Businesses that focus on growth, innovation, and marketing have double the profit margin of those that sell based on price.NC State University Industry Extension Services can help.
We can help you understand unmet needs in the marketplace, identify potential new markets, exploit technology disrupters, and develop opportunities to globalize your business and position your company to gain market share over the competition.
We can help you:
- Understand and improve your company’s position in the marketplace
- Capitalize on your company’s strengths and exploit competitors’ weaknesses
- Become more innovative to increase profitability
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Understand potential markets, entry opportunities, and market trends and drivers
- Recognize possible applications for the new products
- Identify new markets for existing products
- Overcome operational, technical, and market barriers
- Create a realistic marketing and advertising plan with measurable goals
Next Steps Are Simple…
Schedule a meeting with your Industry Extension Services Regional Manager to schedule a no-cost Business Competitiveness assessment or discuss a business growth, innovation, or marketing strategy.
To schedule a meeting,
CONTACT US
or call us at 919.515.2358.
CHANGE Pathway is a powerful, practical methodology explicitly designed for manufacturers to equip your team to evaluate and respond to the people-related factors that cause projects to fail.
Unlock the people-side of project success with a proven approach that minimizes resistance, builds engagement, and drives measurable results.
Every project has two sides:
- Technical (cost, schedule, scope)
- People (motivation, capability, understanding)
Most projects do not fail because of poor planning. Traditional project management overlooks the people side—and that’s the main reason improvement efforts fail. Resistance, disengagement, and change fatigue derail even the best initiatives. Organizational change depends on individuals’ ability and willingness to change. Without winning over hearts and minds, projects stall.
The Way to Change.
CHANGE Pathway ensures your team adapts, embraces, and sustains change for lasting success.
Benefits:
- 7X improved project outcomes
- Reduced resistance to change
- Increased employee engagement
- Enhanced communication & collaboration
- Better project success rates
- Minimized disruption & risk
- Optimized use of resources
- Sustained performance improvements
- Competitive advantage for your business
Program Structure:
Training (6 sessions over 3 days)
- Understanding change, risk factors, fatigue, and workforce assessment
- Deep dive into the CHANGE Pathway methodology
- Tools for implementation and avoiding pitfalls
Implementation Coaching (2 days)
- Apply CHANGE Pathway directly to your project or organization
- Overcome real-world challenges and objections
- Secure measurable, sustainable success
Typical timeline: 1–3 months at your organization’s pace.
Our no-cost, one-day Competitiveness Review is the core of business improvement discovery and the first step in our strategic, hands-on approach to help improve your company’s position in the market. The Competitiveness Review is a comprehensive, on-site evaluation of your company’s operations that appraises capabilities and gauges the effectiveness of business systems.There is no cost to you as a North Carolina manufacturer and it represents a $3,500 value. The assessment reveals (or confirms) your limiting factors and provides a snapshot comparison to other companies. The assessment delivers a road map to improve competitiveness, performance and your bottom line.
- Industry Expansion Solution’s one-day, on-site visit focuses attention on top-priority technical and business challenges
- Results are returned to you within 10–15 business days
- A customized action plan is presented featuring strategies and solutions designed to improve productivity, quality, profits and sales
To schedule your review,
CONTACT US
or call us at 919.515.2358.
Industry Extension Services provides innovation training and coaching that provides a practical, repeatable system for innovation to make your organization more profitable. Realize documented strategies for innovation, innovation management tools and ultimately, greater customer satisfaction.Innovation Academy is designed to accelerate a continuous flow of innovation—big or small—to address your department’s, division’s or company’s important problems and/or opportunities, no matter what industry or organization. Our approach to innovation includes creating teams and roles to tap your workforce’s creative capabilities and spark innovation
We can provide the tools and training:
- To assist organizations in recognizing and responding to opportunities for new ideas, processes or products
- To work smarter, faster, and more creatively every day.
- To develop a customized innovation process, models and innovation management tools to implement immediately.
This workshop is focused on the needs of CEOs, owners, senior leaders, plant managers, and business development managers within a manufacturing organization. The Innovation Management Workshop will show you what it takes to implement a process to “ideate,” test, maintain, and sustain an innovation system.Through this workshop, your team will learn:
The System:
- How to increase your innovation speeds by up to 6 times and decrease risk by 30 to 80 percent
- How to implement a sustainable innovation management system
Creating Innovation Pipelines:
- How to create a documented list of ideas for growing sales and profits
- How to implement tools to create innovative ideas
This workshop may be available as an open enrollment program. Check the Innovation Management course page to view scheduled dates, or contact your Regional Manager to schedule a customized workshop on-site.
- Marketing for Increased Sales
- Marketing for New Employees
- Marketing for the Community
Marketing Launchpad is a customizable, retainer-based program designed to address specific needs in three key areas: Marketing for Sales, Marketing for New Employees, and Marketing for the Community. The program is structured to provide a tailored marketing strategy involving elements from one, two, or all three integrated programs based on the client’s unique requirements. We collect data and provide analysis and insights to adapt the marketing mix to achieve your specific goals throughout the contract period.Three integrated programs to address specific needs such as:
Marketing for SalesIncrease sales, generate leads, and improve market demand through strategic communication, enhanced web presence, hyper-targeted digital advertising, and automated marketing systems. Reach the target audience you desire.
