Jess Westerly Case Study
In this study, Jess Westerly is the co-owner of the product at Customer Relationship Management applications for traders of computer and office supplies at Kauflauf, a rapid-growing seller of subscription enterprise software whose headquarters are in the German city of Heidelberg. She was so ambitious that upon the commencement of her duties, she tried to implement some changes that made her suffer setbacks, but these never dampened her spirit, and thus her consistency made her succeed.
After two months of work in the organization, Westerly makes a futile attempt to change the sales call patterns for the field consultants. Westerly initiated the changes in the firm through a memo that stated the new procedures plus their justification. However, the reaction from the field consultants was negative due to their perception that the changes violated their autonomy, as well as the orientation of the business towards building relationships. After a three months period, the data from sales depicted little difference in the pattern of calls. After explaining, revising and justifying her idea, Waverly offered her revised proposal to the senior-most personnel, and she was to produce an implementation plan within three weeks and if the plan were proven viable, then she would be allowed to implement it.
While she served as the co-owner of the product at Customer Relationship Manager, she was in charge of most of the firm’s aspects. Additionally, she was tasked to position the product lines of her group to make some aspects perform optimally for example; design, sales, profitability, among other aspects. The scope of her work as the assistant product owner was just like that of people who manage products in other companies due to the similarity of roles. The resemblance occurred because she mostly worked with other groups of people for instance; the global sales persons, the designers, and the colleagues of the same rank so as to develop an effective overall strategy for marketing. The following are some of her achievements;
Upon joining the organization in 2011, Jess Westerly helped the company to reach significant annual subscription sales. This effort was a critical step since it would serve a vast number of people by offering good services. As an assistant product owner, she seriously helped in the production of services to people. The software functions accounted for most of the overall revenue in the Kauflauf. To be specific, it represented over two-thirds of the total revenue earned by Kauflauf.
During her leadership, the company improved its technology at a fast pace. The organization had set its target at mid-sized and top-tier smaller firms. By setting the target, the organization could ensure that the target firms could largely gain from cloud-based contributions made by the software. Since the company had some different advance improvements, the advancement in technology greatly helped in serving the customers in the market with extremely skilled and competent sales Council or legislation team who offered consultant-like services to customers.
By the time the widespread orientation program of the organization at Kauflauf ended within some weeks in 2011, Jess Westerly had taken a number step of circulating an email to promote the company. The email was urging her colleagues in sales section to ensure that they forward call patterns. The call patterns were to be redirected to a wide coverage of established potential buyers of CRM software services in the office and computer business. By doing that, the approach attracted her superiors very much. The boss, Mr. Tim Roeder, immediately accepted her idea without hesitation.
Mr. Tim Roeder was the owner of the product at the CRM services while Westerly was the co-owner of the CRM services. The email she sent to her colleagues was in the form of a memo, which clearly explained her directive and the explanation behind her idea. Her explanation offered a clear reason as to why she wanted her idea to be absorbed. In her email, she also wrote that she would be delighted to respond to questions posted to her via email or even by being contacted by her phone. The responses clearly indicated that her email was accepted and clearly understood.
As an Assistant product owner at Kauflauf, she made the idea work in the company. A far as Mr. Robert Lin’s issue of the consultants’ dissatisfaction with the memo is concerned; she immediately responded by explaining to him the research method and data used, and also the long-run implications concerning the larger productivity as far as larger clients are concerned. Jess Westerly’s memo drew a lot of people’s attention among them was Mr. Robert Lin. As soon as the memo was emailed, Mr. Robert Lin, who served as the regional sales director (RSD) in the Asia-Pacific, complained that the memo not only offended his field consultants but also violated their autonomy.
The consultants mostly complained about the aspect of spending time and the insensitivity to the changes to the relationship- oriented nature of business in Asia. Basing on Westerly’s response, he received more negative responses. By the end of August of that year, Westerly’s idea about change in calls patterns failed. This setback lowered her motivation since it had made her lose a lot of money and trustworthiness in her workplace and also in the eyes of Mr. Robert Lin who was the regional sales director, and other field consultants. This loss seriously affected her, because it seemed like her attempt at changing call patterns had failed. Even though she had lost, she still maintained her dignity, and was able to learn new ideas, and also how to relate with the colleagues and field consultants.
