Case Facts   * Mitalio Software inc. was a key player in the business process management software industry with operations in North America, Europe and Asia. Its offices were located in United States, France, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom and Hong Kong.   * The major product categories were divided according to the customers served and involved corporations in telecom, manufacturing, banking, financial services, healthcare and insurance.   * A core product family was ProcessEdge which comprised multiple products that helped create new software platform, acted as a bridge between multiple platforms, and packaged business applications for specific industries.   * These software involved many permutations and combinations of possible solutions, hence hard to implement.   * Part of the revenue came from services as the sales people had to undertake extensive customer education and consultative selling.   * Direct selling was the major determinant of Mitalio’s market performance.   * Products were licensed and services sold through a direct organization in most parts of the world.   * Selling through resellers was just a supportive sales force.   * The direct selling was accomplished through sales professionals and sales support consultants who provided pre-sale technical support to prospective customers.   * Mitalio Software put a special emphasis on marketing activities.   * Market spending was about 7% as compared to the industry average which was between 2% and 5%.   * Printing advertising in business magazine, industry events and tradeshows, and market services topped the list in the amount spent.   * Online/Web-based marketing was bottom in the list with only 5% of the total spending.   * Marketing productivity per employee was lower compared to peers and competitors.   * The marketing focus was on educating potential customers, generating new sales opportunities and improving awareness of various products.   * The marketing objective was lead generation or generating qualified leads that the direct force could pursue.   * Lead generation was a great disadvantage to Mitalio.   * Competitors had increasingly rolled out rapid fire promotion strategies.   * Instead of enticing people to buy products, Mitalio continued to target an almost fixed set of customers.   * In order to enhance brand loyalty, Mitalio was establishing thought leadership by increasing the time the sales people spent with customers.   * Electronic marketing becoming more common over conventional forms of marketing, thought leadership faced a great challenge.   * BEA acquisition was a great threat to Mitalio’s business.   * BEA had been a long time competitor and the acquisition was an added advantage to the firm’s strength.   * BEA had swiftly engaged in electronic marketing to advertise the acquisition.   * People had begun to respond to the competitor’s call and traffic had increased significantly.   * Mitalio had about 140 cases worldwide in the proposal stage and 60 pilot projects around the world which were directly threatened by the new wave created by competitors.   * Mitalio’s marketing organizational structure: Director of product marketing (Carlos Pintera), director marketing manager (Susan Marakos) and then an MBA intern (Oscar Smith).   * Director of product marketing   * Car