Case Study: AbsolutData - Sustaining Growth Through “Decision Engineering” Go-to-Market Strategy

Client

Anil Kaul, CEO and Co-Founder of AbsolutData, looked to leverage the market opportunity of “Big Data” long before it became the hot current trend it is today in the marketplace. Kaul knew that translating data into knowledge and then into actionable business decisions has been a CEO’s imperative for decades – but many organizations find it too difficult to accomplish with disparate data sources, legacy systems and limited internal expertise.

Headquartered in Alameda, CA, this 13-year old company has helped forward-looking companies across CPG, Retail, Hospitality, Financial Services, Telecommunications, Pharmaceuticals, Consulting, Automobile, Entertainment/ Media & Advertising address their toughest business issues. They are the experts at translating challenges and growth opportunities into clearly defined parameters that can be analyzed, managed and activated to address their clients’ most critical business imperatives. Their “Decision Engineering” approach provides a unique blend of market experience, consulting expertise and heavy lifting to consolidate, integrate and interpret large amounts of disparate data into meaningful business insights. “We are well positioned to uniquely leverage analytics to engineer better decisions for our clients on an ongoing basis” stated Kaul.

Situation

AbsolutData historically structured its business along three major business lines including marketing analytics, market research studies and outsourced analytics processing. Business growth was solid, however in order to deliver future growth and take the company to the next level, Kaul wanted to revisit his company offering vis-à-vis customer needs and competitive offerings.  

“Exhibiting consistent and strong growth over the last few years, AbsolutData has continued to develop new analytical services and enter new markets” said Kaul. Kaul continues, “ although we had strong client relationships with a number of top companies, we found we did not have a clear go-to-market strategy, or a consistent approach to how we presented ourselves to existing and potential new clients. In order to continue our strong level of growth into the future, we needed some help determining our most effective positioning to organize the company around for the next phase of our company story. We knew we didn’t have the internal resources to perform this type of work.”

Approach

Kaul reached out to Chief Outsiders for help. Chief Outsiders Pete Hayes and Slade Kobran worked together to uncover AbsolutData’s underlying business needs and develop an approach to prioritize and address their most important issues. Kobran worked with Kaul and his Leadership Team to gain a deeper understanding of their business, market dynamics, competitive position, capabilities and capacity for future growth. Together, Kobran and the team developed a prescriptive go-to-market plan to clarify AbsolutData’s positioning, messaging and go-to-market approach that would allow them to activate near-term opportunities while positioning the company for future growth.

”The key was a strong working relationship with Anil and his leadership team, as well as other leaders within the organization,” said Kobran, “ this allowed me to gain a much deeper understanding not only of AbsolutData’s strengths but how they operated, the resources they were able to devote to the new approach going forward, and the strategies which would be most effective for them both short-term and long-term.”

Results

• Clarified their approach to market, emphasizing “Decision Engineering” which goes beyond technology or technique to provide a sustainable solution that can be adjusted to meet their clients’ changing business needs.

• Re-defined their product profile to include all the tools their clients need – from strategy to analytic expertise to outsourced execution – in a flexible and as-needed approach. 

• Developed a platform for the future that can be leveraged to grow into new client verticals or solution categories. 

“The positioning has made us re-think who we are as a company, and we are having significant changes to our business model itself which has been partly a result of the work Slade has done for us. This is a fairly large impact not just from a marketing perspective but from an overall business perspective,”  Anil Kaul, CEO