Secomak Ltd designs, develops and delivers a full range of industrial processing and packaging solutions used in many different markets, including: food & beverage, manufacturing, building trade and the Military. The company has grown dramatically following the acquisition of new businesses.
The business challenge
After expanding rapidly following the acquisition of disparate businesses over many years, Secomak Ltd became a company with at least 6 totally separate markets for products with little or no overlap or synergy. Up to this point, the company had never placed due emphasis on the discipline of marketing and had been almost solely reactive.
Facing the future, they could foresee certain areas where some products will reach the end of their life or become subject to cheaper alternatives by new competition. There was a need to strategically assess full market potential and the effect of relevant developments in technology in new and existing markets.
How did Hertfordshire University help?
Working with the University of Hertfordshire through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), Secomak Ltd filled the marketing gap in their business focus and developed a structure for the future, with a marketing overlay to the sales activities. There are now firm foundations in place for a market oriented approach to the development of strong customer relationships and future market driven product solutions.
They now have a marketing objective for all their separate markets and have a set of websites which focus on communicating to individual markets as opposed to their previous all-encompassing website.
Real business benefits
Secomak Ltd now have an integrated marketing plan included in the company’s business strategy. Marketing is leading the way to help promote the whole offering of service, reliability, and technical assistance as well as product and price.
The KTP has given the company a formal approach to address marketing as a whole. This is now an extremely important element of their business planning, taking the whole approach from being reactive to being proactive. As a result of these new initiatives, Secomak Ltd have identified an initial increase in turnover directly attributable to the KTP of £300k and forecast additional turnover of £1m within 3 years.
John Moore, Finance Director, Secomak Limited said:
“Our expectations of the KTP were exceeded. Marketing is now integral to the functioning of the company. We were not fully aware before the start of the process how effective it would be to have a dedicated resource to this function.”
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