

For many years, the CEO was single-handedly overseeing the company’s marketing, at the same time acquiring new clients, growing sales, coordinating the work of other departments, and being actively engaged in initiatives of other subsidiaries in the group.

Taking on so many responsibilities was a heavy burden on the company’s owner, which (in the long run) had a negative impact on the effectiveness of marketing and sales. 

Moreover, at that time, the marketing team consisted of a single person who needed to divide their time among various projects for companies within the group. As a result, other employees created materials and artifacts without marketing’s coordination or approval, which led to a lack of consistency at the level of brand communication and hindered information transfer within the organization. The software house didn’t make effective use of the available communication channels with the market, which weakened the visibility and credibility of the brand among foreign customers. The team didn’t operate strategically to achieve set objectives – marketing activities were limited only to isolated, ad hoc, and chaotic actions that didn’t have any major impact on the company’s growth. Overall, the team lacked the right processes, marketing skills, and environment for effective operations. 

Having decided that it’s time to change things around for sky gate, the agency’s CEO approached Digitalkod with the task to streamline internal operations and work out an effective framework to manage the marketing operations of the software development company.

The cooperation with Digitalkod:

Due to our specialization in marketing for tech companies, we could build and train the team to set a proper foundation to kick off marketing initiatives. The in-house marketing team has grown both literally and metaphorically. 

As a result of the outsourced recruitment process, sky gate hired another marketing specialist with the appropriate skillset within 2 months. The marketing team also used our help to introduce a strategic approach into their routine. They have begun to implement activities in a process- and results-oriented manner as opposed to the task-oriented approach they used before. The team has also begun planning their activities around business objectives and monitoring KPIs and results of marketing activities. Moreover, the involvement in marketing activities has increased across organization and the cooperation between marketing and sales departments has started to improve.

The software house had our continuous support in the planning and execution of various marketing activities including data analysis, and creating marketing processes to build confidence in the path to follow. Knowledge transfer to the organization is crucial for its further growth therefore we also trained the team on how to use different marketing tools and marketing methodologies in practice. Thanks to this approach, the in-house team gained new strategic skills and gained some hands-on experience in working with the new toolset.

The first step was to understand the source of problems and find potential areas for improvement. 

As a result of the initial evaluation, conversations with the CEO and the marketing team as well as an independent analysis carried out by a consultant, we identified the critical challenges in various areas: both strategic and operational, as well as the way that marketing functioned within the organization. Due to the scale of required changes, the CEO decided to approach the transition incrementally, focusing on the development of the in-house marketing team.

The process kicked off with regular consultations with the CEO considering the company’s business goals, vision, and strategic direction, as well as the role of marketing in software companies and effective management of B2B marketing. These sessions were the starting point for further work with team leaders during internal workshops carried out by the client’s team.

The next step was to gradually strengthen the B2B marketing team, which at the time consisted only of one person who had to divide their time among various projects. Due to the scale of planned activities and the baseline situation – lack of experience and marketing skills in the team, it was our priority not only to hire additional marketing specialists but also to develop digital competencies in-house.

Building a successful marketing team within a software company requires a business mindset (acumen), extensive experience in marketing, knowledge of the peculiarities of the IT industry, as well as the ability to hire the right person for the company at its stage of development. Without prior hands-on experience in B2B marketing or marketing management, it might be difficult (even for experienced CEOs or managers) to assess which skills are an absolute necessity for the team and a given position, and which are just a nice to have.

Digitalkod assumed responsibility for the entire recruitment process including:

• defining expectations for the role,
• identifying the company’s EVP, 
• creating a candidate profile, 
• performing screening and evaluation of all selected marketers,
• providing feedback for both parties, 
• preparing a list of recommended candidates, 
• managing the onboarding process.