Country: United States

Client: Snowbird Ski and Snowbird Resort

Project Description: With more than 500 inches of the world’s lightest and best powder snow, Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort has earned SKIING magazine’s top rating among ski resorts for the last four years. Yet, like marketing any other product or service, selling fun has its challenges. Global Resources has worked with Snowbird’s management team for over five years, creating strategies, business development concepts, operations plans and related tools to help the four-season resort convey its unique resources and offerings to a worldwide clientele.

Global Resources’ founder, an avid athlete and Snowbird skier for more than 15 years, noticed that Snowbird was collecting a great deal of data via its billing systems, ski pass scanning systems and related information technology tools. However, valuable as that data was, at the time, it did not appear that the Resort was leveraging those information assets to better understand their customers or to market their resort’s resources as effectively as they could.

With Snowbird’s permission, Global Resources conducted some preliminary research and competitive assessments. We identified how internal information resources were being effectively utilized for billing purposes but more importantly, how the Resort could use their data and historical information to improve profitability.

Snowbird welcomed our ideas and our work began in 2003 with Snowbird Mountain School, as we used in-house information and external resources to systematize and update the School’s product descriptions, recognize customers’ historical spending and start to predict the next season’s buying patterns. Our responsibilities expanded over the years to include competitive assessments, direct customer communications on behalf of the resort, and detailed assessments of product offerings, while we implemented quality checks and operations trouble-shooting to systematize the School’s operations.

Today, Global Resources serves all areas of the Resort through our work with Snowbird’s marketing department and senior management. Our work focuses on Snowbird’s information infrastructure and how it can best be used to provide skiers and boarders of every level the best possible experience as they go beyond the technical aspects of their sport to enjoy all aspects of their recreational experiences.

Client: US Trade and Development Agency

Project Description: The United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) has been a client of Global Resources for more than 15 years. The Agency seeks to advance economic development in developing and middle income countries in a manner that also promotes opportunity in these countries for US commercial interests.

The Agency’s approach is to provide grants for the planning of infrastructure projects in developing and middle income countries. Typically, this planning takes the form of feasibility studies and investment analyses, followed by independent due diligence, and finally funding for detailed project planning. Host country partners, or project sponsors, select the US companies that perform these USTDA-funded studies, review the results, and determine if they want to move forward with project implementation either with private-sector or public-sector investment capital.

The USTDA also organizes workshops, conferences and technical symposia worldwide that are sector-specific or project-oriented and designed to connect overseas project sponsors with US firms and entities that supply project finance, technology and industry expertise that may be useful in project implementation.

Global Resources’ primary work for USTDA involves our expertise in ICT and infrastructure planning and implementation. This work includes the following:

• We meet with potential host country sponsors to explain USTDA’s resources and to define projects under tight timelines. We work with foreign nationals and their staffs to develop detailed project specifications for potential USTDA support (missions, tasks and deliverables, staffing plans and contractor qualifications, bidding documents, budgets and related parameters).
• We troubleshoot for USTDA and other multi-party projects when contracting and operational challenges arise.
• We provide independent due diligence services on behalf of USTDA for project partners seeking grant assistance.
• We have also been awarded a major grant by USTDA for a Feasibility Study and two Pilot Programs in Turkey.
• On occasion, we represent USTDA and explain the Agency’s resources to international governments, private sector entities, financing institutions and non-governmental organizations at international conferences and symposia.

With our breadth of USTDA experience as both a grant recipient and consultant, Global Resources possesses a unique understanding of the Agency’s guidelines and operations and can assist organizations working with USTDA – whether that organization is attempting to design a project for support, is going through due diligence to receive a grant, or facing queries or challenges regarding contractual and operational issues when conducting a USTDA-funded grant project.