Organization/Project Management

Building MAGNET out of CAMP, Inc. • Developing Security Plus Keyless Home

• Initiation: Established goal of aligning CAMP, Inc.'s 3 divisions under one message and getting rid of silo structure of the organization. Salespeople would now market all of CAMP's services instead of just continuous improvement, product development or business incubation. Secondary goal was to follow analysis that continuous improvement (Lean, Six Sigma) had largely saturated the manufacturing community and therefore more growth oriented strategies of product development and new business incubation should be promoted.
• Planning: Developed overarching message for each year of the marketing and business strategic plan. Aligned events, initiatives, collateral pieces and other communications both internal and external with plan. Held meetings with sales staff to impress upon them importance of new direction and educated them on how to best implement new plans.
• Execute: Analyzed impediments to implementing plans. Analyzed costs, new technologies necessary, new personnel new partnerships and new distribution of tasks within marketing and other departments.
• Design: Developed initiatives and marketing messages to highlight need of manufacturers to focus more on growth than on improvement as improvement strategies were beginning to reach saturation in the market. Developed higher end graphical treatments and more "corporate" feel to communications to highlight idea of growth and bold change.
• Build: Developed new Web site, new collateral pieces. Implemented "Growth in Manufacturing" initiative. Began partnership with Cuyahoga County on New Product Development Loan Initiative to fund new products at easy rates if they would be manufactured in Cuyahoga County. Loans would fund product development work at CAMP.
• Test: Presented new Web designs, collateral and event and initiative ideas and strategies internally to get buy-in from sales force. Took their ideas and made improvements.
• Implement: Went live with new Web site. Published new collateral and ads. Began Growth initiative.
• Post-implementation: Developed new metrics for Web site success, event success, success of collateral and advertising. Maintained compliance with federal and state regulations by communicating internally need for salespeople and consultants to provide economic impact numbers for services.

Developing Security Plus Keyless Home

• Initiation: Established goal to design product to win business school competition.
• Planning: Developed meeting and work schedule. Broke up tasks by individual. Developed project steps, deliverables and dates.
• Developed strategic principle of keeping product ideas in competition judge's (well known product development company) area of core competency: small, plastic devices with gears, batteries and motors at low price with mass appeal.
• Each member set about brainstorming their own ideas. We met and chose amongst options, finally voting on the product we called "The Magic Doorman".
• Execution: Rendered progressively better versions of the device, doing incremental technical drawings and meeting and discussing what was working and what was not working in the design.
• Showed idea to focus groups.
• Monitor/Control: Did marketing research on product, competitive analysis, costs, etc. Developed PowerPoint presentation and model of the device and packaging to give completely professional appearance. Presented to competition judge.
• Finish: Helped manage process of negotiation of product sale and education in product manufacturing, patenting and intellectual property.

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