The 10 Influential Marketing Leaders to watch in 2019

Vol.4/ Issue-14
www.insightssuccess.com
April 2019
The 10
Inuential
Marketing
Leaders to
Watch in 2019
Leader of the Month
George Hughes, CMO
The Star Entertainment Group
Chandar
Pattabhiram
Imparting Wisdom
Successful Personality Traits
to Learn from Elon Musk
The Art of Leading
Attributes of a
Good Leader

E
Thriving in the Multi-dimensional
Sphere of Marketing
he world is constantly evolving through the new technological trends and with different aspects of business. One such
Taspect is marketing that no business can overlook. From traditional practices such as advertisement through
television, print ads, radio space to digitalized practices such as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing,
social media marketing (SMM), and email marketing, marketing sphere has seen a drastic change.
Thus, the job of marketing has become more convenient as well as complex at the same time; as marketing leaders have to
perform several tasks to reach out to their potential customers. Despite these differences of modern and traditional marketing
practices, many leaders have smoothly carried out all the marketing functions and achieved the desirable results.
Being one of the foremost components of business management, marketing is present in all stages of the business. It
communicates business offerings to potential customers and thus, requires strenuous efforts. This job role needs leaders, who
hold attributes such as ability to intrigue, effective sales approach, sound communication, flexibility, resourcefulness,
adaptability, and accountability. By effectively carrying out these responsibilities, there are some marketers, who are
pioneering the marketing world with new possibilities.
With an intent to exhibit the significant contributions and inspiring journey of some of the world’s most influential CMO’s,
Insights Success has compiled its list of “The 10 Influential Marketing Leaders to Watch in 2019”. These leaders have
been at the frontline of digital transformation by their novel approaches of communicating a product or services.

“
Internet led to digitalization;
Digitalization enhanced Marketing;
Through Marketing, businesses prevails.
“
Hitesh Dhamani
Driven with the perception, ‘In marketing, there aren’t markets - there are only buyers’, and embedded with the perfect blend
of above mentioned abilities, a marketer for life, Chandar Pattabhiram, the CMO of Coupa Software, is the cover feature
of our special issue. In his extensive career, he has held marketing leadership roles at startups like Cast Iron and Badgeville,
fast-growth public companies like Coupa and Marketo, and some of the largest and most successful global companies like
IBM. The remarkable contribution he brought to the marketing table at all of these companies is recognized by prominent
social platforms across the world including LinkedIn. In June 2017, Chandar was recognized by LinkedIn as one of the top 5
CMOs in the world to follow for thought-leadership in the digital marketing domain.
The CMO’s strategic and executional abilities go hand in hand with high levels of responsibility and accountability. George
Hughes, the CMO of The Star Entertainment Group is one such C-suite leader, who is featured as CMO of the month in
our issue. The depth of his experiences across direct and digital marketing, marketing communications, product development,
and corporate development have him positioned to help drive The Star’s brand in a highly competitive tourism and
entertainment industry.
Delve in to more such inspiring stories and lessons from many such significant marketing leaders in this issue and reap the
fruits of motivation. Also, make sure to scroll through the articles written by our in-house editorial team and CXO
standpoints of some of the leading industry experts to have a brief taste of the sector.
Happy reading!

Contents
36
Incentives Solutions
Rethinking the Products of
Today for a Better Tomorrow
46
Tech-Know Insights
What a tech CEO can
teach your business
about digital
58
Purpose Driven
The Importance of Purpose
Cover Story 10
Chandar
Pattabhiram
A Marketer for Life!

30
Industry Lessons
Role of Laboratory Information
Management System in
Manufacturing Sectors
Articles
42
The Art of Leading
Attributes of a
Good Leader
52
Imparting Wisdom
Successful Personality Traits
to Learn from Elon Musk
Leader of the Month
20
George Hughes
An Avid Marketer
Aiming to Improve
Customer Experience
April Critchfield
An Enthusiastic Marketing Leader
24
Jennifer Deutsch
Redefining Global
Marketing Approach
28

Micheline Nijmeh
Signifying Innovative
Marketing Approach
34
Mike Fox
A Marketing
Forerunner Who
Makes A Difference!
Ric Navarro
Setting Benchmarks in
Global Marketing and
Communications
38
44
Stephany Zoo
Creating Robust
Marketing Experience
50
Ulrike Lemke
Redefining Medical Innovation
56

Editor-in-Chief
Pooja M. Bansal
Managing Editor
Anish Miller
Executive Editor
Bhushan Kadam
Assistant Editors
Jenny Fernandes
Rohit Chaturvedi
Visualizer
David King
Art & Design Director
Amol Kamble
Associate Designer
Sanket Zirpe
Co-designer
Priyanka Rajage
Senior Sales Manager Co-designer
Passi D.
Business Development Manager
Peter Collins
Marketing Manager
John Matthew
Sales Executives
David, Kevin, Vishnu
Technical Head
Jacob Smile
Business Development Executives
Steve, Anish, Alan, Anup
Technical Specialist
Aditya
Digital Marketing Manager
Marry D'Souza
SME-SMO Executive
Prashant Chevale
Research Analyst
Andy Mitter
Circulation Manager
Database Management Technology Consultant
Robert Brown Stella Andrew David Stokes
Insights Success Media Tech LLC
555 Metro Place North, Suite 100,
Dublin, OH 43017, United States
Phone - (614)-602-1754
Email: info@insightssuccess.com
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sales@insightssuccess.com
April, 2019
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Reprint rights remain solely with Insights Success.

Cover Story
Chandar Pattabhiram
CMO
Coupa Software

Chandar
Pattabhiram
A Marketer for Life!
“
Be a Greek and a Roman: bring the
thoughtfulness and insightfulness of the
ancient Greeks while bringing the great
building skills of the ancient Romans to
create the ultimate marketing machine.

Remember the interview scene from Wolf of Wall
Street, in which Leonardo Dicaprio asks
candidates to sell him a pen? Now, what does
that scene stand for? The forty-five seconds scene
perfectly portrays the key attribute a marketer requires;
an ability to intrigue. In the field of marketing, evoking
the buying emotion of a customer by intriguing is the
absolute purpose. Whether you are selling a pen or a
billion-dollar cruise, you must know how to make the
process of selling interesting. However, impressing
personnel of different ages, interests, and emotions in a
single product is quite a challenge, isn’t it?
Comprehending the potential customer and need of the
hour paves its way here. Someone with these capabilities
can be a successful marketer. But becoming a world’s
leading marketer demands an unwavering and evolving
vision beyond all.
With the idea to exhibit the inspiring journey and
insights of some of the world’s most influential CMO’s,
Insights Success proudly presents an exclusive edition of
‘The 10 Influential Marketing Leaders to watch in 2019’
Driven with the perception, ‘In marketing, there aren’t
markets - there are only buyers’, and embedded with the
perfect blend of above mentioned abilities, a marketer
for life, Chandar Pattabhiram, CMO of Coupa
Software, is the cover feature of our special issue. In his
extensive career, he has held marketing leadership roles
at startups like Cast Iron and Badgeville, fast-growth
public companies like Coupa and Marketo, and some of
the largest and most successful global companies like
IBM. The remarkable contribution he brought to the
marketing table at all of these companies is recognized
by prominent social platforms across the world including
LinkedIn. In June 2017, Chandar was recognized by
LinkedIn as one of the top 5 CMOs in the world to
follow for thought-leadership in the digital marketing
domain.
First Little Steps
As Chandar coins it, an influential leader is a
combination of training and DNA -- it requires a natural
gene for their function, and a passion for it. Some people
are born wanting to be doctors, some lawyers, others
engineers. For Chandar, it was his interest in a range of
activities, from advertising, to public speaking, to
theater, that helped forge his path in marketing.
Early in his life, a family member shared an important
piece of advice that shaped his career in marketing:
“perception is reality.” He learned early in his career that
a CMO doesn’t have to - and probably shouldn’t - be the
best at everything but needs to be know how to bring
everything together. The job is like a conductor and his
orchestra. It is about bringing together the best
instrumentalists that are masters at their craft and
empowering them to excel and produce a harmonized
hymn that ultimately achieves your objectives together.
Hence, as a marketing leader he strives to spot and
cultivate tomorrow’s leaders by identifying the
candidates that reflect the core values and attributes that
make up to the team’s culture.
Being a team player, Chandar claims, “As a marketer,
you have to market your company and the product, of
course, but you also have to market your team’s work
effectively. You can do a lot of marketing activities and
look busy, but ultimately you want to focus on the ones
that move the needle and then market those wins
effectively.”
Enriching Experiences
Beneath the surface of almost every great success story
are stories of failures that have laid the foundation.
Chandar recalls an experience at Cast Iron Systems
where he learned about the challenges of not crystalizing
product market fit. Despite having a groundbreaking
product (the first appliance offering for integration), the
team of marketers did not find early traction because of
product market fit: the differentiating attribute for
marketing was simplicity, but the customer was Fortune
100 companies looking for comprehensiveness, not
simplicity. It turned out they were trying to sell an iPod
to a buyer looking for large professional-grade stereo
systems to run concerts.
Upon the inception of SaaS and Cloud markets during
this timeframe, the team quickly discerned that it is not
the Fortune 500 but the “Unfortunate 5000”- the

“
Never
confuse
effort with results.

