Altia Solutions is a rapidly growing software company. Based in the UK with offices in different parts of the world, the organisation creates specialist digital investigation tools, to support investigators in both public and private sector organisations. The company had received private equity backing and were looking to scale their operations rapidly over the next few years.
The Altia leadership team had already engaged a number of different creative, brand and marketing providers, including ourselves, and had asked us all to contribute our ideas in how best to support their marketing and sales activities. They were looking for creative ways to attract new customers, increase license renewals, deal with (what could be) complex buying processes, to essentially support their sales staff and to help increase revenues in whatever way possible. Naturally as a high-growth start-up, they were looking for a little entrepreneurial flair along the way.
As an existing supplier, we were thrilled to be given the opportunity to contribute. We initially worked together on one project which quickly became two and then three and on and on. Over the next 5 years, we would eventually with Altia on over 100 projects as we became a key partner of the company and latterly the group.
This is how we helped Altia Solutions ‘win the sales game…’
The centrepiece of our work was the segmenting and personalising of messages for each of the individual stakeholders involved in the sales process. This included new customers, existing customers, leads, prospects, users, finance officers, procurement officers, project managers and even local, regional and national decision-makers as well as many others.
By intelligently breaking up marketing communications and serving tailored micro messages to each of the different people involved, we were able to help Altia Solutions make incremental gains which dramatically compounded over time.
These are a few examples of the bespoke solutions we created with Altia.
Targeted print and digital communications were created to showcase the tangible value of Altia’s products (number of investigators hours saved, how many tasks were reduced, etc.) These campaigns were instrumental in winning over decision makers, most significantly – with procurement officials in the public sector.
We wanted prospective customers to quickly understand what each software package could do and how it would help their organisations. Subtle graphical messages were embedded into the product sub-brand identities, which could then be used as a prop by sales staff to help explain to customers the value each product would bring. (These were incredibly effective for introductory conversations.)
We created customer loyalty communications, to promote different software features and help existing users use more of the software features available. These were some of the most successful campaigns in our time working with Altia, they built tremendous good and would result in significant sales uplifts over several years.
Many different communications were produced over several years. They ranged from the informative to the humorous, from the highly targeted to something that would just remind customers that Altia were there and ready to help. These were pivotal at key moments to help the company continuously achieve their ambitious quarterly sales targets.
‘Marketing and sales’ activities can come in many guises. The creation and showcasing of common and ‘shared values’ with local and central government (national and international) were invaluable in helping the organisation present their value in various large-scale tenders.
Many of the tactics discussed in this case-study are based on building relationships and making progress ‘on the ground’ with users, customers, buyers, etc. The creation of a new brand and event, SOCEX, was invaluable at helping Altia gain influence with many of the top local, regional and national decision makers in law-enforcement.
In addition to the work produced in close collaboration with the client, the other highlights of our service included…
We learned so much working across the entire organisation – this included with technical teams, business development teams and even the wider supply chain. Each time, we enhanced our knowledge of the Altia products and how they added value to the end customers/users. At one stage, our Founder, Benedetto, felt he knew so much about Altia’s software that he could sell the products himself.
The ‘intellectual weightlifting’ carried out on various projects with our teams helped individual sales staff better understand their own products and eventually sell better when in the room with prospects.
We would host regular ideation to share new ideas, exciting concepts and best practices. These sessions resulted in a number of successful ideas, one such example being, the Altia Customer Loyalty Campaigns, inspired by the project management tool ’Trello.’
Many of the learnings established with Altia was carried onwards and onto ABM Intelligence after their merger. This allowed ABM staff to quickly piggy-back of tried and tested marketing methods.
Our work to help Altia ‘win the sales game’ lasted over 5 years and more than 100 different projects. THE LOFT worked with the wider organisation for more than 7 years in total before the management team exited and the company was sold.
