Replacing Siloed Execution With Centers of Excellence and Go-to-Market Pods
The Challenge
A growing specialty insurance organization had strong business ambition and a marketing and growth structure that had not evolved to match it. Teams worked hard, but the operating model created friction: capabilities, priorities, and ownership were not always clear, and execution depended on individual effort rather than a repeatable system. The company needed a model that could support several growth motions at once — direct-to-consumer, strategic partnerships, retail channels, employer-based distribution, and other specialized segments — and the existing structure made it hard to build deep expert capability and stay focused on specific markets at the same time.
The Approach
We designed and implemented a more scalable marketing and customer growth operating model with senior leadership and the functional teams, clarifying how the organization should operate and where decisions should sit. The shape of it: Centers of Excellence that build and manage core capabilities across the business — media, analytics, lifecycle marketing, creative, UX, partner marketing, and strategy — paired with go-to-market pods that own specific markets, channels, or customer segments, set growth strategy for them, prioritize opportunities, coordinate execution, and make sure activity translates into business outcomes. Around that we drew the line between capability ownership and market ownership, defined how the two work together, built a consistent model for prioritization, planning, execution, and measurement, improved alignment across marketing, sales, client success, operations, product, and technology, and helped leadership see the capabilities, resources, and dependencies long-term growth would require.
The Results
The organization implemented the first phase of the new operating model, giving marketing and customer growth teams a clear structure for working together. Strategy and execution came into better alignment, teams gained a consistent way to prioritize, and the foundation for scalable growth was set. Marketing stopped operating as a collection of disconnected functions: there is now explicit ownership across both capabilities and markets, and a mature growth operating system that says who owns expertise, who owns market outcomes, and how work moves from strategy to execution.
Why It Matters
As companies scale, growth often gets harder because the operating model does not keep pace with the ambition. A structure that builds stronger marketing capability while staying focused on the specific markets, partners, and customer segments that actually drive growth is what closes that gap.
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