unfortunately often ignored midmarket companies that
couldn’t handle the cost or complexity of the traditional
integration products - that truly yearned for its
differentiation and offered the best product-market fit.
By maniacally focusing on this segment, Chandar and
his team ensured its success. “You need to find product
market fit where you can target a market that yearns and
values the attributes you can offer,” Chandar asserts.
Pertaining to this experience, he learned to pick winners
like Coupa Software by making sure there is a large
market and real pressing need for the product(s), so it’s
not a “nice to have” but a “must have.”
Chandar states, “You have to fail fast and know how to
lose to win, and I’ve learned a lot from my failures as
well as my success to help shape my journey of today.”
Another key area of learning he witnessed was around
talent. He believes everyone has an individual brand that
you need to embrace. As a leader, you must live and
breathe working to cultivate those brands to help achieve
everyone achieve success for themselves, and the greater
good of the team.“True leadership comes when you
grasp that and when you wake up in the morning; it’s not
about powering your brand, but empowering theirs,”
says Chandar. The greatest tool you have as a leader is
how to intrinsically motivate by building individuals’
reputations and showcasing their success through
recognition. Thus, in organizations like Coupa today, the
core values are not just words but are intrinsic in the
foundational fabric of the company.
Listen, Learn and Enable
During his career, Chandar has had the privilege of
learning from some of the world’s best B2B marketers,
gaining the practical know how of the three pillars of
marketing (product, demand generation, and
corporate/brand marketing) and how to build an
integrated approach that combines these three elements
into the ultimate marketing machine.
For developing and articulating brand value, Chandar
suggests listening to customers and prospects to get their
perspective. He states,“Take a listen, learn, and enable
approach. It’s about developing and articulating your
brand by looking from the outside in.”
“Learn and understand the true differentiating attributes
that made you win or lose; and enable your team to
distill all this insight to design your swords and shields
messaging and approach that will help you articulate
your differentiation in an engaging way,” he adds.
A Combination of Emotion and Intellect
According to Chandar, marketing starts with an
understanding of who the buyer persona is and tailoring
a message that evokes emotion to influence the decision
making of that persona. This requires a combination of
Einstein and Spielberg.

“
Use
recognition as an
intrinsic motivator to
instill a sense of purpose
in your team while at
the same time
maniacally showcasing
their success.
The Einstein approach is the science of marketing,
grounded in quantitative and data-driven analysis of your
ideal customer that can be used to determine the “plays”
you are targeting. Only then can you fuel rinse and
repeat motions that can be driven across distinct product
offerings. This data-driven approach extends to a keen
understanding of the return on marketing investment
across all programs and making sure any available dollar
spent on marketing is done so efficiently to drive impact.
The Spielberg approach is getting a personal
understanding of your buyer to build and tell emotive
stories that resonate with them in a way that’s distinct
and meaningful. This practice allows you to build
awareness that is relevant, drive influence in their
decision making process, and engage them at every point
in their journey.
As the CMO at Coupa, Chandar encourages these
approaches to address three distinct personas the
company’s business spend management platform appeals
to -- procurement, finance and IT. There’s a unique
anatomy to every deal that Coupa does based on each
persona. It is grounded in a value message that resonates
with that persona and draws an emotional, meaningful
connection.
AI Driven Future
The future of marketing is promising and the
implementation of innovative technology is adding more
value to the purpose of marketing. Chandar is also

certain about these sustainable shifts, and believes there
are two AIs that will lead the marketing revolution.
Firstly, he notes, AI (artificial intelligence) and, more
importantly ML (machine learning), are starting to have
an exponential impact on the science of marketing - from
chat-bot interactions for sales/SDRs, to the ideal
customer profile determination, multi-channel
orchestration and the social pulse of customers. He
highlights how companies like Coupa are applying AI to
powerful community intelligence, resulting in AI-driven
insights and benchmarking to each customer based on
the collective intellect of the entire community of
customers.
He also sheds light on another AI, Authentic Interactions.
He indicates today is the day of brand authenticity.
Brand and culture are not distinct - they are one in the
same. Customers are looking to support brands that
adhere to the cultural values they hold dear and in order
to do that, every brand has to be built inside out - where
your company culture permeates to your customer
through the product you deliver and the way you market
it. He feels advocacy is an important part of “authentic
interactions.” Our peer-bound world that hangs on the
influence of advocates is impacting the decision making
of both B2B and B2C customers. Having a
programmatic focus on advocacy on both owned and
earned channels (which lend an air of authenticity to
your brand) is a key way for companies to drive
customer acquisition in the future.
Stairway to Marketing Heaven
At Coupa Marketing, Chandar is focused on the
company’s Stairway to Marketing Heaven - Awareness,
Acquisition and Advocacy. In the times ahead, he
envisions driving awareness and building deep emotional
connections with Coupa’s customer community;
fostering closer synergies with sales to successfully drive
acquisition and incremental business; and introducing
(and scaling) the right advocacy programs to build
customers for life who express passion about their
experience with the brand.
“There is nothing more thrilling than helping a company
achieve its greatest potential by telling the right emotive
stories to win deals and building a high-impact
marketing team. I thrive on achieving the perfect
harmony that enables you to establish an emotional
connection that wins the mind of your buyer for life. This
is much easier said than done, but central to being
influential.” And that’s Chandar Pattabhiram for you.
Want to be a CMO?
Having a disruptive product is not enough to achieve
global success - a team of skilled marketers who actually
display its uniqueness to customers is equally essential.
Be it door-to-door sellers or a digital marketing
executive, every marketer plays a crucial part in ensuring
the success of the product.
Being one of the world’s most influential CMOs,
Chandar has supported exceptional people who are now
CMOs in both public and private companies, and he
further aims to cultivate great CMOs of tomorrow
through nurturing insights. His blogs and interviews
have had a great impact on budding CMOs across world.
And surely they will be helpful to our readers too.
He particularly advises them to harness storytelling skills
as these will be one of the most important skills as a
CMO. He highlights understanding that emotion is the
precursor to a go-to-market motion. According to him,
ultimate success is about making that emotive
connection and winning the mind of the buyer.
Understand that connection and let that drive everything
you do across all aspects of marketing (product,
corporate, brand, and demand generation).
Chandar also motivates a data-driven mindset of “show
me the romi” (return on marketing investment). As what
gets measured gets funded.
Finally, he asks to harness the ability for contextual
communication. He exclaims, ‘Become a marketer for
marketing, and market your marketing as a brand.’
Learn to communicate the impact of marketing to
different constituents based on what they care about.
What your CFO cares about is the empirical impacts and
what the CRO cares about is how you are driving
pipeline sales effectiveness and win rates. Identify their
objectives, and align your communication to show how
you are driving progress against them.

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George Hughes
An Avid Marketer Aiming to Improve Customer Experience
Marketing is an intoxicating blend of art and
science. It involves understanding human
behaviour and creating or inviting a change in
the customer mindset to ensure superior results. In equal
measure it is dependent on measurement and analysis for
insights and learnings. The ultimate mix of left and right
sides of the brain. As customers become more selective,
even cynical, when making decisions on brands, products,
and services, marketing is key to driving consideration.
Excellence without the differentiation a targeted marketing
campaign can deliver will not necessarily turn the revenue
or market-share dial for a business. It is for these reasons
the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is considered crucial to
an organisation’s growth and success. The CMO’s strategic
and executional abilities go hand in hand with high levels of
responsibility and accountability. George Hughes, CMO of
The Star Entertainment Group is one such C-suite leader.
The depth of his experiences across direct and digital
marketing, marketing communications, product
development, and corporate development have him
positioned to help drive The Star’s brand in a highly
competitive tourism and entertainment industry. The Star’s
vision is to become the leading integrated resort company
in Australia. George Hughes has that at the forefront of his
daily planning.
Below are highlights from the interview conducted between
George Hughes and Insights Success:
Give a brief overview of your background as an
influential marketing leader.
I never expected to have a career in marketing. I started my
career in the early 2000s on a graduate program at one of
the largest banks in Ireland. Whilst on the graduate program
I qualified as a chartered accountant but quickly realised
that my passion (and some may say talents!) lay elsewhere.
Working as a commercial analyst on a range of growth and
cost containment programs instilled in me a deep
appreciation for the drivers of profitability; an essential
ingredient for modern day marketing. It wasn’t until years
later when I moved into a strategy role that I found my real
passion - customers and consumer behaviour.
Over the years I have had the great privilege of working for
some of the most recognisable brands in Australia and in
the U.K. I tend to gravitate towards challenging roles. The
commonality is usually the need to make instrumental
change whether that is setting up a business unit from
scratch, turning around the profitability of a loyalty
program, overhauling the marketing mix of a wellestablished
consumer brand, developing a suite of consumer
products or building a challenger brand in a mature market.
I’ve learned that fundamental change requires bravery,
calculated risk-taking, commerciality, focus and tenacity.
Success comes down to people; do you have the right team?
Is there diversity in thought and experience? Do they trust
each other? Can they collaborate for effect? Do they
understand and are they passionate about their customers?
How do you diversify your organization’s offerings to
appeal to the target audience?
In too many companies the marketing team operates as a
communications or campaign execution function.
Exceptional marketing requires a combination of direct
accountability for core functional areas (brand, creative,
channel, etc.) and an influence role in developing or
evolving the core value proposition of the business. The
Star Entertainment Group’s marketing team plays an
integral role in bringing the voice of the customer, the
competitive market and the brand to the table. Our
marketing team has a seat at the table in each of our
business units and is involved in the development stage of
everything from the design of a new bar or restaurant (such
as Chuuka, our first off property signature restaurant at
Jones Bay Wharf) through to the planning of The Queens
Wharf development in Brisbane. Great marketing teams are
customer obsessed. They know how to collaborate, engage
and influence their colleagues. They also know their
company’s point of difference and can communicate this to
their target audience in an engaging and compelling
manner.
What were the past experiences, achievements or lessons
that have shaped your journey?
I’ve had my fair share of “career defining moments”.
20| April 2019|

Concept image only
Sky Deck which will be a feature at Queen’s Wharf Brisbane
Foyer of The Darling hotel in Sydney
The Darling hotel at the Gold Coast
| April 2019
|21

