Glamorgan face arguably their most important winter in recent years as they look to turn the on-field improvements from this summer into something more tangible.
At the club's end of season award ceremony, chief executive Hugh Morris suggested promotion, after 10 years in the second tier, would be on the agenda next season.
His optimism came with a caveat.
Most significantly, that the club simply can not go out and buy the depth of squads enjoyed by Surrey and Lancashire, who were both promoted this term.
If we can get the right players for the right money we will look to sign them, Morris said.
I have made no secret we want to strengthen our seam bowling department and we need to create more competition at the top of our batting order.
We have to live within our means but also recruit well.
While the club scours the market for affordable players they will also look to finalise important talks with their creditors as they bid to manage the debt at the club.
Morris has said he hoped to have everything tied up by Christmas admitting that servicing a £16million debt would have been the straw that broke the camel's back.
If there is plenty yet to do behind the scenes, they players will take much heart from the fact that in 2015 they saw an on-field yield on the hard work already done.
All-rounder Graham Wagg underlined Glamorgan's on-field improvement last summer, highlighted by his career-best double-century
A four-placed finish in Division Two was the equal best return in the LV= County Championship since relegation in 2005 and met the goal set out at the start of the summer.
A second successive trip to the NatWest T20 Blast quarter-finals was missed only after losing a five-over slog against Gloucestershire in the final game, while the Royal London One-Day Cup campaign was undermined by a dangerous pitch at the SSE SWALEC that resulted in lost points.
Already the club have moved on from that, Robin Saxton has been employed on a 12-month basis as head groundsman, while their hosting of the first Investec Ashes Test was one of the highlights of the summer.
With an air of cautious optimism permeating into the club, pushing on further up the table next term appears well within their reach.
If that is to be done then Morris' assertion that strengthening the squad, which was the smallest in the Championship, appears the most obvious area of need.
Glamorgan began last summer with only 15 players on their books and, while they remained unbeaten and in touch with promotion during the opening eight Championship games, they fell away markedly once July hit and the rigours of all three formats kicked in.
Fatigue did strike there's no doubt about that, Wagg said.
It wasn't an easy last few months but we stuck at it and we managed to pick up fourth. That was our goal at the start of the season and, realistically, it was a great improvement after finishing eighth last season.
We were on the road for 21 days around the Ashes Test we hosted and that was hard work. We lost in the Championship for the first time during that spell, which ended with an innings defeat against Lancashire up at Colwyn Bay.
It's hard with a small squad, you can't rotate the bowlers, but there's no excuse factor.
We simply take the positives from what we achieved and look at the fact that until early-July we were unbeaten (in the Championship) and even looking at promotion.
While Wagg would welcome greater depth at the club to help drive ambition, he knows improvement from the current playing group will be at the heart in any forward progress.
Under the coach-captain combination of Toby Radford and Jacques Rudolph, which has dovetailed with Morris' off-field moves, a strong emphasis has been put on squeezing the best out of the players already at the club.
Since Jacques took over as captain he has been big on getting that little bit extra and aiming higher, Wagg said.
He's big on the big picture rather than people focussing in on themselves and doing enough to get by. We've just had our season appraisals with Hugh and the coach and improvement was a big part of that.
We're going in the right direction and, if we keep pushing ourselves, and then get a couple of signings to offer that depth of squad then I honestly think we can push up towards promotion next year all while not taking anything away from white-ball cricket.
Wagg was the perfect example of a player making a step up last summer when the 32-year-old filled up the stats sheets, scoring 838 runs and taking 45 wickets in the Championship.
Personally the way things have gone for me this year have been phenomenal especially with the bat, said Wagg.
That has been my most important thing. For me the most important thing was with the bat, I'm still looking to take 50-plus wickets.
You see some guys getting 75 wickets - that's phenomenal. That's something that I am striving for to get past 60 wickets. I haven't got over 60 yet.
That's a target for next year and with the bat to carry on the form. I want to bat up at seven and be the actual all-rounder in the team rather than the guy who is just trying to whack a few runs at the end. It paid off this year.
Wagg's season was highlighted by a maiden double-century in the victory over Surrey at Guildford - an innings his son Brayden predicted.
He's gone cricket mad my seven-year-old and he said before the game that he wanted me to get 200 runs, he said.
I said a hundred would do me and he said 'no'. He was determined on that and said 200. It was the night before I left. I spoke to him afterwards and it was amazing.
He's tried to do it since, bless him, it hasn't worked when I've tried to get his prediction.
While Wagg senior is optimistic predictions of a Glamorgan promotion can come true next summer he has endured enough tough times in south Wales to know that any success will have to be earned the hard way.
My first three or four seasons here it was tough. We were down the bottom, Wagg said.
Everyone at the club knows if we are to improve next year it is going to be very hard.
But we are an honest group. When we were down at the bottom for those years the members were restless and saying we're a better team than this.
Mark Wallace was captain - a very honest and open chap - and as he said unfortunately we weren't a better team than that because it happened three years on the bounce. Stats don't lie.
Slowly we are stepping things up. We did that this year, there's ambition at the club, but there is plenty still to be done. We won't forget that.