The failure made her learn a lot of things including her responsibilities as a co-owner of the product. Such things included ensuring that she understands various markets as well as clients to facilitate the establishment of priorities for development of the product to satisfy not only the current needs of the customers but also those of the future clients. To improve her communication-related actions, she ensured that she mingled with regional sales directors and field consultants so that she can learn and improve her knowledge to assess the requests of her customers. To add on that, she relied on her contacts with the support group and development section to weigh the possibility and the appropriate time for her to meet the sales team and assess their requests. Her flexibility made her available most of the time, in the sense that, she could attend trade shows. By doing so, she was able to maintain her contacts with other sources; especially from the outside so that she could institute a way forward on how to improve the value of Kauflauf’s plan, thus improving her productivity in her production group. According to her, the success that is seen within the clients and Kauflauf was brought about by the gradual change of calls for sales from smaller to larger accounts, even though they were inside the client firm.
Westerly ought to have consulted before going ahead to plan and include the completed ideas for the production of the office. Because of lack of consultation and proper communication skills, she did not receive positive feedback from the Regional Sales Director and field consultants as she had expected. Because of her ignorance, she went ahead to re-polish the existing software to serve more customers. This made her lose her trust because she was privatizing her ideas. Additionally, if she had allowed and incorporated outside assistance, for example, RSDs and the field consultants, her idea would be successful and would have attracted largest customers in every regional sales division in the organization. Another factor that led to her failure is that she lacked official powers and control over both the engineers in charge of development and the sales team. She inferred that her elaborations and analysis of the issue would convince the rest of the workers that her plan could yield better results if adopted by the organization.
Westerly also needed to check on her cooperation and coordination of activities. With good relation with friends like incorporating the field consultants in her plans, so that he plans can be marketable. She decided to change her communication strategies for the better due to the frustration and embarrassment she received after her first idea failed. Due to this, Westerly reviewed her plan that she had earlier and decided to change their views of her concept in September in the year 2011. By conducting more studies, she was able to conduct some analytical studies so as to come up with a better and realistic robust proposal.
Additionally, she needed to brief all the management levels to make them have a clue of the changes she was implementing. The senior manager was reluctant to approve her ideas, and she had to put in more effect and continue consulting through coordination, cooperation and public participation. The product owner, Mr. Tim Roeder was so adamant about westerly’s concept because, he was scared of losing his organization through lack of trust from the clients, as it had happened earlier. He was so dormant in approving her new idea because he lost it when he supported him in her first attempt. Mr. Roeder still had some hopes in her idea because he had hired Westerly to assist him increase the volume of sales and to enable his firm to penetrate the global software market.
Westerly needed to elaborate to the consultants based in the field as well as the firm managers the effects of her plan. Additionally, she ought to have assured them that the call pattern changes stated in her proposal would not negatively affect their working environment as well as the firm’s place in the middle market but rather, it will lead to a considerable improvement in business. With motivation and her patience, the managers agreed to approve her new proposal and decided to offer her with an opportunity to k implement her proposal by late December. This gave her a good start in executing her idea as soon as possible, as soon as the holidays have ended.
Westerly needed to adopt proper communication-related actions and she only realized this after the failure of her first attempt. At this time, she was sure of gaining support and trustworthiness that would enable him to maintain her relationship with the RSDs. By being keen on her current idea, she was now more prominent in her marketing skills. By the help of Kristoff and Hoorn, she was able to identify an effective program for execution and explain what it meant than she did in her previous attempt.
In conclusion, despite the obstacles she encountered in her initiative, Westerly never lost focus, and thus her commitment convinced the managers to give her a second chance for introducing changes in the workplace. Mr. Kristoff thought that Westerly’s new uptake in the new call patterns might in one way or the other affect the success of Kauflauf greatly focus on middle market and smaller companies. Her hard work seriously attracted the attention of her employers and decided to endorse her proposal. By the support she had from these three people, they managed to encourage those people at Kauflauf. Through her proper marketing strategies, she was able to gain support for her analytical conclusions from the van Hoorn and Kristoff. This step made her gain more respect for her capability of managing the process of change to promote development. She was able to plan and identify the reason she did not succeed in her previous attempt. This enabled her to change her mode of approaching ideas because, if she had found ways to win the field consultants’ cooperation, her idea would not have been rejected. This has also made her come up with new ideas like; in case she comes up with a new idea of incorporating rollout meetings for the RSDs and also meet the best consultants.