Most of it is oriented around the role of leadership. One of
those was when I was in my mid 20’s and living in the UK;
I was given the opportunity to lead the sale of a financial
services business. I reported directly to a member of the
executive team for this project. The disposal process proved
to be a challenging one. I was young and had limited
experience in managing a program of work of this scale and
was operating in a high-pressure environment.
Thankfully, I worked for a very experienced leader who
was adept at getting the best out of me and the team. I’ve
gleaned from my mentor the importance of recruiting for
potential, attitude and ability to learn. In addition, she also
taught me the importance of fostering a positive work
culture where personal accountability and calculated risk
taking is encouraged.
What were the primal challenges and roadblocks you
faced during the initial phase of your career as a
marketing leader?
Like most people, I’ve had a few challenges to deal with in
my career. There have been times when a presentation has
tanked, a campaign hasn’t delivered to plan, or a business
case rejected. I’ve encountered poor leadership behavior
and inappropriate behavior. On reflection, those challenges
have been instrumental in my development. I’ve learned to
be more resilient, patient, planned and philosophical. I’ve
learned to speak up and to always stay true to my values.
It’s taken a (long) while but I’ve also learned not to be so
hard on myself when things don’t go to plan.
What inspires you to become an influential marketing
leader?
I am passionate about creating impact and tend to gravitate
towards challenging projects. I find inspiration everywhere
– from the small moments through to the big things in life.
It could be through music, art, a story, an advertising
campaign, a new business venture or a business
transformation. The common thread tends to be turning an
idea into reality. I am continually in awe of human
creativity, passion and resilience.
“ Surround yourself with
a motley crew who are
diverse in their background,
thinking and style.
“
The Star Gold Coast on the night of The Darling hotel opening
22| April 2019|

Where do you see yourself in the near future and
what are your future goals?
Over the next several years The Star and its partners
could invest as much as $6 billion into further
developing its tourism and entertainment
destinations across South East Queensland and
Sydney. It’s an exciting time to be part of this growth
agenda. To support the successful execution of these
projects, we have transformed our marketing
function. We have moved from a decentralised,
generalist marketing structure to a centralised
functional specialist model. I’m really pleased with
the quality of talent we have in our business,
augmented with recent external appointments. My
priority is to lead our team through this exciting
stage of development and deliver exceptional results
for our customers, internal business teams and
ultimately our shareholders.
Leader of the Month
What is your advice for budding and emerging
marketing leaders?
Jack Welsh summed it up well when he said “before
you are a leader, success is all about growing
yourself. When you are a leader, success is all about
growing others”. Invest your time and energy in
growing your skill set, seek out feedback even if it is
confronting and finally, never
stop learning.
George Hughes
CMO
The Star Entertainment Group
| April 2019
|23

April
Critchfield
An Enthusias c Marke ng Leader
“
Enlightening the new
edge of marke ng
approach.
“
April Critchfield
CMO
Zurixx
n an interview with Insights Success, the CMO, of Zurixx, April Critchfield, sheds light on the company’s cutting-edge
Isolutions that create the best financial education programs and shares her insights about the company’s core
competencies and its future. She has also broadly discussed about her overall journey as a marketing aspirant.
Considering these influential and inspirational aspects, Insights Success recognizes April Critchfield as one of the influential
marketing leaders to watch in 2019.
Below are highlights from the interview conducted between April and Insights Success:
Give a brief overview of your background as an influential marketing leader.
I think it’s very important to lead with action through example, and to encourage people to think for themselves and make
24| April 2019|

decisions. If you have expectations of your team members,
and you can’t keep your own deadlines, you can’t really
expect to have other people meet the same deadlines. For
example – being on time to work…. It’s a simple act, and
it’s something 99% of the time you have complete control
over. But, if you’re showing up to work late every day, then
you can’t expect to have your team members keep their
commitments to also show up to work on time. I also have
been one who appreciates knowing how my role and my
actions affect other people and departments. I like
explaining the big picture and how everyone’s role makes a
difference – I feel it is the best way to encourage forwardthinking
among your team members. When people come to
me and ask a question or come to me with a problem, I will
always answer like this: “no, and this is why” or “yes, and
this is why.” We work through things together and I think
helping team members come up with alternative solutions
to problems empowers them to be stronger employees, and
better thinkers.
What were the past experiences, achievements or lessons
that have shaped your journey?
I’ve been fortunate to have great leaders shape me into who
I am. I have worked in the corporate world for over 20
years and have been able to grow and take bits and pieces
of each experience, leadership style and challenge with me
along my journey. I have had influential leaders in every
workplace that I’ve been a part of, and I can look back on
every opportunity and say what I took away from it. I also
have a few moments that I don’t like to remember fondly…
the way I acted or behaved in certain situations, especially
early on in my career. Not knowing how to handle stressful
phone calls, meetings, or confrontation issues… but I
wouldn’t change it.
Because of those (not so great) moments, I learned some
pretty valuable things about myself. I know that it’s
important to breathe, take a minute to let things settle, and
to have patience, especially in stressful situations. Being
able to go with the flow and proactively work to make a
hard moment better, is a pretty amazing quality. I’m still
working on it.
How do you strategize your game plans to tackle
competition in the market?
I think being able to recognize growing trends and acting on
them is instrumental in tackling competition in the market.
There is always something you’re going to see or like that
you can take and make it your own, or improve upon. You
want your competition to think of you as an industry leader,
not the other way around. Don’t wait for your competition
to come up with the next big thing. Do it first. That being
said – it’s also very important to involve people in the
beginning stages of strategy. Utilize other people’s strengths
and allow collaboration. It will save a lot of time and
energy when you can feed off each other’s ideas, and work
through a game plan together.
What were the primal challenges and roadblocks you
faced during the initial phase of your career as a
marketing leader?
I didn’t have a lot of marketing specific jobs or experience,
so that alone was the biggest challenge…my background
was in communication, accounting and analysis, so being
able to combine that experience with the creativity of
marketing was an amazing opportunity. I learned quickly
about reaching out to others, managing vendors, trying new
things, testing things out, and continuing education was key
in the marketing world, it’s constantly changing. Marketing
is so versatile, and being able to speak to a certain audience,
and capture their attention through their response is a pretty
fulfilling feeling.
What inspires you to become an influential marketing
leader?
I don’t really see myself as “influential.” That’s kind of a
tough question…. But I have had a lot of influential people
guide and provide mentorship in my career. I strive to be
like them, and to hold the same qualities that I’ve admired
in other leaders. I have had people tell me that I’ve made a
difference for them. That they’ve learned something from
me, and it doesn’t matter what it is – if I have helped
someone become a better version of themselves in any way,
then I am happy with that!
Where do you see yourself in the near future and what
are your future goals?
I want to always be learning and always be growing. I have
a lot of things I still want to accomplish, like starting my
own business, and getting more involved in my community.
What is your advice for budding and emerging
marketing leaders?
Speak up! Remember, timing is everything. Make
connections, network with people. Do things that might be
out of your comfort zone. Do your research with the
company, bring up fresh new ideas, and if your idea has
already been brought up by someone else, and it didn’t
work for some reason, find out why. Was it the timing? Was
it the budget? Would it work now? Follow up and follow
through.
About the Leader
April Critchfield is the CMO at Zurixx, and a certified
Professional in Marketing with a demonstrated history of
working in the events services and live seminars industry.
She is a skilled marketing professional with a Bachelor’s of
Science Degree in Communication, Organization & Speech
from the University of Utah. April possesses the curiosity
and ambition towards marketing. Initially an accounting
background she enables her skillset in Negotiation,
Budgeting, Customer Service, Advertising, and
Event Management.
| April 2019
|25

“
— Jennifer Deutsch
CMO
Park Place Technologies
“
Jennifer
Deutsch
Redening Global
Marketing Approach
28| April 2019|

Asupportive and visionary
leader challenges the
traditional ways of doing
things, while making an organizational
impact well beyond their specific
department.
Jennifer Deutsch, Chief Marketing
Officer at Park Place Technologies, is
described in exactly these terms. In an
interview with Insights Success, she
shed light on her journey as an
influential marketing veteran,
discussing her background, overall
experiences and achievements along
with Park Place’s core competencies
and future.
Insights Success recognizes Jennifer
Deutsch as one of the influential
marketing leaders to watch in 2019.
Below are the highlights of the
interview conducted between Jennifer
and Insights Success:
How do you diversify your
organization’s offerings to appeal to
the target audience?
We have a robust product development
process that included several rounds of
testing. Additionally, we established a
Client Advisory Board that we engage
with 6 to 10 times per year. We share
our product road map with the CAB
and ask for customer pain points that
help us shape the global roadmap.
What were the past experiences,
achievements or lessons that have
shaped your journey?
My 25+ years on the client side,
working for companies like Nestle and
Marriott have provided me with
fantastic B2C experiences and
learnings focused on understanding the
customer path to purchase as well as
learning how to gain customer insights
and understand market opportunities
and how best to address these
opportunities. My 10 years of agency
experience have shaped the way that I
approach problem solving, message
development and creative
development.
| April 2019
How do you strategize your game
plans to tackle competition in the
market?
I work very closely with my global
marketing team to develop categoryleading
strategies and to identify
technology and tools that can give Park
Place Technologies an edge over the
competition. Park Place has 9 new
marketing operations tools that were
introduced in 2018. Finding and
identifying these tools was Job One,
training and launching the tools was
Job Two and integrating the tools has
been Job Three and will be on going.
The high-tech approach Park Place is
taking to marketing helps to win in the
marketplace.
What were the primal challenges
and roadblocks you faced during the
initial phase of your career as a
marketing leader?
I don’t see roadblocks. I view
‘obstacles’ as challenges and a form of
entertainment!
Where do you see yourself in the
near future and what are your future
goals?
I love working at Park Place. We are in
hyper-growth mode and being here has
been the most exciting period of my
career. I am working with the best team
I have ever partnered with and hope to
stay with Park Place until I retire!
What is your advice for budding and
emerging marketing leaders?
Listen, learn, work hard, take risks, be
a team player and think creatively.
About the Leader
Jennifer Deutsch is a veteran of the
marketing and brand development
space, with over three decades of
experience on both the in-house and
agency sides. As Chief Marketing
Officer of Park Place Technologies,
Jennifer leads the company’s global
marketing and communication teams,
where she is focused on reinforcing its
leadership in third-party data center
maintenance and support from a global
perspective. Jennifer has built a stellar
team of hand-selected marketers who
have overseen 11 acquisitions during
the past 20 months and have
introduced a revolutionary, awardwinning,
category-changing new
product called ParkView . She and
the team have launched new brand and
product campaigns that have driven
global brand awareness and captured
92% SOV in the category via an
innovative content strategy, in what is
today a growth-explosive category that
18 months ago was underdeveloped.
Jennifer is an advocate of mentorship
across all levels, from the classroom to
the boardroom. She is an innovative
role model within Park Place
Technologies, the broader technology
industry, her local and regional
community, and in her everyday life.
Not only does she raise the bar within
her organization, but she puts mile
markers in place for future leaders to
come. Her efforts go above and beyond
to ensure a bright future for women in
STEM, and her strengths in mentorship
of young employees, recruitment of
team members and engagement in the
local community. Jennifer is frequently
cited as a source in marketing trade
publications and podcasts, and
selflessly shares her decades of
experience with new and established
team members across the U.S., the UK,
LATAM and Asia. Her impact is
personal yet global, direct yet
company-wide. Additionally, her
philanthropic efforts further magnify
her selfless accomplishments within
the medical and arts communities.
Jennifer is a humanitarian first, a
pioneer second, and a role model.
|29

