This is my problem that needs a little push in the right direction.

[foxy]

Scenario:
The Exact Solution Company is a privately owned technical consulting company. Started in 1999 by four technically savvy IT professionals, the firm has grown steadily and gained a solid reputation within its major metropolitan area. Exact Solutions is recognized as a market leader in Systems Management for the IT Departments of Fortune 500 companies.
This year, the founders hired a CEO. The CEO is a venture capitalist who brings an MBA degree and 10 years of successful consulting experience to the company. Exact Solutions is looking to the CEO to expand the firm's product offerings and to grow business opportunities nationwide. Exact Solutions' goals are to grow sales by 20% year one, and an additional 20% each subsequent year for the next two years.
Currently the firm's System Management products consist of two primary business lines: custom consulting services and packaged offerings. The custom consulting services are unique for each customer, are offered to meet specific capabilities, and are usually priced based on a time and materials basis. Since each project is different, the firm’s sales are difficult to project, resulting in an uneven revenue stream. In addition, the number of fulltime employees often fluctuates depending on the custom project requirements.
The packaged offerings are standardized solutions that can be used by many clients. Like word processing software that can be bought at the store and used by a general audience, Exact Solutions' packaged offerings can be used by a number of clients to solve a similar problem. Exact Solutions sells the packaged offerings by a single-user or multiple-user license agreement along with optional installation and support services. With the packaged offerings, Exact Solutions can set a predictable sales goal based on known costs for developing each offering. And can earn additional revenue on the installation and support services for a minimal cost.
Whether clients are buying custom solutions or packaged offerings, Exact Solutions has gained market share by developing a reputation for helping companies reduce their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for their IT departments. Using Exact Solutions' products, IT departments can establish firm budgets since they can specifically identify the total costs to support, maintain and upgrade all the personal computer workstations at their company.
To build upon the firm's solid reputation and to meet Exact Solutions’ aggressive sales goals, the CEO has hired six new sales people. Total fulltime staff is now at 35 people. The CEO is planning to hire a fulltime, entry-level tactical marketing person who will focus on day-to-day activities and sales support materials. Any additional marketing tasks, such as a new product rollout, will be handled by marketing consultants hired on an as-needed basis. The CEO has also planned to rollout a new application within the packaged offerings product line.
New Product Rollout
Exact Solution has developed an industry-first product to boost its Product Offerings business line. The product is designed to help an IT department remotely upgrade any sales force application that is used on a wireless PDA. Regardless of whether the IT department supports Palm Pilots, iPAQs or other handheld devices, the Exact Solutions product ensures that the sales team can receive all new and upgraded application software simultaneously versus one PDA at a time. This product is expected to be popular with system managers who can save deployment time and support a consistent PDA user interface at a lower cost. The application may not appeal to a sales force whose personality-rich individuals like to customize their PDA with software not supported by their companies. This unsupported software results in unplanned expenses and maintenance costs for IT resulting in higher expenses than budgeted for their companies.
Exact Solutions must rollout the product within three months. The Exact Solutions sales team must have the product at that time – or sooner - to sell it to IT departments who will be preparing their annual projects and budgets for the next year.
Your Role:
You are one of seven candidates for the entry-level tactical marketing position. You have met with the CEO who has told you the vision and goals for the firm. The CEO has also communicated that while a formal marketing plan and strategy would be helpful to develop, the firm's founding partners do not want to invest a lot of money in a highly-experienced marketing professional and planning, have limited marketing expenses to $12,000/month, and have provided for product rollouts to have separate marketing budgets.
As an interviewee for the position, you see an opportunity not only to land the job, but also to sell management on the need to redefine the role to include strategic planning as well as tactical support. Your objective is to win the position, elevate its status from entry-level to senior level within the firm, and become a highly valued member of the management team.
For an overview of Systems Management, please visit Bitpipe (an aggregation of white papers on the IT industry) or the Center for Systems Management websites.

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I just need a little push in the right direction to get my mind working efficiently.

[Lars39]

1. I'm getting that antsy feeling that you are possibly giving out TMI,

that can be read by anybody. :shrug: