A Method for Marketing and Sales Optimization of Enterprise Software

Applications

Dana van Uitert

, Marijn Smit

, Wim van den Brandt

and Sjaak Brinkkemper

Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

The Business Innovators, Ede, The Netherlands

Keywords:

Marketing and Sales, Business Strategies, Discover Your Potentials, Enterprise Software, Business Model

Canvas, Customer Journey Map.

Abstract:

Marketing and Sales departments are closely related but there is also underperformance within this collabo-

ration. Multiple strategies exist to improve collaboration or integration between the two. This paper focuses

on the Discover Your Potentials method which uses a combination of different models to improve business

performance in enterprise software companies. A qualitative case study approach was used to ﬁnd out how

successful the method is in designing marketing and sales potentials. The paper discusses how the method

was executed at a company developing and selling accounting software extensions. Based on this study some

preliminary ﬁndings and conclusions can be formulated.

1 INTRODUCTION

Marketing and sales departments are closely related,

working together to drive business growth and rev-

enue (Baycur et al., 2022; Le Meunier-Fitzhugh

and Massey, 2019; Le Meunier-FitzHugh and Piercy,

2007a). Although they have similar goals, there is

often a lack of coordination (Malshe et al., 2017).

The departments have different viewpoints, mindsets,

and motivational factors, leading to friction between

them (Beverland et al., 2006; Rouzi

es et al., 2005;

uhlb

ack and Rosenow, 2022). This friction is noth-

ing new, as it has been a persistent challenge for many

years now. It has been documented in the litera-

ture, for instance, as early as 1993 (Crittenden et al.,

1993). An article published in 1997 even showed that

the differences between the marketing and sales de-

partments are already of greater importance than ini-

tially anticipated. It becomes evident that solving this

is crucial for the success of an organization (Mont-

gomery and Webster, 1997). Because of this absence

of collaboration between the two departments, signif-

icant challenges arise. For instance, when the efforts

are not aligned between the two departments, it may

lead to missing out on potential customers, which will

impact the generation of revenue (Biemans, 2023).

Another challenge that is a result of this friction is a

lack of coordination, which can cause the overall busi-

ness performance to also be affected (Le Meunier-

FitzHugh and Piercy, 2007b; Watson, 2017).

Some existing studies have delved into resolving

the underperformance between marketing and sales,

a topic that will be further discussed in the subse-

quent chapter of this paper. Some research has al-

ready been done regarding ﬁnding a solution to min-

imize the underperformance between marketing and

sales or even solve this completely (Enyinda et al.,

2023). For example, researchers did ﬁnd that the type

of difference between marketing and sales matters in

how signiﬁcant the underperformance is within an or-

ganization. As it turns out, some differences can also

positively impact performance. So to perhaps solve

the underperformance between the two departments

within an organization, it is crucial to fully understand

their differences and their impact on the business per-

formance (Homburg and Jensen, 2007; Lauzi et al.,

2023). While efforts have been made to develop tools

and strategies that try to solve the marketing and sales

friction, one of the main limitations is that there are

little to no real-world case studies that demonstrate if

the tool or strategy is effective. And having a lack

of evidence that shows success stories, makes it chal-

lenging for businesses to adopt these tools (Atteya,

2012).

A tool that is designed to assist in solving the un-

derperformance between marketing and sales is the

Discover Your Potentials (DYP) method introduced

by Wim van den Brandt (hereafter referred to as ex-

van Uitert, D., Smit, M., van den Brandt, W. and Brinkkemper, S.

A Method for Marketing and Sales Optimization of Enterprise Software Applications.

DOI: 10.5220/0012634200003690

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2024) - Volume 2, pages 185-195

ISBN: 978-989-758-692-7; ISSN: 2184-4992

185

pert), which is the tool that this study will focus on.

This method is designed to improve business perfor-

mance, focusing on marketing and sales from soft-

ware and hi-tech organizations. The method follows

ﬁve comprehensive steps in order to identify business

potentials. It combines two popular marketing and

sales modeling techniques: the Business Model Can-

vas and the Customer Journey Map. This innovative

combination has the potential to signiﬁcantly mitigate

the risks associated with unsuccessful software imple-

mentations.

The main focus of this study is to observe the

impact of the DYP method within an organization

concerning the development of marketing and sales

strategies. As this method will provide an innova-

tive insight into ﬁnding a suited strategy for enterprise

software companies, seeing how this method facili-

tates a real-world case study will be very insightful

in observing its effectiveness. This leads to the main

research question guiding this study to be:

To what extent does the ‘Discover Your Potentials’

method lead to useful marketing and sales strategies

for enterprise software companies?

To answer this question, an in-depth exploration is un-

dertaken through a combination of a literature review

and a detailed case study analysis.

The DYP method was designed for software and

hi-tech organizations so that is also where the focus in

this paper will be. Nevertheless, the popularity of the

Business Model Canvas and Customer Journey Map

implies that the DYP method can be applied across

diverse organizations. In this research, one case study

of the DYP method was performed at a software com-

pany in the Netherlands, here referred to as ’S-Pack’,

with the company’s identity anonymized to maintain

conﬁdentiality and privacy. All other names in this

paper have also been anonymized. The scientiﬁc con-

tribution of this study will be that it adds to the ev-

idence that shows the practicality and effectiveness

of the DYP method in real-world cases. It will show

that the DYP method is an effective method to use for

addressing marketing and sales optimalization. And

it will, thereby, also show the applicability of this

innovative tool into an actual existing organization.

Besides having a scientiﬁc contribution, this study

will also have a societal contribution. Because the

DYP method assists in better collaboration between

the marketing and sales departments. This does not

only beneﬁt software and hi-tech organizations but

also other organizations in various industries facing

the same kind of challenges. Providing strategies that

will contribute to the overall business performance,

will also be a valuable contribution to the overall busi-

ness community.

In the upcoming chapter, more depth to the topic

is given. Subsequently, the research method is ex-

plained. In chapters four and ﬁve, results from the

performed case study will be discussed, afterward,

leading to conclusions and implications.

2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1 Marketing and Sales Collaboration

The collaboration between marketing and sales within

an organization can be a challenge that has gained

attention in the ﬁeld of strategic organizational man-

agement (Malshe, 2009; Dewsnap et al., 2020; Mal-

she et al., 2022). Several studies have indicated and

conﬁrmed the challenges in trying to harmonize these

two departments. For example, Beverland, Steel, and

Dapiran’s (2006) research explored the underperfor-

mance between the marketing and sales departments

and concluded that these are driven by differences in

belief (Beverland et al., 2006). Several additional

pieces of research conﬁrmed these indicated differ-

ences between the two departments. They emphasize

the importance of reaching a consensus and meeting

regularly since improving this collaboration is essen-

tial (Strahle et al., 1996; Le Meunier-FitzHugh and

Piercy, 2010; Arnett et al., 2021). Better collabora-

tion and overall communication between these two

departments will also lead to better outcomes (Smith

et al., 2006; Hauer et al., 2021). Based on these multi-

ple pieces of research, it becomes clear that there is a

challenge in trying to create an effective collaboration

between the marketing and sales departments within

an organization, but achieving this can be crucial for

success.

While previous research has mostly focused on

identifying and describing the underperformance be-

tween the marketing and sales departments, some

more recent studies attempt to explore these differ-

ences a bit further by trying to quantify them as a

way to measure and prioritize the differences that can

occur between these two departments within an or-

ganization. The results of this quantifying research

showed that task-related differences and communica-

tion challenges are the primary drivers behind team

underperformance (Enyinda et al., 2023). Another

study also noticed the increased attention in trying

to solve the marketing and sales underperformance.

That research looked into the unique roles that mar-

keting and sales have within an organization. While

marketing is strategic and product-oriented, sales

primarily focuses on short-term tasks and customer

needs. This research also recognizes the need for bet-

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ter collaboration between these departments and pro-

poses a framework to improve teamwork. However,

further research into this framework is needed to guar-

antee success in real-world organizations (Rehme and

Rennhak, 2012). Overall, these studies emphasize the

signiﬁcant importance of creating a better collabora-

tion, however, they also underscore the need for fur-

ther research to ﬁnd possibilities and innovative ways

to enhance marketing and sales cooperation.

2.2 BMC, CJM and Case Studies

The studied DYP method makes use of a combi-

nation of the Business Model Canvas (BMC) and

the Customer Journey Map (CJM). Through a case

study done by Sort and Nielsen (2018), it has been

made clear that by using the BMC, communication is

improved. It enhances feedback, increases chances

of funding, and better matchmaking between en-

trepreneurs and investors (Sort and Nielsen, 2018).

It has also been identiﬁed as an effective and efﬁ-

cient way to guide an entrepreneurial journey, and is

perceived as a useful tool to conduct business model

innovation (Murray and Scuotto, 2015)(Qastharin,

2016). The CJM is another model used in the DYP

method. It is an already widely used tool to represent

a customer’s experience with a certain service (Moon

et al., 2016). This helps to understand a customer’s

needs and, therefore, can assist an organization in im-

proving their customer experience (Rosenbaum et al.,

2017).

Based on the descriptions given in the literature,

using the BMC and the CJM together can be a strate-

gic approach to enhance the collaboration between

marketing and sales. As the BMC is a well-designed

tool to identify the key components of a business and

the CJM is very useful for understanding and improv-

ing the customer’s experience. Combining these two

tools allows the team to get an overall view of how the

business operates through the BMC and, thereby, un-

derstand what the customer goes through in the pro-

cess, by creating and analyzing the CJM. The com-

bination will help the marketing and sales teams to

better know if they match the customer’s needs.

The implementation of the Discover Your Poten-

tials method has been tested by executing a case study.

Case studies are extremely useful and an important

strategy to conduct organizational analysis (Feagin

et al., 2016).

2.3 The Steps of the DYP Method

The Discover Your Potentials method is a method that

aims to assist in this better collaboration between the

marketing and sales departments. This method con-

sists of ﬁve different steps. Executing each of these

steps will result in possible new marketing and sales

potentials for a speciﬁc enterprise software organiza-

tion. The different steps in this method are as follows:

• Step 1: Exploration. In this ﬁrst step, a as-

is business model canvas is mapped out, based

on the company’s goals and available informa-

tion. For an extensive analysis, the method pro-

vides questions speciﬁed for four different types

of software companies: Value Added Resellers

(VAR’s), Systemintegrators (SI’s), Software Fac-

tory’s (SF’s), and Softwarehouses (SH’s). After

this ﬁrst analysis, the involved company can de-

cide if they want to continue with the DYP method

or if the insights gathered from this step are sufﬁ-

cient enough for them. If the insights are deemed

sufﬁcient enough, the DYP method will be con-

cluded.

• Step 2: Strategic analysis using the Business

Model Canvas. From 148 applicable analysis

tools, the suitable tools are performed on the com-

pany to optimize the business model canvas. The

business model canvas is a powerful tool to gain

a complete picture of the existing business model

of a software company, identify strategic alterna-

tives, and prototype the adapted business model

with a value proposition.

• Step 3: Analysis using the Customer Journey

Map. An as-is customer journey map is analyzed

and improved to a to-be model. With a customer

journey map, an organization discovers how its

prospects and customers perceive the contacts in

the company about the products and services. The

map visualizes all relevant touchpoints and inter-

actions between customers and the company. The

customer journey map is used to analyze and op-

timize marketing, sales, implementation, and ser-

vice strategies which helps to, among others, re-

engage customers after an extended period of time

when they will be replaced. This is important be-

cause loyal customers mostly yield a better mar-

gin than new customers.

• Step 4: Analysis using the Business Control Pro-

cess Structure (BCPS). In this step, the as-is

BCPS is adapted to a to-be BCPS. A BCPS is

composed of a framework of processes, arranged

by execution stage, and helps to visualize the

workﬂow of a company’s processes, collect data

about the processes, identify bottlenecks in the

processes, and improve the processes. The aim is

of course to have efﬁcient and smoothly running

processes that can be monitored and evaluated.

A Method for Marketing and Sales Optimization of Enterprise Software Applications

187

• Step 5: Realization management actions. From

the previous three steps, there are multiple action

lists delivered. In this last step, these lists are

combined, and based on this result, so-called po-

tentials are generated. These potentials, or man-

agement actions, will improve the business per-

formance.

A visual overview of the different steps of the

DYP method can be seen in Figure 1.

3 RESEARCH METHOD

The goal of this study is to understand the practical

workings of the DYP method. Given this goal, a qual-

itative case study approach was adopted.

3.1 Procedure

An important aspect of the preparation for the case

study is the weekly sessions between the expert and

the observers. For eight weeks, a 2.5-hour session

was held, each focusing on a different step in the DYP

method. Simultaneously, a literature study was per-

formed using scientiﬁc papers retrieved via Google

Scholar and hand-out documentation from the expert.

To ﬁnd companies where a case study could be per-

formed, the observers were dependent on the expert.

Eventually, one case study was performed at a com-

pany where the expert was already involved. In the

weekly sessions, the observers were informed about

what was already discussed in prior meetings.

3.2 Study Setting

Accounting software company S-Pack was visited,

where step two and step three from the DYP method

were discussed. S-Pack is a company that provides an

integration platform with which they offer functional

applications with the software from another company

called S-Accounting. They aim to provide their vari-

ants of the software that is produced by S-Accounting.

By offering tailored software to a speciﬁc customer

need, they can provide more speciﬁc software and

better comply with the needs of customers. During

the case study, the observers mostly observed the con-

versation between the expert and the spokesperson

from S-Pack. There was also the opportunity to pro-

vide input. The interview was semi-structured since it

was mostly a two-way conversation without set ques-

tions, but there were some documents to be discussed

as guidelines.

A few days later, a follow-up session was held

where the rest of step 3 was executed. The procedure

of this session was the same as the ﬁrst session.

3.3 Research Questions

One main research question and two subquestions

were designed:

To what extent does the ‘Discover Your Potentials’

method lead to useful marketing and sales strategies

for enterprise software companies?

To focus the analysis of the case two subques-

tions were formulated (1) How does the DYP work

and what are its key components?, and (2) When is a

potential that resulted from DYP perceived as useful?

Subquestion 1 can be answered solely from the lit-

erature review. To answer the main research question

and the second subquestion, the data gathered from

the case study is used. We hypothesize that the suc-

cess of the DYP method strongly depends on the com-

pany. The more information the organization can give

on its processes, the more detailed the outcomes of the

method will be. Additionally, some software compa-

nies will of course expect more outcomes than others.

3.4 Data Analysis

During the case study sessions, notes were made on

the discussed documents. This made sure ﬁndings

could easily be discussed for separate topics: the busi-

ness model canvas (steps 1 and 2) and customer jour-

ney map (step 3). These ﬁndings will be listed and

interpreted in the next chapters.

4 CASE STUDY

From the two case study sessions executed, ﬁndings

on the practical workings of the DYP method were

noted. These results are sorted per method step. First,

some general ﬁndings are discussed.

4.1 General

For this research, a case study at software company

S-Pack was conducted. First of all, the reason why a

company wants to have the DYP method performed

is important. For S-Pack, business processes actually

went very well in the beginning. After a while, growth

problems were discovered. These growth problems

included issues with planning and initiating projects

for new clients, which led to confusion and client loss.

Another challenge came through failing to follow up

on signed orders, resulting in a loss of revenue. A

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Figure 1: Illustration of the DYP method.

third growth challenge was because pre-sales and de-

tailed instructional materials got mixed up, leading to

missed sales opportunities. The last growth problem

was caused because of only partially considering ex-

pansion proposals due to conﬁdentiality reasons. To

clarify the cause of these challenges and to clarify

further growth scenarios, the management decides to

have analyses carried out on the desired strategy and

on the possible variants of the business model. The

order-acquisition process should also be examined for

growth opportunities and bottlenecks. It was decided

to carry out this method using the DYP method.

The expert executes the complete method at the

company’s ofﬁce. The ﬁrst and second author acted as

observers and were present during two sessions. This

ﬁrst session was dedicated to discussing the Business

Model Canvas (BMC) and the second was used to

discuss the Customer Journey Map (CJM). For both

of these sessions, the observers detected the different

suggestions that the expert made and how S-Pack was

planning on implementing them. It was also discussed

how the BMC and CJM could be adjusted to more

speciﬁcally represent the S-Pack company structure.

4.2 Step 1: Exploration

As said, it was the management team that initiated the

analyses. Therefore, they were, next to the business

owner and an external DYP partner, present at the ﬁrst

meeting. The management team consists of a market-

ing and sales manager, a development manager, and

a services manager. The business owner chairs the

management team. Since the documentation needed

for the business model canvas is not available yet, it

was decided to start with the order-acquisition pro-

cess: the customer journey map. To optimize this

model, three separate sessions with the marketing and

sales manager are held, two conversations with the

business owner are assembled and there is continuous

contact over the phone and email.

In a new 1,5 hour meeting, the as-is BMC is estab-

lished. This is always done by adjusting a template.

The DYP method makes use of four BMC templates

for the four different software companies (VAR’s,

SI’s, SF’s, and SH’s). The business owner thoroughly

reviewed and provided the adjustments when neces-

sary to the BMC.

4.3 Step 2: Business Model Canvas

During the ﬁrst session, the business model canvas,

which can be seen in Figure 2, was further discussed.

According to the method planning, the as-is BMC

is converted to a to-be BMC in step 2. In this ses-

sion, there were therefore suggestions made, mostly

for the customer segment. S-Pack currently aims only

at trading companies with accounting software S-

Accounting. However, expanding on this was not nec-

essary for S-Pack’s objectives. S-Pack is currently the

specialist in the ﬁeld of extensions to S-Accounting

software. Because of this reseller-relation, they will

have a continuous customer inﬂow. In Figure 2, it

can be seen that there was originally more written in

the customer segment section. The parts marked in

grey were actually already removed from the BMC in

a previous session. These parts are kept in the model

to keep track of changes.

A suggestion that do was welcomed by the busi-

A Method for Marketing and Sales Optimization of Enterprise Software Applications

189

ness owner was the introduction of competence

centers between S-Pack and partners such as S-

Accounting. Both beneﬁts and downsides of compe-

tence centers were discussed since this does lead to a

signiﬁcant change in an organization’s structure.

It was remarkable to see that the expert makes sure

to pay attention to the manner of working in the or-

ganization. In particular, the large paper sheets with

brainstorming notes, which were located next to the

workplace of S-Pack’s young employees, were dis-

cussed. This turned out to be the result of a customer

day organized by S-pack. On such a customer day,

customers could provide input on S-Packs products.

The expert linked this to ’feedback sessions’, which

was already included under customer relations in the

BMC (3c in Figure 2). It was also suggested that good

customers could also be used as references to make

sure their relationship circle would also become cus-

tomers at S-Pack. The business owner agreed to this

suggestion and mentioned that the customers present

at the customer day would also be willing to do this.

S-Pack’s ecosystem (point 7 in the BMC) was also

discussed. Usually, instead of ecosystem the name

’key partners’ is used. However, the expert has ad-

justed this in the DYP method because he felt that

’key partners’ does not fully cover the load. In this

part, there are also parts marked in grey, which al-

ready had been removed by the business owner in a

previous session.

The last segment of the BMC that was discussed is

the value propositions. According to the expert, this

is the most important aspect of a company, which is

why he always pays extra attention to this segment.

Because the expert believes that the value proposition

of S-Pack is not clear enough, extensive brainstorm-

ing sessions are conducted on this matter. Eventually,

the two parties came up with a new slogan that accu-

rately captures the commercial essence.

4.4 Step 3: Customer Journey Map

The second session was a follow-up from the ﬁrst

session. In this session, the main focus was on dis-

cussing the Customer Journey Map (CJM) for the S-

Pack company. A ﬁrst impression of the CJM was

already made in step 1 of the DYP method process,

which was based on general information, but further

details were still missing. These all were made clear

in this session, as the whole customer’s experience

was discussed. When creating the enhanced version

of the CJM, the focus was on identifying different

touchpoints made with the customer. Thereby also

indicating how the ﬁrst contact between a potential

customer and S-Pack is established.

For the current customer journey, the as-is CJM

was established as follows: ﬁrst, the way in which

a customer gets to know about S-Pack is discussed.

This is currently done in two separate ways, one is

through a potential customer clicking on the website

of S-Pack. Another way is through the partner of

S-Pack, which is S-Accounting. When a customer

seems interested in the S-Pack software, they can then

ask for more detailed information. If the potential

customer is still interested after that, and after a few

emails have been sent back and forth, it is time to send

an offer to them. If they then agree with the given of-

fer, they are going to exchange some further details

and may meet face-to-face for the ﬁrst time. Within

this meeting, or further meetings, they discuss what

the customer wants from S-Pack and if additional cus-

tomization is needed for the software. If this is all

clear, S-Pack will tailor the software to the needs of

the customer and test it. If this all goes well, the cus-

tomer will eventually receive the ﬁnal software and

S-Pack will install it on the customer’s systems. A

visual overview of this CJM can be seen in Figure 3.

Multiple suggestions were made concerning the

discussed CJM. First of all, the expert observed that

the explanation videos that the customers will see

when they are on the landing page of S-Pack are a

bit boring. Since the landing page is a part of the

initial contact with potential customers and serves as

one of the ﬁrst and most important touchpoints, it is

important that the potential customer is immediately

drawn to what S-Pack has to offer. The experts sug-

gested that there is a need for better material for these

instruction videos. By making the instructions more

engaging and addressable, the acquisition of new cus-

tomers could be improved. The expert strongly sug-

gests the use of visually pleasing material, such as

pictures and small videos that show the implementa-

tion of the products that S-Pack offers. Another ob-

servation based on the CJM is that the implementation

phase often goes wrong, especially when additional

work is required. This results in irritation and dissat-

isfaction among customers. The expert suggests look-

ing into preventing this when possible. A third obser-

vation as part of the CJM was that the conversion rate

was quite low, which shows that customers often back

out. A suggestion was made to look into the time it

takes between signing a contract and receiving further

communication to progress with the customer. As an

extended time between these two steps of the CJM

can result in uncertainty and a lack of commitment to

the purchase.

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Figure 2: Illustration of the Business Model Canvas for S-Pack (Some cells are left empty due to conﬁdentiality).

Figure 3: Illustration of the CJM for S-Pack.

4.5 Step 4: Business Control Process

Structure

The fourth step of the DYP method is dedicated to

an analysis of the Bussiness Control Process Struc-

ture (BCPS). The BCPS helps to achieve your goals,

improve your (ﬁnancial) performance, and make bet-

ter decisions. Within, S-Pack, it was not necessary to

perform this step of the method.

4.6 Step 5: Management Actions,

Potentials

Based on the BMC and CJM, the expert has become

aware of bottlenecks. Solutions to these problems are

based on a potential from the DYP’s extensive poten-

tials database.

From the BMC, it was found that S-Pack solely

works with S-Accounting and their customers. S-

Accounting can therefore be seen as a VAR part-

ner. This dependency can bring risks. Additionally,

it limits the opportunity for expansion. The com-

pany must therefore consider broadening and deep-

ening its commercial activities. The expert designed

four ﬁgures visualizing ideas on how to expand. Fig-

ure 4 visualizes the current state of S-Pack, with part-

ner S-Account as VAR partner. Figure 5 shows how

the structure would look when a competence center

would be introduced. If S-Pack expanded to more

partners, there would also be another competence

center. This change can be seen in Figure 6. If the

company would also expand to another customer seg-

ment, the structure would look as in Figure 7.

From the CJM, multiple bottlenecks were found.

First of all, S-Pack uses three instructional videos on

their website, explaining their software. According

to the expert, the long screen instructions in these

videos quickly become boring. Better videos will

strengthen the acquisition of new customers and the

A Method for Marketing and Sales Optimization of Enterprise Software Applications

191

Figure 4: Current situation S-Pack.

Figure 5: S-Pack with competence center.

instruction for the new users of those customers will

become more attractive in terms of attention and more

addressable. A tip from the expert is to shoot mate-

rial from a good customer with a nice and tidy com-

pany. This solution is based on the potentials Instruc-

tion material, Acquisition, and MarCom.

Secondly, the planning for preparing the soft-

ware, developing, installing, and implementing it

goes wrong too often. This is especially the case if ex-

tra work is necessary. This error causes internal con-

fusion and discussion; Which then causes irritation

for the customer about unclear agreements et cetera.

The expert solution to this problem is based on the po-

tentials Project management, Development planning,

and Proﬁtable additional work.

Lastly, some time ago, a quotation signed by the

customer was chosen as the contract format. When

this signed quotation had to be implemented, the con-

version factor turned out to be much too low. About

15% of signed quotations are not implemented for

various reasons and/or the customer drops out. The

cause appears to be mainly a too-long time between

signing the summary quotation and further notiﬁca-

tion/action from S-Pack. Besides, the contract terms

and conditions turned out to be incomplete. The con-

sequences are a lack of clarity and a reduced sense

of obligation. The expert solution to this problem is

based on the potentials Contract formation, Starter

kit, Implementation planning, Down payment, and

Covering standard contract.

5 DISCUSSION

Multiple sessions discussing the DYP method imple-

mentation at S-Pack were held and are, due to the

postponement of steps 4 and 5, still to be held. In this

chapter, three main ﬁndings of this case study will be

discussed.

Finding 1: Discussions are much broader than

strict DYP execution. From the overall execution of

the method at S-Pack, it can be seen that the focus is

actually not always on the DYP method. It is mostly

the expert’s knowledge and long-lasting experience in

the ﬁeld that was much appreciated by S-Pack.

Finding 2: Low-impact suggestions are not taken

as action points. Some suggestions made by the ex-

pert are more drastic than others. Subjectively, it can

be said that there appears to be a relationship be-

tween the degree of drasticness and whether the busi-

ness owner immediately agreed with the suggestions

or was still unsure. Suggestions that S-Pack imme-

diately agreed to also do not come back in the man-

agement actions in step 5, at least not for now. Ex-

amples are the use of good customers as references,

mentioned in section 4.3 or the change in value propo-

sition, also discussed in step 2, which was started im-

mediately.

Finding 3: High impact suggestions need careful

follow-up. Several suggestions might have a higher or

unknown impact on the current business process. The

business owner did agree to the idea of competence

centers but was not completely sure how this would

work out. That is why this does come back in the

management actions. The expansion in the customer

segment, which the business owner did not seem en-

thusiastic about, is also mentioned again in the man-

agement actions (Figure 7).

6 CONCLUSION

The Discover Your Potentials method was designed

to improve marketing and sales in enterprise software

companies. To see whether the method actually leads

to useful marketing and sales strategies, the expert of

the method was observed during two method perfor-

mance sessions at company S-Pack. To correctly an-

swer the research question, there are simply too few

observations made.

It is also important to mention that the method is

still under construction and that the execution would

be different at every company. One should see it as

iteration, and not as a waterfall method so steps can

be executed in a different order just as happened at S-

Pack for instance. Besides, the last step, where the ac-

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Figure 6: S-Pack with more partners and more competence centers.

Figure 7: Situation three with a new customer segment.

tual management actions are planned to be presented

and discussed, was not included in the case study.

Despite these limitations, it is expected that S-

Pack will be satisﬁed with the management actions

discussed in section 4.6 and that the DYP method

does indeed lead to successful marketing and sales

strategies. In addition, S-Pack seemed satisﬁed with

the way of working. It is of course not yet possible

to assess whether the same conclusions can be drawn

for another company.

Future research should conduct more and com-

plete case studies at diverse companies. This should

be combined with an extensive evaluation to assess

whether the company is actually content with the mar-

keting and sales strategies or not. This should be dis-

cussed directly after the method execution but also

especially suitable time after the company has imple-

mented a management action. Only then can be really

seen whether the strategy actually worked. But to be

completely honest, it is concluded that the Discover

Your Potentials method is not yet ready to be scien-

tiﬁcally investigated in this way. As long as the work

plan is still being tinkered with in between, good com-

parisons between companies cannot be made. It is of

course true that after each implementation the expert

can apply new experiences to another company and

the management actions will therefore generally con-

tinue to improve. However, the planning of the ﬁve

steps should be the same at every company in order to

make comparisons.

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193

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to S-Pack for their help in this case study.

Collaboration with the S-Pack team offered insights

into the practical applications of the DYP method and

their willingness to share insights has been essential

for this research. A special thanks to all who shared

their time and knowledge, as without their support,

this study could not have been done.

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