Husband & wife founders, Olivia & James Phoon, had been operating their business, Hidden Spark, for 14 years and realised they needed to make some changes to keep their business strong.
Their key requirement was to make a shift from a predominantly services-based offering to one that centred around their flagship product, ClubSuite – a software platform used by universities to run on-campus clubs and societies. Olivia & James researched their support options and engaged Realise Business Advisor, James Evangelidis, through the Business Connect Program in November 2018.
Working with James, they discussed and researched their product’s market potential and quickly gained confidence in their decision to make such a big strategic change to their business. To their credit, Olivia and James, knew they needed to not only change the focus of the business but also the culture – that is “how they do things.” Historically, their business had a heavy engineering bias and they needed to move towards a more outward looking marketing focus, simplifying their communications to appeal to a less technical, wider audience.
They worked on product branding, simplicity in the market, pricing and their market potential, both locally and internationally. Given their work and their new marketing activities, the business is well positioned to increase revenue through more universities signing up to use the ClubSuite product well into the future.
The accountability and sounding board in James allowed the business owners to think about different perspectives, launch their product more quickly and to gain a new momentum with their business.