Marketing Darwinism - by Paul Dunay
  • Home
  • Bio
  • Books
  • Press
  • Speaking
  • Webinars
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Photos
  • Awards
  • Abstracts
  • Testimonials
Home
Bio
Books
Press
Speaking
Webinars
Videos
Podcasts
Photos
Awards
Abstracts
Testimonials
  • Home
  • Bio
  • Books
  • Press
  • Speaking
  • Webinars
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Photos
  • Awards
  • Abstracts
  • Testimonials
Marketing Darwinism - by Paul Dunay
Cloud, Exec Interviews, Marketing

Executive Interview with Todd Wells, CMO of award-winning Acumatica

Marketing Darwinism caught up with Marketing Executive Todd Wells, CMO of award-winning Acumatica

Marketing Darwinism: Acumatica- the leader in Cloud ERP.  What is the value proposition of the company and what explains the torrid growth pace?

Todd W: Acumatica does indeed continue to grow at a very substantial pace – and it’s great to see how the product and the value proposition resonates so well with our prospects and customers.  The value prop is centered on three basic promises: superior technology, high value, and unflagging support. That is essentially what we provide to all members of the Acumatica ecosystem, from worldwide OEMs and regional VARs to ISVs, developers, and of course customers. We truly believe it’s our duty and obligation to ensure the success of all those who place their trust in Acumatica.

Marketing Darwinism:  Todd, you were a marketing and data leader at Microsoft and then transitioned to a much smaller company.  As a Marketer, how do you unlearn the “access” to massive budgets and teams and find a more guerrilla footing?

Todd W: I tend to think about it less as unlearning and more about bringing all of my varied experience to bear on the work – whether that is the experience with scale or even in different industries prior.  The scale was certainly different from when I left Microsoft to when I started at Acumatica, but I think that we are now scaling so quickly that much of the work is similar to what I did before with large, global teams.  Meanwhile, of course, you just have to roll up your sleeves and do the work rather than delegate it. Massive budgets often mean you have to get more people involved, and that doesn’t necessarily lead to a better result.

Marketing Darwinism:  Acumatica’s marketing is top-notch and ubiquitous.  How do you approach the marketing mix?

Todd W:  Marketing is directly responsible for a substantive portion of our licensing wins on a quarterly basis – and so no question that our demand generation is focused on those vehicles that are quantitatively proven to drive pipeline – and we continue to dynamically invest and optimize across the entire mix.  But given that we are a challenger in the ERP space – we do have other complementary objectives such as brand awareness – and you will see our presence in airports and other vehicles – even including highly targeted television ads.

Marketing Darwinism: I see that Acumatica Summit is a core piece of your outreach strategy.  What does the Summit/Physical Event offer you that other, “virtual” means cannot?

Todd W:  I do believe that the Summit is an extremely strong community event and one that will continue into the foreseeable future. The way our attendees come together with real enthusiasm is hard to duplicate, it can’t be livestreamed. Virtual events and webinars are certainly a critical component of our marketing mix – and have grown substantially in importance during COVID and quarantine – but yes, as you say, the Acumatica Summit is the seminal event for us and our customers, partners, and industry analysts.  We invest a lot of time and effort to ensure that it is motivating, engaging and informative for all attendees – and we just recently concluded our 2021 Summit at the Wynn Las Vegas – with over 2,500 attendees and record satisfaction levels.

Marketing Darwinism:  Acumatica’s growth one can argue is partner-led.  What are the challenges and opportunities of being a CMO on a channel enablement scenario versus a direct-to-customer scenario?

Todd W:  Acumatica is entirely dedicated to our partner channel – and I like to think about partners as a marketing flywheel driving awareness and demand generation beyond what we can do ourselves.  A critical focus of my team is our partner marketing enablement capabilities through which we can go to market through and with our vast partner ecosystem. A direct-to-customer scenario is certainly more traditional, but leveraging the channel and all of its breadth and expertise can be a very powerful combination.