Marketing for New Employees
Attract the most qualified potential job candidates by improving your company’s reputation and visibility online.
Marketing for the Community
Elevate the image and reputation of your community that instills pride with stakeholders, local businesses, community leaders, government entities and prospective new business developers.
How the Marketing Launchpad Program Works
We first deeply understand your company and how we want the target market to feel, then we implement strategies based on where your target markets give their attention. The program always begins with a strategy planning session, and services often include all of the below:
- Website Refresh–Restructuring of site and updated content to improve user experience and conversion rate
- Competitive Analysis–Research to understand competitive advantages and gaps in the market
- Search Advertising–Google Ads to show up when the target market is actively looking for what you provide
- Geotargeted Advertising–Social media, on-site SEO, off-site SEO, and technical SEO to improve organic results
- Search Engine Optimization–Creative content and graphic design, monitoring and optimization of paid Google, LinkedIn and Facebook advertising for maximum reach
- Email Marketing–Set up and customization of email distribution software, graphic design, and list development
- Automated Nurturing System Development–Remarketing Ads and CRM emails to continue building a feeling in the target market
- Photography and Videography–Logistics for an on-site shoot and editing of benefits oriented videos, to build a library of marketing resources
Workforce and community reputation management may also include:
- Online Reputation Boosting–Identify critical factors that make your organization attractive to positively position your organization and digital marketing management services to boost credibility and visibility.
- Employee Recruitment–Strategies to leverage current employee referrals, application process optimization, feedback mechanisms to improve candidate experience, initiatives to attract a diverse workforce and assistance to develop a database for potential talent workforce.
- Employee Retention–Engagement strategies for long-term retention, measure and improve employee satisfaction to achieve sustainable and loyal employees, benefits review for unique proposition positioning and brand marketing messaging management.
Your organization will retain ownership and access to all online accounts and marketing materials developed during this program. At the end of the contract period, you may continue to utilize ongoing services under a new contract agreement.
The Strategic Alignment Program helps small and mid-sized manufacturers in North Carolina turn their long-term vision into focused, actionable priorities. Using a proven, no-nonsense approach based on Hoshin Kanri, we guide your team through a structured process to align goals, engage your workforce, and track progress—all with minimal disruption to daily operations. With expert facilitation, simple visual tools, and ongoing support, we help you build clarity, accountability and results—from the front office to the shop floor.Program Format
We create customized schedules tailored to meet the organization’s specific needs. A typical company’s time investment is 1-2 days per week for 6-8 weeks. Our product specialist will meet with one or two people at a time, with two or three meetings onsite per day, to minimize disruption to daily operations.What we offer:
- Hands-on facilitation of strategy development and deployment
- Straightforward tools (like very simple X-matrix and A3s) to connect goals to actions
- On-site workshops to align leadership and team priorities
- Coaching support to build internal capability
- Integration with your existing Lean, CI, OpEx or ERP and SIOP efforts
- Templates and dashboards for tracking progress without adding complexity
With these benefits:
- Company-wide focus on what matters most
- Better use of limited time, talent and resources
- Clear accountability—everyone knows their role
- Less firefighting, more proactive problem-solving
- Greater engagement from supervisors and operators
- Measurable improvements in throughput, delivery and profitability
Understand the Potential of Your ProductDo you have a winning tech idea, but aren’t quite sure how to bring your product to market, or who to market it to? Technology Driven Market Intelligence (TDMI) can help you understand your product’s potential and position it to gain the most power in the marketplace, using extensive market research and real-world insights from industry experts.
Whether your company is small or large, private or public, focused on research, or driven by business, TDMI provides the leverage to turn your ideas into drivers of tangible results.
TDMI allows you to:
- Create a more viable, more competitive product
- Recognize possible applications for the new product
- Capitalize on the product’s strengths and exploit competitors’ weaknesses
- Understand potential markets, entry opportunities, and market trends and drivers
- Overcome technical and market barriers
Think of TDMI as Your Flashlight in the Dark
Unlike other services, TDMI analyzes your product’s potential for positive return on investment before you launch, and identifies and engages potential commercial partners to maximize that investment. You’ll go forward with confidence, knowing that your product will meet demand and generate value in the marketplace.
If you are responsible for developing markets, creating growth, or launching new products or product lines at your company, increase your chances of success with TDMI.
What are the Benefits of Using TDMI?
- Getting a top-level view of the market: trends, drivers, value chains and competition
- Having a plan to maximize resources and direct them to where they will create the most return on investment
- Thoroughly vetting potential new products and markets before entry
- The ability to make decisions with confidence
Contact your Industry Extension Services Regional Manager to get started!
