Calabrio, Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, is a privately-held company that was formed 5 years ago as a spin-off of Spanlink.
Calabrio provides software products and services to customers in the contact center industry. The company distributes its software through channel partnerships and an OEM relationship with Cisco. Calabrio is a member of the Cisco Developer Network (CDN), and a gold member of the Avaya DevConnect program.
While there were 2 major competitors and approximately 40 other companies providing software products and services to customers in the contact center industry, Calabrio’s Business Strategy focused on achieving significant share growth in the next few years. In order to achieve this growth Calabrio management believed the time was right to understand the current needs and motivations of customer’s, and their perceptions of Calabrio and competitors. In doing so, Calabrio believed it could develop more effective and efficient plans to accelerate and sustain profitable organic growth.
Calabrio management engaged Stellus Consulting to guide a cross-functional team, including their advertising agency, to develop a Brand Strategy that would build a strong relationship with Target Customers. The objective of a Brand Strategy is to create a Brand Promise that, when effectively expressed in the marketplace, will result in profitable organic growth, i.e., more customers buying more Calabrio products and services more often.
We began by interviewing customers, re-sellers and analysts to deepen our understanding of their relationship with Calabrio and competitive brands. Next, we uncovered customer’s underlying needs and motivations, and determined how we wanted the Calabrio brand to evolve in the future. Lastly, we created a Brand Promise that was compelling, believable and distinct in order to drive growth that was consistent with the Calabrio Business Strategy.
We then led a Brand Implementation Workshop with all functional areas (i.e. R&D, IT, Sales and Marketing, etc.) to identify actions to deliver the Brand Strategy in the marketplace.
Three years later we were engaged to evolve the Calabrio Brand Strategy to align with the company’s future growth plans.
Engaged with:
Calabrio
- Tom Goodmanson, President and CEO
- Matt Matsui, VP of Product Management
- Tim Kraskey, VP of Marketing and Business Development
- Brett Theisen, VP of Sales
- Kristen Jacobsen, Director of Marketing Communications
- Katie Bosch, Marketing Generalist
- Tom Sullivan, Product Manager
- Mike Maciej, Director of Product Engineering
- Debbie Williams, HR Manager
- Mike Cripe, Director of Support Operations
- Kim Kraska, Director of PDI
Hunt Adkins
- Patrick Hunt, President
- Josh Smerick, Director of Strategic Planning
- Shanna Apitz, Account Director
Haberman
- Brian Wachtler, President