Below are examples of several types of projects I’ve worked on during my career.

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Current Client Work

Below is some of my current edtech client work. Want to dig a bit deeper? Visit my client portfolio here.

Other work:

Case Studies

EdTech Software Provider

Audience:

• State Education Department CIOs, Local School District CIOs, and Education Data Staff ­ who were:
  • Attempting to meet data collection and reporting requirements of No Child Left Behind
  • ­Looking for a Longitudinal Data Warehouse Solution

Problem:

• Ed Departments had a choice of building Longitudinal Data Warehouse from scratch, hiring a large integrator (e.g., Oracle), or buying a Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) product like ours ­
• Skepticism around flexibility of COTS Data Warehouse products ­
• Many failed homegrown and Integrator implementations

Opportunity:

• Establish our credibility as best-of-breed COTS Data Warehouse solution in a space with few credible players
• ­Capitalize on string of client successes to highlight the strength and flexibility of our products

Result:

• Case Studies published as one-page downloadable documents
• ­Built our reputation and referenceability across the space
• ­Invited to finals of 4 Statewide Longitudinal Data System RFPs
• ­Won 3 (TX, NC, MI). At the time, TX was the largest Statewide Longitudinal Data Warehouse implementation in the nation

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White Papers

EdTech Software Provider

Audience:

• ­State Education Department CIOs
• Local School District CIOs
• Longitudinal Data Solution Project Sponsors

Problem:

• ­As Longitudinal Data Warehouse implementation projects at the state-level became more prevalent, many Education Departments were unsure what staff they needed for success
• ­Our product was a packaged software solution — a relatively new concept in the space at the time – so we had to overcome the perception that a packaged product was plug and play ­
• The incoming Obama administration announced a new round of competitive grants (named ARRA-RFA). Many State Education Departments were uncertain how to use their data to apply for and win them

Opportunity:

• ­Prove our expertise in the Education Data Warehouse space
• ­Provide our prospects and customers with a roadmap on project staffing and project success ­
• Help our customers and prospects attain federal grant money
• ­Guide customers toward 3 business initiatives– our user conference, a new Professional Services business line, and a new Customer Education business line

Result:

• P-20 Roles and Responsibilities paper adapted into a user-group seminar I delivered at our conference
• Several Professional Services and Customer Education deals signed
• In some cases, new business lines allowed us to grow organic revenue without a lengthy RFP process
• Several clients won ARRA-RFA grants and we later presented those results at a national education data conference

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Communications Strategy Plan

Retail Tech Firm

Audience:

• Executive Leadership Team
• VP/Director-level sponsors of initiative to consolidate our various customer support streams into a single contact center
• Program team spread across multiple business divisions, geographies and vendor partners

Problem:

• We delivered a service that had been live for several months, but had low internal/external adoption
• The division who owned the technical implementation did not know how to publicize the service
• Lack of communication had given rise to internal suspicion and customer confusion about the offering

Opportunity/Process:

• I built this communication plan to reset the focus of the initiative
• I worked with the team to:
  1. Identify all audience personas
  2. Establish where each persona was today; and what we wanted them to think, feel, and do about the service
  3. Brainstorm key messages we wanted to communicate
  4. Determine the key channels/tactics we were going to use and a high-level timeline to roll them out

Result:

• While this plan was approved, we did not get to execute it. Unfortunately, business impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic shelved the project

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Blog Posts

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Let’s build something together.

rob@backyardwriter.com

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