Refocusing an underperforming product for growth

The decision

The product had been in market for three years and consistently underperformed relative to another product in the company’s portfolio. Sales teams often bundled it into larger deals rather than selling it as a standalone offering.

Leadership needed to know whether the market was simply developing slowly or whether the product itself lacked sufficient value.

C Squared E conducted 20 interviews with company leaders, existing customers, and prospective customers; led two focus groups with chief nursing officers and informatics leaders; sized and segmented the market; and assessed competitors and their relative strengths and weaknesses.

What the evidence revealed

The research showed that the market had been slow to develop, largely because hospitals were still focused on other major IT investments. However, that was beginning to change, and customer interest in this class of solution was likely to increase.

The addressable market exceeded $1 billion, giving the opportunity sufficient scale to matter.

The product itself was also fundamentally strong. It was built around an industry-leading library of clinical content that gave the company a meaningful competitive advantage.

The most important gap was integration with leading electronic health record systems. Hospitals wanted the solution to fit naturally into existing workflows, making EHR integration essential to broader adoption.

From insight to action

The findings gave leadership confidence to continue investing, while also clarifying where that investment should go.

The company strengthened its EHR integration strategy, working with leading EHR vendors and completing integrations as customer demand emerged. It also made user-experience improvements for nurse informaticists.

C Squared E helped reposition the offering around the strength of the company’s clinical content and its ability to integrate with hospital systems. The sales team received new training and tools, and a 12-month marketing plan called for increased investment in collateral, trade shows, and lead generation.

What began as a focused research project expanded into approximately three and a half years of ongoing product strategy and go-to-market support.

Results

The research did not by itself create the growth. It gave leadership greater confidence that the market opportunity was real and that continued product and go-to-market investment was justified.

As those initiatives took hold, product sales doubled over the following two years.