The organization: Nedap
Nedap are an international technology provider based in Groenlo in Netherlands, whose business comprises a number of different business units selling products into different sectors. Some of these business units such as Livestock are well-established and have been trading for years, others have been set up more recently to provide technology products into different sectors such as Security.
The challenge
Nedap knew they wanted to improve the performance of their Marketing team, but did not really know how to go about it in a way that would get buy-in from across their different business units. There were different Marketing challenges in different parts of the business. Plus the Marketing team were seen as more operational than strategic and in some cases resistant to change.
Our solution
We began by interviewing the leaders of each business unit to assess what they needed and wanted from their marketing teams. This gave us a framework and focus for what was required in terms of skills development and performance improvement.
We then sent out a questionnaire to the 40+ Marketing people employed across the business to get their individual views on what they felt were their strengths, skills gaps, and how they felt Marketing could improve on what they delivered. In the same questionnaire we also sought the views of Sales people and Product Development so that we could get a more rounded view of what the learning gaps really were.
We then ran short online workshops with the Marketing team to give them feedback on the results and to get their buy-in and commitment to the learning journey that we were proposing.
The impact
We delivered more than just the outline for a learning programme. We helped the whole business to think through what they really wanted from a Marketing department and therefore the type of people that they needed to employ and develop as Marketers. We enabled both the Marketing teams and their business units to look beyond the largely functional role that many of them were doing and consider how to develop to the Advisory and/or Strategic level.