Role of
Laboratory
Management
System
in Manufacturing Sectors
Management
InformationSystem
Even if an organization offers an outstanding
series of creative products, it has to ensure that
the quality is up to the mark. Being
compassionate about quality management is quite
essential for a business venture to become a promising
manufacturer. Thus, quality is more likely to be a
necessity rather than a want. It do plays a salient role in
supply chain that has strengthened manufacturer’s belief
of implicating information systems especially in
laboratories for quality inspections on finished products
and goods.
Similar to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP),
Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS)
has brought a disruptive change in traditional methods of
supply-chain management. This technology acts as a
reporting tool which allows researchers to input and
store crucial data regarding the sample, such as schedule
records, test-sample tracks, and also sample’s
materialistic properties. Thus, it is quite obligatory for an
organization to implement an adequate information
system in an attempt to overrule all quality-related
issues. Also, it often utilizes barcode generation for
scanning in-process goods as well as finished products in
an attempt to consume less time.
Outlook on LIMS
Utilizing to its full-potential
LIMS operations customarily depend on the
manufacturer and its requirements. Yet, there is a
standard protocol on which the system mostly relies. It is
deliberately designed to monitor and function on the
various aspects of product quality management i.e.
sample management. It handles the detailed records of
each sample, and maintains accuracy in reducing the
possibilities of the information getting mixed up in labs.
LIMS maintains the record of each and every unit, from
a supplier to the researcher handling that sample. With
such systems, the information tracking gets quite easier
and could be fully automated, reducing the need for
laboratory administration.
Implementing LIMS for workflow management aids a
manufacturer to streamline the decision making process
in the laboratory. The self-oriented system can
automatically assign scientists regarding their tasks and
even suggests the type of instruments required as per
stated in the standard experiment module. Once the
testing is completed, the system identifies and supplies
30| April 2019|

Industry Lessons
the sample for the further process.
Besides, many LIMS automatically
cover ups various processes such as
maintenance, inventory management
and reporting. It is often useful for
the instruments like centrifuges
which generally face countless wear
and tear, leading to variations in the
readings. Such variations not only
affect data analysis auditing but also,
disrupt the calibration of the
instruments. The use of LIMS system
might vary from one organization to
another, as the requirement of most
of the industries is quite different.
| April 2019
|31

Equipment Calibration and Maintenance
No industry can afford a failure in the quality checks.
Thus, many organizations spend loads of monetary
assets over the laboratory maintenance and instruments
calibration. With the LIMS system, an organization can
surpass over unnecessary damages and
monetary-cuts in laboratory. Apart from that, LIMS
system must include maintenance records of the
instruments used in testing, in an attempt to perform
orderly preventive maintenance.
Due to the regular utilization, some instruments starts to
show distortion that further affect the tests results. In
case of depth micrometer, the instruction follows that it
may require calibration every month or after every 50
uses. A manufacturer can improvise LIMS system, by
including additional calibration instruction sheet which
can be utilized by maintenance department thereafter.
Brief on Functions commonly found in LIMS
Reporting: Irrespective of any category, every sector
requires a prompt method to process out the reports.
Report helps organizations to analyze data and make
further decisions based on it. From the ‘most used
instruments’ to ‘lab-processing time’, it include all the
required information flow from one unit to other.
Through implementing LIMS, organizations take a
follow up and process audit trails of received
information from such units. Yet, the level of difficulty
varies with reports, as some may require higher custom
coding to run while other export on Adobe PDF and MS-
Word.
EMR/EHR: Electronic Health Records is separate
software, but some LIMSs includes EHR feature built-in
mostly including patient reception queries and billing
processes. Organizations mainly prefer on utilizing an
all-encompassing system instead of software with
singular capability. Integrating LIMS with such functions
facilitate clinics with huge benefits while monitoring and
maintaining a laboratory. It manages every bit of aspects
such as data tracking over time, continuity in healthcare,
reduced costs, gamut information, technology of
prescriptions and result orientation.
Workflow Management: Automate workflows have often
become a trail in businesses due to its ability to maintain
a steady flow between various processes without any
extra human efforts. Instead of focusing more on
reducing work, it saves time taken for tasking
complicated tasks. Hiring or Installing LIMS aids one to
codify existing methods and procedures and could
delegate the decision-making to the software. Say, if
installed, it can take over on assigning jobs to scientists
and can also pick out instruments, as per requirement. It
only requires a strong command structure through which
LIMS can operate much deliberately.
ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning software attains
potential to manage inventory and like EHR, it is also
self-processing software. Collaboration or say,
integrating ERP into LIMSs is more favorable due to its
high allowance in monitoring alerts over low-supplies,
auto-calculation of storage capacity and location
management. Through implementing LIMSs, one can
surpass issues related to data transcription errors,
turnaround time, WIP status, and statistical analysis and
COA generation.
Aftermath of LIMS-integration in laboratories has been
witnessed to be more efficient and been claimed as a
reliable system by various manufacturers. Though the
digital transformation has never failed to surprise the
markets with its potential to bring out disruption, its
many fruitful benefits are yet to be explored. One of
such—mobile-friendly LIMS, is predicted to shift the
traditional laboratories by delivering more compact
experience to the manufacturers which sooner or later
going to be trail among the lab-owners and
manufacturers. Currently, it is focusing on improving
environmental, petrochemical, health-care,
bio-technology companies and R&D institutes.
32| April 2019|

Micheline
Nijmeh
Signifying Innovative
Marketing Approach
Micheline Nijmeh
Chief Marketing Officer
Zscaler, Inc.
In an interview with Insights Success, the Chief
Marketing Officer of Zscaler, Inc. Micheline Nijmeh
sheds light on her journey as an influential marketing
aspirant. She has also broadly discussed her background as
a marketer, overall experiences and achievements along
with the company’s core competencies and its future.
Considering these influential and inspirational aspects,
Insights Success recognizes Micheline Nijmeh as one of the
influential marketing leaders to watch in 2019.
Below are the highlights of the interview conducted
between Micheline and Insights Success:
Give a brief overview of your background as an
influential marketing leader.
I have been in the tech industry for more than 20 years. I
have been lucky to have worked in start-ups and large
enterprises, taken companies public (and private), as well as
been part of large growing organizations such as Salesforce.
How do you diversify your organization’s offerings to
appeal to the target audience?
As a marketer, it’s important to understand your buyer and
their buying journey. Diversification of your offering is an
important strategy, especially if you have penetrated the
market. Your audience is always looking for ways to
optimize their organization and processes while saving
costs. Therefore, adjacent markets that compliment your
existing solutions not only help with providing your
customers with new offerings but, also reach new potential
customers.
What were the past experiences, achievements or lessons
that have shaped your journey?
I have been fortunate to work for incredible managers. They
have always provided me with opportunities to learn and
grow. Every opportunity or role I have taken, even ones that
I may not have thoroughly enjoyed, has helped me learn
and grow to where I am today — specifically, in demand
34| April 2019|

