Government Agencies Success Story -

Challenge: The Commissioner of one of Minnesota’s state agencies was working to increase the emphasis of its employees to focus more on providing quality services and to re-define the focus of the department's customers to include a broader base. As part of a continuing quality improvement process, the Commissioner determined that the department needed to develop a new program to focus on providing critical services to meet the needs of an underserved population that was growing in size. Developing this new service was one of the state agency’s highest priority programs.

JCS Solution: Johnson Consulting Services conducted a two-part engagement to assist the Commissioner in obtaining information for decision-making. Our efforts were concentrated on conducting research to confirm the agency's perceptions of the issues affecting needs of the underserved clients and to identify the critical success factors necessary to design this new service. We reviewed agency data to evaluate the effectiveness of current services to meet the needs of this market. We conducted in-depth interviews with key agency employees and external decision makers to determine how the new service needed to be designed and discovered that success would be limited unless existing negative attitudes held by those external to the agency could be counteracted. We offered suggestions to enable the department to better position its services efforts and address the critical issues we identified. We also developed recommendations to maximize the effect of promotional opportunities available throughout the state.

Results: Our analysis provided the impetus to restructure this program. Our recommendations provided the foundation for this restructuring effort and addressing the negative attitudes held by the community it served. Our work with senior staff helped reposition this state agency as an important resource with a targeted focus on meeting the needs of the underserved population increased the success of the new high priority program.

Research Services:

• Comprehensive Secondary Research
• Demographic Analysis
• In-Depth Qualitative Interviews
• Competitor Intelligence
• Focus Groups
• Surveys

Analysis Services:

• Market Studies
• Company Evaluations
• Situation Analysis
• Market Opportunity Analysis
• Industry Trends Analysis
• Product or Service Concept Development
• Marketing Audits

Planning Services:

• Strategic Planning
• Business Planning
• Marketing Planning
• Business Start-up or Expansion
• Individual Business Coaching