Portfolio | Fractional Exec

Project Details

TL;DR

Pinsoft, a company growing rapidly with a focus on aviation and travel, needed help restructuring their commercial department and improving their online presence. A new website was designed emphasising the team, with fun bios and avatars to engage visitors emotionally. Within 6 months, the site ranked 14th for keywords, generating 2,000 impressions a month with a 6-7% CTR.

Additionally, commercial processes were streamlined, reducing proposal times by 70%. As Fractional Leader I helped develop governance, business processes, and negotiated contracts, with the role expanding as the company grew. Fun fact: team members initially hesitated to submit bios/photos, but after seeing the website, they eagerly participated.

Sketch diagram of mobile phone parts and components, conveying mobile app development.

Photo of a man in glasses, looking at the camera, with an emoji version of him in the background.

The Requirement

The company had landed its third major client, increased personnel from 7 to over 20 within two years, and in the process of scaling up its marketing activities. The team consisted of predominantly software engineers and architects. Pinsoft wanted to stand out from the legion of IT vendors globally, who cater to their target industry: airlines and travel. They needed someone with experience to build and restructure their commercial department and operations. They also wanted to improve their online presence and brand, to better appeal to CIO’s, IT managers and businesses in the aviation and travel sector.

What was delivered

Web design and development

Rather than focus solely on Pinsoft’s solutions development, UI / UX design and systems delivery capability, which they were obviously very capable of (like the legions of others), we decided to place a special emphasis on the Pinsoft team, the people that their target clients would be engaging and hopefully working with.

On the website, a special “Meet Your Team” section was designed within the About Us page, where individual avatars were designed for each member of the Pinsoft team, who provided a profile photo (more on this at the end…)

In coming up with the design, the aim was to create emotional engagement with website target visitors before they’ve even met the team.

A multi-lingual blog, along with content, was designed and built, before Webflow had localisation capability.

The Results

Within 6 months the new website was ranking 14 on its keywords, with no paid ads. On average the site received 2,000 impressions a month with a CTR between 6-7%.

Fractional Leadership

Starting with a commercial "Way of Working" methodology framework, key business processes were established. These included governance and best practices from nurturing leads to eventual project delivery. All documentation from proposal document templates to commercial contracts were re-written and developed from scratch, as well as sales and marketing presentations. A detailed financial forecast leads database was built using Excel.

I also actively participated in executive meetings with potential clients and negotiated contracts.

The Results

Commercial processes were standardised, reducing proposal preparation and delivery times by ~70%. Contractual exposure was reduced. Ultimately the Fractional role was initially for two days a week but was extended to three as new clients were onboarded.

Humorous Project Fact

So, about those profile photos we requested from the Pinsoft team for the new Webflow website. Other than branding and re-branding objectives, a major benefit of branding workshops is to bring together and re-align the organisation, closer, as a team. Which can be a lot of fun. I'd asked each team member to provide a professional bio as well as their likes and hobbies. Using this information, short, whimsical, and amiable personnel bios were created for each team member, and placed under their avatar. Upon clicking the avatar, the actual team member photo was going to be revealed, along with their LinkedIn and Instagram links.

However, as anyone who develops websites will tell you, waiting on, and reminding clients to eventually send the content for the website, can be exasperating. It was a similar experience with the profile photos and bios, here. That was until the first instance of the website was delivered for testing. Until that point, only six or seven team members had shared the information requested. Once the rest saw the result, they all wanted their own avatar and “fun bio” and sent in their content within a few days.

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