Our company regularly took a leadership role with activities. This included regularly drafting the commercial rationale behind activities, formalising the brief, proposing ideas, managing the projects and the resources, all the while ensuring that everybody was on-board, on-message and knew what they were doing all the way through project delivery and evaluation. etc.
Our work to help Altia ‘win the sales game’ lasted over 5 years and more than 100 different projects. THE LOFT worked with the wider organisation for more than 7 years in total before the management team exited and the company was sold.
Such was Altia’s growth curve, and our own lean processes, almost all projects were conceived, created and delivered in incredibly quick times. Most projects generally spanned just a couple of weeks.
We aimed to provide the most frictionless experience possible – meetings were kept minimal and light. We would also always have ideas for new activities, would organise presentations to allow for decisions to be made quickly and even go to the extent of sketching out various proposals to ensure leaders could better assess options, etc.
Marketing & Sales Strategy | Stakeholder Proposition Development | Creative Services Management | Campaigns | Graphic Design | Events | E-Mail Marketing | Design for Print | Vision & Values
Speed was very much the order of the day for the rapidly growing Altia. Many of the campaigns and various communications were taken from concept to delivery in incredibly quick timescales.
Each of the activities mentioned help to contribute to the company’s scale-up journey. In the 5-year period of this case-study, the company achieved an average 6-7-fold increase in revenues, a comparable rise in profitability and significantly increased shareholder value. Our contributions resulted in…
Improved Conversion Rates with highly qualified prospects, close to purchase.
Accelerated Decision-Making with all stakeholders involved in the buying process.
Better & Faster Understanding of the Products from prospective customers.
Stronger Relationships with influential decision-makers locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.
Faster Sales Pipeline Progression from prospect to lead to sale to eventual upsell.
Increased Enquiries from existing Altia customers.
Higher Attendee Numbers for company training sessions/webinars.
More Professional overall brand appearance.
More Satisfied, Informed and Engaged business development teams.
Greatly Improved Project Efficiency compared to previous agencies.
Outstanding Financial ROI on all work produced.
Outstanding Time ROI for many of Altia’s executive team.
“THE LOFT was an integral part of the Altia story, we worked together for many years and they were instrumental in creating our global brand. They contributed to countless projects, worked across the entire organisation and provided real support throughout our business journey as a growing company.
They were a tremendous help, particularly in the earlier years, when our company’s growth was at its most rapid and things were changing every single day. They supported then, as they always have done, by contributing to the company’s strategies with great energy, insight and creativity. Always grounded in the commercial realities of what we were doing and always with the bigger picture in mind.
Good fun too, highly recommended.”
Ian Watson, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Altia Solutions
“We’ve been collaborating with THE LOFT for more than a year and in that time I’ve been mightily impressed, first and foremost with their enthusiasm and desire to understand our business. An easy option would have been to deal with the initial job in isolation, complete it quickly, and move on to another but Benedetto and his team instantly saw the bigger picture and opted not for the quick and easy choice but the more challenging.
Their willingness to challenge themselves and push the boundaries shines through in the physical work they have produced for us. From a total company and product rebranding exercise to more subtle marketing campaigns the material produced always surprises and delights me and consistently supports my teams activities to drive sales.
Working from the ground up and engaging everyone at Altia, the entire team at THE LOFT have built a strong understanding of our business which they apply to new projects, subsequently presenting the end product remarkably quickly and accurately.
Long may our collaboration with THE LOFT continue.”
Paul Miller, Sales Manager of Altia Solutions
“THE LOFT helped us to create a new brand after our merger in 2016. They went to great lengths to talk to everybody in the company, they were always responsive with changes and both the identity and cultural aspects of the new brand have been a great help to us in re-positioning the organisation and getting our message across. We very much enjoyed working with them, highly recommended.”
Paul Hardman, Business Relationship Manager of Altia-ABM
This is 1 of 4 case-studies documenting our extensive work with Altia Solutions over 7 years. We are in the process of completing the other 3, if you would like more information on these or the case-study above, please don’t hesitate to contact us.