generation. I recall being asked to be
part of a demand gen team early in my
career. I had not had the experience nor
the interest, at the time. However, if it
were not for that opportunity, I would
not be running a marketing
organization at a public company
today.
How do you strategize your game
plans to tackle competition in the
market?
First, you have to know your
competition inside and out. Understand
their marketing and selling tactics just
as much as their technology, and then
put together a product and marketing
SWOT analysis. Make sure your value
proposition is differentiated and ensure
your marketing (messaging, creative,
tactics) stands out above them. Also, be
sure your sales team is enabled and can
articulate your message concisely, as
well as be able to handle any
“landmines” from the competitors.
Sales and Marketing need to have a
unified strategy and approach.
cross-regional collaboration. As noted
by Ken Blanchard, “None of us is as
smart as all of us.” Therefore, being
able to see an organization work
together to build great marketing
programs and grow together is
inspiring.
Where do you see yourself in the
near future and what are your future
goals?
I see myself continuing to lead global
organizations whether it’s in marketing
or within a product business unit.
About the Leader
Micheline Nijmeh is the Chief
Marketing Officer at Zscaler, Inc. and
mainly known for her innovative and
proven marketing approach who
possesses a balance of strategic
thinking, data-driven decision making
with proven results. She has also
recognized for transforming marketing
programs that creates demand, delivers
customer value, and increases
company revenues.
Micheline have extensive experience in
marketing to the enterprise with solid
What were the primal challenges
and roadblocks you faced during the
initial phase of your career as a
marketing leader?
It’s been amazing to see the evolution
of Marketing from being known as an
event and advertising organization to a
revenue/pipeline generating, valued
organization. The ability to show the
real benefit of Marketing amongst my
executive peers was difficult when
I didn’t have the data to support it.
Therefore, influencing company
strategy was not always easy. With the
onset of new marketing tools, this now
has changed, and it’s inspiring to see
Marketing “at the table,” helping shape
strategy.
What inspires you to become an
influential marketing leader?
The people! I love creating and
building strategies and being able to do
that alongside my team inspires me to
come into work every day. I enjoy
seeing how team members can grow
within their career. As a leader of a
global organization, I always focus on
| April 2019
Talent wins games, but teamwork
and intelligence wins championships.
What is your advice for budding and
emerging marketing leaders?
Besides executing on your strategies,
I always advise emerging leaders to
identify what their personal brand is
and then live up to it and make it
known within your company. People
will remember what you are good at
and may offer you additional
opportunities that fit your strength.
My second advice is sometimes lateral
career moves can be a great stepping
stone to large upward moves. The more
you learn and experience, the more
value you can provide at your next
opportunity.
—Micheline Nijmeh
Chief Marketing Ofcer
Zscaler, Inc.
accomplishments in all aspects of
global marketing, all delivered with
creativity and focused on execution
and results. She has also been
recognized for her unique blend of
driving change and of building brand
and demand generation strategies,
creating successful lead generation and
adoption programs, and the ability to
communicate effectively,
complemented by a “go get ’em”
attitude.
|35

Rethinking
the Products of Today
for a Better Tomorrow
Celia Pool
Co-Founder
DAME
36| April 2019|

Incentives Solutions
The world is finally waking up to
the single-use plastic crisis.
Over the last 10 years we have
created more plastic than the whole of
the last century combined. Half of the
plastic we create is used just once, and
then thrown away, taking 500 years to
decompose. By 2050, the oceans are
predicted to contain more plastic than
fish. The plastic crisis is now too big
for recycling alone to fix.
Global governments, businesses and
consumers need to collaborate quickly
to make impactful change before it’s
too late. However, change is difficult
when environmentally damaging habits
have become so entrenched and often
appear more financially appealing.
Technology is helping in this fight.
Reusable water bottles are now
widespread, and apps that help you
locate drinking water refill stations are
now emerging. At the same time,
reusable coffee cup technology is
addressing the half a trillion disposable
coffee cups discarded every year. Such
items are gaining increasing social
currency with consumers, who are
keen to display them as markers of
their environmental conscience. This
revolution is encouraging, but what
about the products that people aren’t so
willing to talk about?
100 billion menstrual products are
thrown away globally every year.
These are single-use, mostly made of
plastic and cannot be recycled. You can
choose not to have a coffee, you cannot
choose not to have a period. Reusable
options (e.g. menstrual cups, cloth
pads) have been on the market for
decades, yet the adoption rate has been
slow. The primary barrier to entry is
the fear of habit change.
So how do we bring about a
revolution? The answer is keep it
simple. And take time to consider
consumer psychology. As humans, we
abhor change. We are creatures drawn
towards the comfort of the known. By
keeping habit change to a minimum,
consumers are much more likely to
adopt a new idea.
This was our philosophy at DAME
when we created the world’s first
reusable tampon applicator. We
ensured the design was familiar and
intuitive, so women did not have to
compromise on their convenient,
established rituals. We knew that
hygiene could be a significant barrier
to entry, so we worked with leading
micro-biologists and medical engineers
and used the best medical grade, antimicrobial
materials on the market. As a
result, the consumer only must rinse
the applicator in cold water after use to
keep it clean. Simple steps, minimal
habit change.
However, it is challenging to tackle an
issue that has such little awareness.
Menstruation has historically been
shrouded in shame, fear and discretion.
It is not a topic openly talked about.
This is a problem with feminine care as
a whole: it is frequently dismissed and
the women trying to address it are
critically underfunded. In 2017 female
founders got 2% of the $85 billion VC
investment pot. About 8% of partners
at the top British VC firms are women.
According to Harvard Business
Review, stereotypes about female
entrepreneurs persist: women are
overly cautious, shy away from
growth, have insufficient resources and
consequently their ventures
underperform. Yet there is no
performance data to support these
stereotypes.
How are products used by women
supposed to change in line with human
and environmental needs, when they
aren’t given appropriate recognition or
have women involved in all stages of
the process? Women need to be given
more of a voice if we are to create
meaningful change. The world of AI is
already highlighting the need to
diverse away from male, white,
Western coders if we are to avoid
unconscious bias in the robots of
tomorrow. Amazon had to abandon an
AI recruitment tool that was
discriminating against women, instead
favoring prospects who mirrored
Amazon’s existing male engineer
workforce. At DAME women have
been involved in every stage of the
journey, not as a token gesture but as
an absolute necessity.
However, our overarching business
strategy goes beyond issues of
inclusivity to incorporate a wider
mission. DAME was founded on the
belief that business can be used as a
force for good. We use this core value
to guide every decision we make in the
business, bringing great clarity to our
route forward. By communicating our
genuine and authentic commitment to
this mission, we hope that our message
will quickly be picked up by those
eager to join a movement for change.
To date, we have seen this happen not
only with our consumers and the press,
but with employees. People are
increasingly drawn to companies doing
good. 75% of millennials would take a
pay cut to work at a socially
responsible company.
All this strengthens our resolve at
DAME to continue to tackle critical
problems that are not openly
acknowledged, that are significantly
underfunded, and that have historically
been controlled by giant monopolies.
Today we are focusing on menstrual
products, but our vision is to
revolutionize the entire bathroom.
These are big mountains, but having
strong guiding principles makes the
navigation much easier.”
-Words by Celia Pool
Co-Founder of DAME
For more information visit
wearedame.co
| April 2019
|37

In an interview with Insights Success,
the CMO of Culture Trip, Mike Fox,
sheds light on the company’s cuttingedge
solutions which are boosting the
startup operating in travel, media and
entertainment. Here he shares the
company’s core competencies and his
overall journey as a unique marketing
leader. Considering these influential and
inspirational aspects, Insights Success
recognizes Mike Fox as one of the
influential marketing leaders to watch in
2019.
Below are highlights from the interview
conducted between Mike and Insights
Success:
Give a brief overview of your
background as an influential marketing
leader.
I’ve built and managed both iconic and
new brands from Sony, CNN, and Snapple
to Facebook and my current role at Culture
Trip. One of the early architects of social
marketing through the work done at
Facebook, I’ve become passionate about
building and scaling startups through a
blend of brand, growth, and product
marketing. I was on the marketing, sales
and monetization team at Facebook and the
big question was how we were going to
make money on all these users. That
remains a key question for all marketers. At
Culture Trip, I have worked to build a
hard-hitting marketing team for an
emerging brand, starting from scratch in
2018. The team now comprises leaders
from tech and the travel industry.
38| April 2019|

How do you diversify your
organization’s offerings to appeal to
the target audience?
As primarily an online/mobile brand,
our marketing is built to blend offline
and online experiences for the
audience to discover or participate in.
Since our company is about getting
people to travel and experience
cultures around the world, diversifying
across both spaces leads to inspiration
and ultimately action.
What were the past experiences,
achievements or lessons that have
shaped your journey?
Work as a brand planner at ad agencies
gave me sharp consumer focus and the
ability to find a key insight to drive the
work. Work as Director of Marketing
at Snapple gave me the experience of
managing a business. Work at CNN
immersed me in cross-platform
marketing and content marketing.
Facebook gave me the passion to work
for startups, an expertise in scaling
businesses, and understanding of how
to build/manage high-performing
teams. In particular Facebook gave me
the experience to manage high growth
and to build marketing strategies that
can scale and work internationally.
Culture Trip is giving me the
opportunity to build a new brand in the
minds of consumers as we are a travel
and media company with relatively
low brand recognition but huge
potential in English speaking markets
and globally.
How do you strategize your game
plans to tackle competition in the
market?
The principle that matters most is to
create a “difference that makes a
difference.” If your strategy does not
accomplish this, it will not be
meaningful or useful to consumers.
What were the primal challenges
and roadblocks you faced during the
initial phase of your career as a
marketing leader?
The challenge was to figure out how to
solve problems without being within a
traditional training program. For
example, being in brand management
at P&G is an amazing training ground,
it creates incredible skills and
experience. I was trying to figure it out
as I went and at times could feel like I
was “punching in the dark.” Although,
that challenge has helped me
enormously later on my career as it
gave me a very strong muscle for
solving ambiguous problems. Often
marketing can be the forcing function
for the other teams and also the most
visible connector that gives a company
internal coherence and momentum.
That has been almost invaluable in the
startup world.
What inspires you to become an
influential marketing leader?
I love marketing. I’m a complete nerd
about it. So, the inspiration at this point
comes from building teams that build
brands and help great talent reach their
potential.
Where do you see yourself in the
near future and what are your future
goals?
I see myself bringing Culture Trip to a
global audience and disrupting the
travel-media-tech space that we sit in
the middle of. My goal is to create a
new category of business from the
work we do here.
What is the future of technology and
marketing?
My answer is that right now the most
interesting thing is augmented reality.
People talk about virtual reality but for
Culture Trip we really want people to
do things in the real world, to book and
to travel, and augmented reality is how
eventually you can seamlessly
integrate online and offline at the same
time. If you can imagine someone
walking down the street, and looking
over at a building and augmented
reality is able to tell them the history of
the building. All that is related back to
the content and the data that they are
interacting with. That is going to
become a major enhancement and a
major opportunity for marketers -
presenting a more seamless and much
more interesting way to communicate
with consumers and users.
About the Leader
Mike Fox is the CMO at Culture Trip,
a travel, media and technology
company with offices in New York,
London, and Tel Aviv. He has also
worked as Senior Level Marketing
Executive with over 20 years’
experience in both consumer and
business-to-business markets. In
Mike’s early career he started working
at advertising agencies, before moving
client-side to Sony Electronics and
Snapple Beverages. Next he joined
CNN’s Strategic Integration Group,
where he created multi-media content
platforms for some of the world’s
largest brands. Next he worked in
CNN’s Strategic Integration Group
before, in 2009, he joined Facebook’s
monetization team and helped build the
teams that grew Facebook’s annual
advertising business to $12 Billion in
five years. Since leaving Facebook in
2014, Mike has worked as CMO and
CRO on early stage startups before
joining Culture Trip.
| April 2019
|39

