Improved Marketing Bandwidth Increases Revenue Opportunities

A Case Study: Upscaling Regional Marketing Teams

A leading manufacturer of innovative technologies focused on raising the performance of diagnostic testing and creating better patient outcomes across the entire healthcare continuum. A recent acquisition created the opportunity to address existing challenges in their respective regional marketing team structures and capabilities.

As a result of the pandemic, the organization enjoyed strong growth in some areas yet experienced a slowdown in business units directly impacted by dramatic fluctuations in hospital volumes. Additionally, given the new healthcare market dynamics, the organization needed to restructure its regional marketing organization to reflect the company’s changing needs, as supply chain issues, inventory and customer order fulfillment required additional marketing bandwidth.

The organization called upon Alexander Group for assistance based on our previous projects that focused on accelerated growth through targeted account segmentation, marketing and sales team restructuring.

Approach: Time Allocation Reveals What Gets Accomplished

Alexander Group’s initial assessment of the organization’s regional marketing capabilities identified a significant misalignment between the current team structure and the evolving go-to-market priorities of the commercial organization. By conducting interviews, documenting current roles and responsibilities and analyzing current time allocation metrics, Alexander Group could design specific strategies to improve the regional marketing team’s productivity.

In one circumstance, Alexander Group analyzed the team’s time allocation during normal business conditions and how they addressed specific challenges, including product allocation issues that fell within their responsibility. As a result, Alexander Group could better understand the gaps created in the core marketing activities due to a blended role that required executing both marketing and product allocation tasks.

Key Findings: Help Needed for Non-Marketing Activities

The organization’s sales team structure targeted different sites of care, including hospital and physician-based locations. Unfortunately, the marketing messages were different for each site. In addition, the current regional marketing team was often not supporting all care sites, creating a gap in coverage and impacting revenue.

The regional marketing team also managed product allocation issues, including product shortages, creating a significant burden as the team lacked the bandwidth to complete their core marketing tasks, which included strategy and sales team support. This bandwidth constraint varied by product group in time and scale, but in peak months, the product marketers spent only 15% of their time on their core marketing activities, requiring over four FTEs to fully support product allocation and ad hoc requirements. This seasonality requirement meant that during peak times, the organization devoted 85% of its regional marketing investment to non-revenue-producing activities.

Recommendations and Results: The Right Roles for the Right Job

Alexander Group offered specific recommendations to address the existing gaps in the regional marketing team, including:

1. Align the regional marketing team’s organizational structure with sales team coverage to increase overall team efficiency and drive collaboration.
2. Group product managers by focus area to create a better span of control and provide greater opportunities for career advancement.
3. Create a formal marketing operations team, including a new product portfolio manager role, to address product allocation bandwidth issues, projected to result in a 25% increase in headcount productivity.
4. Add more junior resources, increasing overall headcount without incurring additional headcount costs.

While product allocation challenges remain, the regional marketing team can better manage the process due to new, dedicated resources. In addition, the organization forecasted to realize a 6%-9% above-market growth in the first quarter after implementing the new marketing structure. The company has also experienced early success in cross-selling the combined product bag, partially due to better marketing support. The success of these programs has resulted in growth across segments and product lines, diversifying revenue and mitigating any ongoing risk of market fluctuation impact on revenue.

Aligning Roles and Responsibilities for Results

Alexander Group specializes in aligning sales and marketing teams with the appropriate coverage to ensure you meet your organizational goals. We have the healthcare industry expertise and critical benchmarks to ensure you target your investment on the right revenue-producing activities.