Business resilience and continuity have always been important for the survival of companies. The future brings risk and change, without a doubt. Then, as COVID-19 set off a trigger of unprecedented global disruptions, these services became even more vital for maintaining “business as usual.”
Yet program managers struggled to find the right resources and information to protect their companies. Their programs spread chaotically thin across different platforms and solutions. The solution industry remained disparate and disjointed — thus, so too did their programs, leaving risky gaps and dangerous uncertainties.
For Castellan, a business continuity and resilience software-as-a-service (SaaS) leader, their clients’ struggles meant facing a hard reality: Its current solutions were not fully meeting its target clients’ needs.
Rather than remain in the status quo with all other providers, Castellan’s leadership team had a vision to serve their clients better. They proactively uncovered the greatest business continuity and resilience fractures and then pressed forward to fill them with truly impactful solutions.
Castellan embodied Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™. They committed to expansive business transformation at a challenging time for Castellan itself — and also a disorienting time for all businesses. Here is how they did it for all-around success.
Seek Input from Those Who Matter the Most — Your Clients
By 2021, Castellan had been providing clients with business resilience and continuity services for years. They struggled to stand out among a fractured marketplace. On top of that, Castellan leadership became aware that clients were struggling with the same problems year after year, worsened by the current disruptions.
So, Annie Asrari, Castellan’s chief product officer, rang current clients. She did not ask them what they loved about Castellan solutions. Instead, she asked a tough question not many B2B selling organizations are brave enough to face: “What are you missing with our solution?”
Castellan leaders did not whip up a new service from internal meetings and guesswork. They did not pretend they knew what would be best for their clients. They went to the source — their clients — for input. They listened to what their clients’ age-old issues were, and also mined for new challenges that had been exasperated since 2020.
While almost anyone could guess companies needed business and resilience solutions more than ever before, Castellan leadership knew how to meet those needs with clear validation. With that vital input, the executive team was ready to lead a great transformation that would redefine the industry.
Forge Ahead Toward Your Vision — No Matter How Challenging
After acquiring and uniting three companies that had expertise across the business resilience and continuity space, Castellan needed to reorganize and align these core competencies into a new powerful solution.
Leadership transformed the company inside out. They rethought the old ways of how they did business to forge paths for new ways to serve clients. This meant moving people around. This meant developing out new competencies. And this even meant building out new structures and processes for sales, marketing and product teams.
After months of due diligence for successful solution development, the leadership team introduced the Business Continuity Operating System (BCOS). This solution launched as a comprehensive business resilience and continuity solution.
This powerful client- and value-focused vision continues to lead Castellan to build out new solutions to answer their clients’ current and changing needs — from third-party emergency notification connectors to a BCOS guidebook.
Focus on Long-Term Returns — Not the Short-Term Gets
At Mereo, our principals were fortunate enough to witness and support this transformation driven by a Seek to Serve spirit. Castellan rapidly realized success from this tough transformation and was even recognized as a Business Continuity Management Program (BCMP) Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.
Most of all, Castellan was meeting clients’ needs at a time that mattered the most. In turn, Castellan is realizing sustainable revenue performance and enhanced value for its investors and employees alike. Fast forward, and Castellan found their business acquired by Riskonnect — formally announced earlier this month. The investment in serving clients proved fruitful for Castellan because they went about their strategy with the right purpose, passion and sequencing.
Learn more about the outcomes of Castellan’s Seek to Serve, Not to Sell approach here.
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