Attributes
of a Good
Leader
42| April 2019|

The Art of Leading
Leadership is about using the
power of a position to
empower a group of people in
order to attain a common goal. A
leader’s task is to implement the plans
that usually look good on paper,
through a delegated team, in a specific
time with an ongoing motion. She/he
may use the traditional method or may
think out of the box. It depends on the
leader as how to do it; the ultimate
motive is to get the job done.
Although, each and every individual
has a different approach on leadership,
some might say it is about setting
examples, some might say it is about
sharing the authority; what matters is,
taking the right decision when it is
most needed.
Leadership varies from one
organization to another. An
organization is a dynamic body and
creates new probabilities every now
and then. And with new probabilities,
come new challenges.
Although, it is impossible to overcome
every challenge, the business
environment has adopted certain
leadership styles for the efficiency of
business:
The Participative Leader
Participative Leadership is the process
of sharing authority with the work
force in order to get optimum
efficiency. The team, after getting
access to certain powers, works
responsibly to accomplish the goals set
by its leader. The shared leadership
also helps in case of any requirement
of change, as the employees adapt
quickly in such environment.
Incidentally, this style of leadership fits
best in a scenario when there is a
limitation of time.
The Transformational Leader
A transformational leader inspires the
team through effective communication
and an intellectual environment.
However, these individuals require
more detail oriented managers to
successfully implement their strategies.
Transformational Leadership is
considered among the most effective
employees of the organization. One of
the examples of this type of leadership
is when a leader is assigned on a higher
level for effective environment.
The Transactional leader
The transactional leadership, as the
name suggests, enables the leader to
incentivize the team corresponding to
their performance. The team gets
rewarded when it attains the goals and
the Leader has the power to review the
results and act accordingly when the
team fails to do the same. The goals
and the strategy to attain them are
decided by the leader and the team
itself.
The Situational leader
Situational leadership is a theory that
the best leader will adapt to the
required leadership style according to
need of the hour. A Situational leader
may adopt democratic style while
discussion business with senior
executive, but may switch to
transactional at the time of team
review. However every individual has
a natural style of leadership and it may
be difficult to switch roles at a certain
point of time.
Qualities of a good leader
There is an old proverb that says,
“Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed
Him for a Day. Teach a Man to Fish,
and You Feed Him for a Lifetime.” So
is the case with leadership. One of the
basic qualities of a Leader is to pass on
the leadership skills.
Following are some of the qualities of
a good leader:
Ÿ Communication Skills
Communication is the basic
requirement for efficiency in a
business. As the level of hierarchy
elevates, the requirement of
communication grows. Especially,
when it comes to leadership, there is no
scope for lack of communication. A
Leader who fails to develop this skill is
looked up as incompetent, because it is
his job to send the message loud and
clear. Although, it is also important to
listen as it is an integral part of
communication.
Ÿ Integrity
C.S. Lewis said, “Integrity is doing the
right thing, even when no one is
watching.” Be it giving credit to one of
the team members or be it admitting a
mistake, a leader wears integrity as a
badge of honor. They do what is right,
no matter what.
Ÿ Empowerment
As mentioned earlier, Leadership is
about using the power of one’s position
to empower a group of people in order
to attain a common goal. A good leader
shares his authority with the team in
order to get the job done. By doing
this, he shows confidence in the team
and obliged by the gesture, the team
works with full enthusiasm to
accomplish the goal.
Ÿ Decision making
There is risk in decision to making.
Great leaders take great decisions
when the stake is high and it is the
success of those decisions that make
them great. To add up, a good leader
takes right decision at the right time.
In conclusion, a good leader can be
defined by the dynamics of his style in
leadership, the values that he brings to
the organization, the methods he uses
to make the best of the resources, and
the kind of decision he makes in the
given situations. At the end it is about
the attitude of an individual to bring
the change for good.
| April 2019
|43

Ric Navarro
Setting Benchmarks in Global
Marketing and Communications
degree. This job bestowed him with an opportunity to work
on communications and media for the Office of The Prime
Minister. Thereafter, he went on exploring and honing his
marketing and communications skills in B2B and B2C roles
across diverse industries including FMCG, mining,
infrastructure, sporting and professional services.
Ric Navarro
Global Director of Marketing &
Communications
A Tetra Tech Company
Creating a benchmark for
others is often a
responsibility bestowed
upon a leader. In order to be worthy
of being an influential personality, a
true leader adapts to various strategies,
further implementing them for the
betterment of an organization. Although
global professional services are
flourishing in every dimension, the
requirement of such personalities has
become a need rather than a want. To dwell
on the top of the industry, an organization
requires a good marketing strategy which
needs to be exceptionally executed by a
prolific marketing leader. Ric Navarro is one
such leader, whose marketing tactics have
helped his organization Norman Disney &
Young, A Tetra Tech Company, to reach great
heights. Ric’s creation of the Four Cs’: Customers;
Content; Channels; Consistency methodology, as
outlined in his book, Marketing with Purpose: a C-
Suite guide to being truly customer-centric, has
created a huge impact on the top and bottom line
performance of his organization, resulting in a number
of personal global awards and accolades.
Emergence of a Leader
Prior joining to one of the Australia’s largest newspapers,
The Age, Ric graduated from university with a journalism
This diversity of sectors – and the nature of the roles
themselves – required innovation and agility to lead,
develop and manage the marketing and communications
remit. Thus, Ric hopes for more number of journalists,
writers and content creators to move into marketing
leadership roles. After all, not all communications is
marketing, but all marketing is communications.
A Broader Sense of Marketing
At Norman Disney & Young, Ric and his team believes in
following a fundamental step that many brands fail to
embrace effectively which is to comprehend the
requirements of the target audiences and to meet – and
where possible, exceed – customer expectations
accordingly.
To achieve this requires comprehensive and deep-dive
research to articulate a compelling and targeted Customer
Value Proposition (CVP). But to create a meaningful CVP,
an organization needs to find out the language that its
customers’ use to describe the product and how they benefit
from it. Ric says the way many brands speak about their
product or service can often differ from how customers
describe it—therefore, comprehensive customer research is
vital.
As Ric outlines in his book, Marketing with Purpose, a
CVP is a clear statement that encapsulates three key
criteria:
Ÿ
Ÿ
Ÿ
Relevancy: explains how your product or service
improves a specific customers’ life or solves their
problems
Value: delivers quantifiable concrete benefits
Differentiation: shows your ideal customer why they
should buy from you and not from the competition.
44| April 2019|

“
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not
everything that can be counted counts.
“
Imposing Better Marketing Strategies
Marketers need to position themselves as vital cogs the
organizational hierarchy and in brand building. And by this,
Ric means the bottom line.
“It’s important to keep your business and brand strategy at
the heart of everything – this enables the business to
understand why it’s so critical,” said Ric Navarro.
Ric is always careful to frame marketing activity in terms of
how it’s helping enable the business, and how it’s a
strategic driver of growth for the business.
If the most senior marketer goes into a boardroom and starts
talking about soft measures and doesn’t connect the dots to
what the pressures are on a board, then they’re not going to
have a very productive conversation.
But if marketers really think about where the two meet, that
is, where the customers’ do needs meet and where the
company does needs meet, they can transform the
conversation. Ric says this is the sweet spot where senior
marketers can have a really fruitful conversation around
how marketing can drive profitable growth for the business.
Being Customer-Centric
According to Ric, keeping an eye on the competition is
beneficial but cautions against obsessing over the
competition. From his experience, Ric has seen too much
energy and focus on the competition draining creative and
strategic clarity from the core activity of marketing teams.
Rather, the focus must be – first, foremost and always – on
the customer: What’s their experience with your brand like?
Are you ensuring all customer touchpoints are seamless and
being constantly refined? What’s your average response
time to any customer issues?
According to his experience, valuable competitor insights
come organically through Voice of Customer programs,
social listening tools, and social media. Marketing leaders
should have in place robust martech solutions that focus on
doing just as much listening as they do publicizing.
“Customers will be the first to point out competitor
comparisons – they remain your north star to brand
differentiation,” said Ric Navarro.
Catching-up with the volatility
Ric’s says everyone wants to ‘go digital’ and believes that
too many senior leaders are obsessed about digital
technology as the panacea to solve or improve marketing
strategies and customer retention.
For some, digital is solely about the technology, while
others think digitization is a new way of engaging with
customers. Meanwhile some approach digital reform to
represent an entirely new way of undertaking their internal
business processes. None of these definitions are incorrect.
But such diverse perspectives repeatedly trip up C-Suite
and leadership teams as they reflect a lack of alignment and
common vision towards the brand. This often results in
piecemeal initiatives or misguided efforts that lead to
missed opportunities, under-performance, incomplete
solutions, or false starts.
“Not so long ago, digital transformation occurred in small
pockets of a brand, perhaps with a team doing cool
incubator projects that might percolate to the top. Today,
it’s happening in every direction. This has a major impact
on how quickly brands – and their marketing teams – need
to adapt culturally and organizationally in order to be
customer obsessed,” said Ric.
Ric knows that a successful orientation towards a digital
experience requires significant transformation across an
organization. He says references to ‘seamless digital
experience’ should always infer ‘better customer
experience’. He specifically understands that marketing and
business leaders simply don’t have the resources to spend
days reading 200-page reports for each new piece of
marketing technology. Instead, they require synthesizing the
information by asking one key question: ‘how will this
technology enhance our customer obsession strategies?’
Ric holds a strong insight over the fundamentals of digital
transformation and provides the following insights:
Quite simply, I merge the left-and right brain discussion
that surrounds digital strategy and break down the
fundamentals of digital transformation into three key
elements:
Ÿ The in-house tools, tech, and analytics to guide
customer obsession strategy and actions,
Ÿ The methods and means by which to reach and interact
Ÿ
with customers,
The digital environment where your customers engage
with your brand.
These are my three fundamentals that I apply in the
development of a fully formed digital customer
experience solution.
| April 2019
|45