Marketing Darwinism: What is your advice for young marketers today?  In the tech industry and others?

Todd W: I think that there has probably never been a better time to be in Marketing – the ever changing and progressing capabilities across marketing technologies, the changing dynamics of our lives across work and our personal, etc.  Companies are more and more realizing how critical Marketing is to deliver on business objectives – and we are witnessing a resurgence in the prominence of the role.  There is so much to learn and understand across digital marketing, analytics, customer experience, creative etc these days – my advice is simply to learn as much across as many of these aspects as possible and to be open to any new opportunities to learn – the strongest marketers I work with have a broad spectrum of experiences and knowledge and are able to leverage it to deliver results.

August 25, 2021by Paul Dunay
Advertising, Big Data, Business Intelligence, Cloud, Data, Data Analytics, Data Mining, Innovation, Strategy

Real Estate, Real AI, Real Value

Submitted article by Romi Mahajan

Chief Commercial Officer, Quantarium

The world of technology is known as much for its hype as it is for its legitimate innovations.  Atone level, this is understandable. Dreamers can only accomplish big things when they dream big and followup on those dreams with supporting rhetoric. At a different level, however, it serves to dupe consumers, customers,and investors into alchemist fantasies that often defy the laws of physics.  What we need, naturally, is a balance.

With AI, and claims about it, we as a community have come to the point where we have to decide if we are okay with “fact-checking.”  Are all claims about AI fair and accurate?  Do all companies that claim to be “doing AI” pass muster in that regard? After all, haven’t many organizations referred to any and all of their “data”initiatives as AI? Have we diluted the term so as to make it meaningless?

Discerning investors have started to kick the AI tires.  Highly skilled Scientists and Engineers increasingly refuse to be beguiled by marketing claims, choosing instead to dig deeply into the code and methodologies surrounding its production before allowing themselves to be recruited by the countless organizations that seek the limited supply of talent. 

Perhaps more relevant, still, is that people in all roles ask one fundamental question:  “Is there any relevant and practical application to the AI work you are doing?”

On all these matters, Quantarium can hold its head high.  From “Real AI” to “Real Applications of AI,”Quantarium is altering and enhancing our notions of what is possible in residential real estate, the world’s single largest asset class.

Take for instance an important but mundane question, likely asked by millions of people every day.  “What is my house worth?”  Several pundits will offer several answers to this question, no doubt.  But, will the answers be accurate and in this case, what does accuracy even mean?  What data goes into the answer?  Do we have all the data we need?  Is it all available? Do the data we collect account for every single aspect of the house that could or should go into the valuation? 

Now take an extrapolation of this question with magnified scale.  Imagine you are the CEO of a large bank that “owns” half-a-million residential mortgages. What is your portfolio worth?  How much risk are you holding in the portfolio?  Are you too exposed in a particular geography or demographic?  Do you have sufficient data and the ability to process and make sense out of it?  Can you do this all with the speed that is called for by regulation and market conditions?

These questions are easy to pose but hard to answer.  Further, while these questions may not seem “sexy,” they underscore the reality of the single biggest source of economic value and for most families the single largest source of equity.  Using AI to drive accuracy, speed, and scale in this market is complex, genuine and incredibly important.Indeed, real AI applied to real industries with real outcomes is the name of the game. Therein lies the balance we seek, the convergence of both the hype and of the reality.

December 18, 2018by Paul Dunay

Search

Welcome to my blog, my name is Paul Dunay and I lead Red Hat's Financial Services Marketing team Globally, I am also a Certified Professional Coach, Author and Award-Winning B2B Marketing Expert. Any views expressed are my own.

Archives

  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • April 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • December 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • January 2020
  • March 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • March 2006

“I started with Brixton to provide you with daily fresh new ideas about trends. It is a very clean and elegant Wordpress Theme suitable for every blogger. Perfect for sharing your lifestyle.”

© 2018 copyright PREMIUMCODING // All rights reserved // Privacy Policy
Brixton was made with love by Premiumcoding.