Atlantis Scientific, now part of MacDonald, Dettwiller and Associates, had developed a sophisticated and expensive software tool for processing images from satellite. The solution served a narrow, high-end market niche, and incurred significant development costs to provide the advanced features that a limited set of customers desired. As a result, Atlantis Scientific could not generate significant product revenue, had to endure high development costs and did not capture a broad enough share of the market.
Keystep executed a thorough market analysis that took several months and included interviews with existing and potential customers around the world. As a result of this process, Keystep proposed the development and introduction of a new entry-level version of the product to serve a broader array of markets at a lower, and more profitable, price point. This approach allowed Atlantis Scientific to triple sales of the software product line over a three-year period without significant additional R&D costs. Sufficient revenue was generated to support the development of an operational version of the product that was aimed at the satellite base station market, which required continuous reception and high processing throughput.