About the Author
Pam Bateson is an expert coach and
mentor in business, training others to
Masters level qualifications and
supervising coaches. She has worked
within the healthcare, retail, hotels,
construction, media, agencies, education
and public sector. She specialises in
Coaching, Mentoring, Employee
Engagement, Change Management,
Learning and Development and
Organisational Design. She has worked
with all levels in organisations from
graduates to the CEO. She has
designed change programmes that
connect projects, outcomes, training and
coaching. The performance outcomes
have been outstanding. She is CEO
and Co-founder at Thrive Partners.
46| April 2019|

Tech-Know Insights
Pam Bateson
CEO & Co-founder
Thrive Partners
am Bateson set up Thrive
PPartners, an on-demand
coaching company, three
years ago. In this article, she
shares her point of view on how
important humans are in a more
digital world, what she’s learned
as a tech CEO, and what this
means when you’re looking to
use tech in a way that’s both
disruptive and works for
customers.
| April 2019
|47

In October 2015, I gave up a successful
career as a management consultant and
coach to set up Thrive Partners. Lots of
people thought I was crazy. I was
approaching 50, with two children still
at home. But for the decade running up
to that decision, I’d been thinking
about a better way to deliver coaching
– supported by digital, to share more
widely the coaching tools I’d used to
help clients for many years.
This was the business I set out to build
three years ago. Today, we’re working
with 25 clients on five continents –
delivering our own brand of
on-demand coaching, backed with
insights for the whole business. The
learning curve has been steep –
particularly for someone who, by their
own confession, didn’t have a lot of
experience in learning technology. So
here, I wanted to share some of the
things we’ve learned – and what it
might mean for your business.
Dream big
I didn’t really set out to build a
business that would be considered
disruptive, but my background as a
lean engineer and coach did mean that
we ripped up the rulebook when it
came to the coaching industry. We
scrapped the idea that you needed to
meet face to face, and that sessions had
to last an hour, or even two hours. And
we made it a lot easier for people to
access a coach to answer the questions
they had there and then – increasing
access so people could chat to an
expert within an hour.
Working with my co-founder, we then
rebuilt the industry by asking the
biggest questions we could imaging.
What if we could make coaching
available to whole organisations? What
if we could get listening as valued as
speaking? And what if we could help
organisations learn as quickly as
individuals?
I found these questions irresistible:
I wanted to do for coaching what Uber
had done for getting a taxi, Netflix had
done for home entertainment, and
Tinder had done for dating. It’s these
big dreams that have galvanised our
success in the last few years – and
which has set us in the right direction
for the future.
Build for modern users
Despite big dreams, we’ve also made
our fair share of mistakes! A lot of
them mistakes happened when we took
our attention away from our end
customers. It sounds obvious to see it
there on the page. But it can be easy to
lose sight of the customers that matter
most, especially when, as a tech CEO,
sometime we get preoccupied with a
shiny piece of new technology.
So, what to consider first when it
comes to users? The main thing to bear
in mind is that they expect experiences
that are easy and fast to access – a shift
brought about by what we call the
‘Amazon Prime Mindset.’ In this era,
clunky user experiences reduce the
chances of uptake of services. In short,
if your technology can’t match or
exceed the quality of digital experience
people get in their everyday lives, then
you’ll need to go back to the drawing
board.
Create wins for the many
So, if users come first – who else can
we harness the power of technology
for?
Our answer? Everyone else in the
system.
Early on in the development of our
MyThrive platform, we realised that
delivering digitally would enable us to
do more than just scale and facilitate
coaching in global organisations; it
would also mean we could spot trends
and patterns within communities of
users, in organisations or society at
large. Just as carefully listening has a
powerful and transformative role in
one-to-one coaching conversations,
carefully listening to and analysing
anonymised version of the
conversations we host has a powerful
and transformative role within whole
organisations.
The whole-system insights we
produced has helped to make sales
processes smoother, improved
communications and created more
opportunities for people to learn.
Keep it human
With suicide being the biggest killer of
men under 45, loneliness sweeping
through developed economies in
epidemic proportions and a third of all
young people suffering from anxiety,
I strongly believe that we have a duty
to keep talking to each other as a
society.
We believe that keeping the art of
conversation alive in this digital age is
essential; only humans can master
creativity, empathy, humour and
imagination in a way that’s compelling.
Information is everywhere, so we’re
using technology differently – to offer
real human experiences at scale, at any
time of the day, whenever our clients
need a conversation, for everything
you can’t Google.
And what of the future? Curiously,
even the structures of artificial
intelligence and machine learning look
set to mimic human patterns. It’s still
early days, but leaders in this space
talk of ‘deep learning’ with AI – by
layering up different tools that connect
in the same way as our brain’s neural
networks.
And so, the next three years?
My recent experiences have led us to
ask even bigger questions than we did
to begin with – which I suspect will
lead to our next irresistible set of
adventures! What if we could
transform learning management
systems into learning ecosystems?
What if any community of learners
could connect with any community of
teachers? And what if a better
understanding of outcomes from
learning could help both individuals,
organisations and society to thrive?
I for one believe there are exciting
times ahead.
48| April 2019|

‘‘
There is no greater skill
than learning to ask.
Learn to ask for help.
Learn to ask the right
questions. Learn to ask
for more.
‘‘
—Stephany Zoo
Head of Marketing
BitPesa
50| April 2019|

Stephany Zoo
Creating Robust Marketing Experience
In an Interview with Insights Success, Stephany Zoo,
Head of Marketing, Branding, and Communications at
BitPesa, shares about her journey and contribution
through BitPesa. BitPesa is a digital foreign exchange and
payment platform for frontier markets. Stephany is
obsessed with making things happen. She is a brand builder,
an aggressive project manager and a passionate network
architect.
Below are the highlights of the interview between Stephany
Zoo and Insights Success.
How do you diversify your organization’s offerings to
appeal to the target audience?
One of the reasons that BitPesa is one of the few truly Pan-
African companies is because we don’t think about it from
a product standpoint— we think about it from the customer
standpoint. How do we look at macroeconomic trends and
greater financial landscapes to create problems that address
B2B financial inclusion? It’s not about building a product
because we think it’s appropriate. Instead, it’s about
understanding the root causes of a challenge and building
from the ground up.
What were the past experiences, achievements or lessons
that have shaped your journey?
Living across 3 continents and 6 countries, I’ve been able to
really immerse myself in markets, even when they are not
my own. I really enjoy the process of market research, of
networking and feeling your way around a demographic.
Since BitPesa operates across 10 African countries, it’s
constantly a challenge to adapt ourselves into each country
and each customer segment. Within this role, I have had the
opportunity to explore each country we expand into
directly.
How do you strategize your game plans to tackle
competition in the market?
I don’t know if I really think about outmaneuvering the
competition, because then even when you win, you are only
one step before your competition. However, if you come
from a point of inspiration and more organic customercentricity,
then you will be many steps before your
competition.
What were the primal challenges and roadblocks you
faced during the initial phase of your career as a
marketing leader?
I never studied marketing, and to this day when young
people tell me that they want to study it in school I think it’s
silly. Marketing is about trying new tactics, being analytical
enough to dissect the results, and being disciplined enough
to optimize the campaign. You can’t get a feel for the
marketing unless you try.
Because I studied economics, a lot of my peers always
viewed marketing as unsubstantial and fluffy. However,
recently there’s a whole movement of “growth hackers”
who are incredibly influential in expanding and scaling
businesses, and all they’re really doing is out-of-the-box
marketing. I think this really helped much of my
community take my role a lot more seriously.
What inspires you to become an influential marketing
leader?
I don’t think anyone sets out to be influential. One becomes
influential not only by doing good work, but by being able
to replicate and then teach the method for good work. When
I worked in China in the early 2010’s, people were
concerned about the reliability of data. Now working in
Sub-Saharan Africa, people are worried about the dearth of
data. In these spaces, people get lucky and are able to ride a
trend to get a huge wave of customer acquisition. However,
it’s in these spaces that I am trying to create a process and
actually create a robust marketing practice.
Where do you see yourself in the near future and what
are your future goals?
It is very rare for CMO’s to be chosen to become CEO’s.
Usually it is the COO or CFO that rises to lead a company.
However, I hope to help change the view of CMO’s as
strategic and pivotal business roles.
What is your advice for budding and emerging
marketing leaders?
B2C may seem funner and sexier, but it’s B2B that really
makes a world of difference. B2C is based on trends, while
B2B is based on behavioral economics and psychology.
Focus on the things that last.
| April 2019
|51

