Finding new life for an existing product line

I once joined a software company called ICIX to lead marketing and market development. Our products were focused on supply chain visibility and compliance. We had landed more than 15 of the top brands of customers in the space with both national and global visibility.

Like many other technology companies, we were fast approaching a time when the software platform needed to be re-architected. This would be expensive and time consuming and we needed to do this while maintaining our current customer base and continuing to grow revenue so that we could help fund the new platform.

As the platform was getting older, newer companies and technologies were coming along that made new sales harder. With my market development hat on, I started looking at adjacent markets, categories or emerging needs to see if we could find a new market for the current technology stack.

At the time, Sustainability  and ESG were in their infancy, but companies were starting to pay close attention. Many firms had made commitments in this area and were starting to report on progress in their public quarterly and annual filings. In addition to having a personal interest in the space, I soon discovered that the tracking and reporting requirements that were emerging would be a perfect fit our our current product line. They would also benefit from the new platform, but were not dependent upon it.

We could re-package the current offerings and position them as new innovation in this fast emerging category, when needs were developing quickly

I was able to get the senior leadership of the company focused on this issue. We engaged major industry associations, press and analysts, built new messaging and go to market for the sales team and within 9 months had sold multi-million dollar deals to Walmart and other major retailers and ended up on stage with the CEO of Walmart. This revenue and visibility gave us financial runway, brand and market leadership perception so that we could focus on the platform rebuild.

The flexibility of the team to pivot to a new category, build and maintain credibility in our new market, as well as our existing market demonstrated to me how a team can come together and grow the business.