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Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE:IRM) helps organizations around the world reduce the costs and risks associated with information protection and storage. The Company offers comprehensive records management, data protection, and information destruction solutions along with the expertise and experience to address complex information challenges such as rising storage costs, litigation, regulatory compliance and disaster recovery. Founded in 1951, Iron Mountain is a trusted partner to more than 120,000 corporate clients throughout North America, Europe, Latin America and the Pacific Rim. Iron Mountain Digital was formed in 2005 with the acquisition of Connected PC Back-up and continues to grow through acquisition and organic growth.
Postscript: In 2005, Iron Mountain was one of the earliest enterprises to widely deploy the “cloud” before the term became popularized.
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Business Growth Challenge
Iron Mountain Digital was a company built on acquisitions starting with Connected, one of the first Cloud based backup services before the term Cloud was popularized. The growing pains of the digital division came from building out the internal product lines while integrating the acquisitions. The following engagements were representative of the rapid growth of this new area for the company that still had 90% of its resources focused on its traditional physical storage business. The digital areas needed a more flexible and faster on-ramp to compete.
Deliverables and Results
Partner Program Engagements: Initially, partnering through sales channels and strategic partners were among the initial keys to growth. For this area, the challenge was to evolve the partner program to meet changing partner requirements. The future was tied to understanding the skills and capabilities of the partners, finding out what they needed to be successful, and eliminating those that could not grow with the new direction. Additional work required studying the evolving MSP Channel and how to work with them in a SaaS environment.
Product Management: This assignment involved Persona Development, Competitive Analysis, and Go-to-Market programs for e-Discovery and Data Protection & Recovery products.
New Product Development: An interdepartmental strategy session in conjunction with the launch of Storage-as-a-Service products including Virtual File Store and the first Developer platform.
Customer Reference Programs: As new customers came on board in the Digital division, the need for customer references became evident. A Best Practices review of Reference Programs was completed for the Corporate PR Team.
Client Feedback
Jacqueline (Marketing Recon) was hired initially by Iron Mountain Digital’s Channel Group head to evaluate the Channel Program for the data protection products. She has continued to work on various facets of Partner Marketing and has also engaged with the Product Marketing organization on initiatives in e-Discovery, Data Protection & Recovery Customer Reference Program, and Storage-as-a-Service products such as Virtual File Store. The breadth and depth of work she has undertaken speaks to her versatility as a marketing and business advisor.
Jacqueline’s approach is to partner closely with the Iron Mountain team while at the same time adding objectivity and strategic intelligence to the process. She is able to work across the organization as a trusted resource on many different initiatives – adding her own team of experts to the projects where needed to achieve a complete deliverable. We have greatly enjoyed our relationship which has expanded considerably. Throughout the engagements, however, Jacqueline stays close to the business issues and is always looking out for the greater good of Iron Mountain.
Karen McPhillips, VP Worldwide Marketing-Iron Mountain DigitalIn the spring of 2005, Iron Mountain Digital called on Jackie to assist us with providing greater definition and programmatic substance relative to our partner program. The investment of time, energy, candid feedback and constructive suggestions now serves as the template for how we will approach working with third party companies moving forward. Her work for us – with the added benefit of her professionalism, personality and real world experience – exceeded our expectations in every regard. Since partnering is a process, not an event, we will undoubtedly call on her services again in future.
Dave Kubick, VP Channels, Iron Mountain