Successful
Personality
Traits to Learn from
Elon Musk
Legends never need an introduction. They tend to be
victorious despite of their uneventful histories. They
stick to captivating traits such as Discipline,
determination and self-belief which help them accomplish
wonders in the long run. One such example of an extraordinary
person is Elon Musk, a South African Business
Magnate, Investor and an engineer.
Musk is the founder, CEO, and chief architect of SpaceX;
co-founder, CEO, and product designer of Tesla Inc.; and
co-founder and CEO of Neuralink. As of February 2018, he
is the 53rd-richest person in the world and has a net worth
of $20.8 billion, which is far more than the net GDP of
Greece taken into consideration.
While each entrepreneur possesses a unique set of traits that
makes him/her successful, this Tech founder has a few traits
much different from any other ordinary CEO, which has
allowed him to build some of the world’s most respected
and innovative organizations. Musk once quoted, “When
something is important enough, you do it even if the odds
are not in your favor.”
Let’s have a look on these personality attributes and
characteristics that make him a contender for the most
innovative intellectual entrepreneur of the century alive.
Hard-work and Characteristic Work Ethics
Elon Musk is a hard-working innovator, working for about
100 hours a week, and has been productive since many
years. He may even be considered as the hardest working
employee of the company, setting standards for his
colleagues to follow and implement. Since the field of work
lies inside his radius of interests, he enjoys it to every
moment and bit when it comes to learning and execution.
Strong Risk Tolerance
Founding a start-up involves a great deal of uncertainty and
risk. A study found that after 10 years of being in business,
96 percent of the start-ups fail. Going by the statistics,
Musk must have faced the same odds against him, when he
had decided to leave an otherwise comfortable life to start a
risky and uncertain business venture.
For instance, Musk left his PhD program at Stanford
University to find a company called Zip2 with his brother in
the year 1995. Later, the company was sold to Compaq
computers, profiting Musk a bit over $20 million.
Following this, Musk once again took a great risk by
investing millions of dollars to found a company called
X.com, one of the world’s first online banks.
‘Always Be Learning’ Attitude
An astounding and less-known fact about Elon Musk is that
he is self-taught in programming and in many advanced
level subjects. He read and understood a variety of books,
which helped him gain endless and persistent knowledge
and understand diverse concepts.
The best piece of advice on learning and implementation is
to constantly think about how things could be done in a
better manner and question self to seek the answers.
52| April 2019|

Imparting Wisdom
Feedback Loop
It is of prime importance to recognize the present symbol or
otherwise ‘status quo’ in the market as an organization and
re-position accordingly. Musk solicits constant feedback of
the companies and executes ‘self-analysis.’ He induces
efforts and divergent strategies to improve customer
feedbacks and strives towards perfectionism.
For example, he seeks out his critics and tries to converse
with them. This habit of self-reflection at regular and
considerable periods is pivotal for any entrepreneur or
organization to succeed in the long run.
Tendency for Vertical Integration
Vertical integration is a strategy where an organization or a
firm acquires business operations within the same product
vertical. Both Tesla and SpaceX embrace this concept. For
example, Tesla not only produces electric cars; they also
generate public awareness about their cars via Tesla
showrooms across various countries. And SpaceX does not
only have the primary goal of rocket propulsions; they
develop their own rocket architecture as well.
Faith in Self and the Founding Team
Musk undoubtedly possesses a profound belief in his own
capabilities as well as the potential-seeking factor of its
founding team. He does not hesitate to gamble on large
scale unless he is genuinely aware of the expected endresults.
It is equally essential to maintain clarity of doubt in any
large scale organization. Under his supervision, Musk
encourages in creating a positive and comprehensive
environment across his firms.
Preferring to Stand Out From the Crowd
Musk elects to bring up innovation at every level of his
understanding. He tends to impart theoretical knowledge at
the base level, applying changes and executing the same on
the practical level. He relies more on transitional aspects
such as research and development, thereby increasing the
probability of ground-breaking inventions.
Tesla Motors, a far headed firm headed by Elon Musk, is
anti-ordinary. Its compelling marketplace has become a
one-stop destination for potential buyers where they can
interact about product specifications. They also have video
testimonials that far outperform in the sales-dominated
industry.
There is no ambiguity that Musk, by far, has been a pillar of
inspiration for budding entrepreneurs and investors because
of his prolific and optimistic approach towards life
All these traits possessed by Musk, in some manner or the
other, coincide with most of your habits. The only thing that
stands as a potential barrier between these two is
identifying your strengths and working on them on a
continual basis. Go on, apply these traits into your daily
life, and you may become the next big CEO the world is in
need of today!
| April 2019
|53

Ulrike Lemke
Vice President
Lonza
Ulrike Lemke
Redefining Medical Innovation
In an interview with Insights
Success, Ulrike Lemke, Vice
President of Marketing at
Lonza, shares valuable insights from
the experiences she gained in her
entrepreneurial journey. Moreover, she
broadly discusses on the services
offered by the company.
Below are the highlights of the
interview conducted between Ulrike
and Insights Success:
Give a brief overview of your
background as an influential
marketing leader.
My educational background is in life
sciences and my main motivation is to
support medical innovation and
technology advancements to help treat
medical conditions or to prevent
people from becoming ill. As scientist,
you typically have deep insights into
the pathway of a disease and its
mechanics. But there is often less
knowledge about what patients suffer
from on a daily basis and what the
holistic picture of their condition is. In
other words, are you as scientist fixing
the element of the disease that matters
most to patients? Are you driving the
right approach, that can yield a
medicine that effectively improves
health conditions?
I firmly believe that scientific
innovation should be driven by deep
insights into real and tangible needs of
patients or even healthy consumers (if
the objective is to prevent onset of
disease). But where should we get
these insights from?
Understanding patient needs, sharing
these insights with scientists to focus
them on what matters and then
communicating the advancements back
to patients – this is how I see
marketing in life sciences. So my
curiosity to learn about patients and
their actual needs naturally led me into
this field. The first step was in market
research areas and in business
intelligence – roles in which you learn
how companies find about unmet
medical needs, how they observe
trends. Without solid data and
comprehensive analysis, insights may
remain shallow and do not help driving
real innovation. When I look around
56| April 2019|

“
Be curious and passionate about
learning. It inevitably leads to success.
“
me today, all the disruptive new
business models we see in the market,
from Tesla, Uber, AirBnB, start from a
different understanding of true market
needs. No organization can afford
today to not be deeply rooted in data –
or the risk of disruption is massive.
How do you diversify your
organization’s offerings to appeal to
the target audience?
My current business context is in
custom development and
manufacturing for pharma and biotech
companies. We are producing on behalf
of our customers, active ingredients or
the final medicine. There is a high pace
of innovation in our customers’ R&D
and we follow that innovation very
closely. In our industry, marketers have
a unique advantage compared to other
industries. We can see the innovation
pipeline of our customers early on, as
regulatory requirements lead our
customers’ to publish what they are
working on. We constantly monitor
which new manufacturing
requirements these medicines might
have and then invest into technology
that allows producing them. So we are
prepared to help our customers launch
their medicines. In addition to
questions around feasibility, we also
work in understanding what the
business risks and opportunities are for
our customers on their path to market.
We focus on the challenges that
bottleneck the process at the customer
side and then innovate our business
models to address them.
What were the past experiences,
achievements or lessons that have
shaped your journey?
For a couple of years now, customer
centricity is a term used frequently,
also in business-to-business
organizations. To be successful in
| April 2019
putting the customer at the center, the
conceptual term should be broken
down to tangible actions. We wanted to
know what we as an organization truly
knew about our customers. So first, we
consolidated all data sources in the
organization that had customer
information in them. This reduced data
silos and combined information, that
was not broadly accessible before
spanning marketing, sales, finance and
production – all under one roof. We
started to build agile data systems and
infrastructure and moved a significant
proportion of IT under the leadership
of marketing. Data are integrated at the
individual customer level, so customer
preferences and behaviors can be
observed across the entire customer
journey. The insights we generate are
disseminated across different functions
through Apps and web entries,
accessibility of customer information
improved dramatically. We leveraged a
lot of technology from big data to new
visualization platforms to bring
available information to decision
makers. For the first time, we now
have a more holistic picture about our
customers, their needs and challenges.
Next, we plan to use this knowledge to
support our field force, where we will
use our learnings to hold proactive
conversations based on our insights
about the customer, away from the old
way of responding to enquiries.
The move to customer centricity is
data-driven and can create discomfort
in an organization. It is a disruptive
change and many functions are
required to change their way of
working. Supporting such
transformation with the best possible
change management and taking all
stakeholders along, ensures success.
This is my biggest learning. Investing
early on into explaining the roadmap
and then co-create a roadmap across
different functions, is the best way of
taking everyone onboard.
Where do you see yourself in the
near future and what are your future
goals?
I would like to continue my learning
journey in digital technology, using the
rich data sources out there, leveraging
developments from AI, machine
learning, cognitive behavioral research
and other areas are areas. There are
still plenty opportunities to improve
the interplay between market insights
and manufacturing innovation in our
business. This is a topic that I want to
drive.
Longer-term, I hope to be able to build
more broad technology expertise and
then apply that in health related data. I
would like to move closer to digital
medical health and see, how we can
best use digital means to improve
public health.
What is your advice for budding and
emerging marketing leaders?
Advice is always hard to give. Here is
what worked for me. I was looking
beyond marketing, as a function and
starting to ask questions about what
really drives a business and what
creates impact with your customers.
Marketing is a team sport and not a
function in a business. Through these
questions, networks of engagement are
created and we learned as teams. Don’t
be discouraged, when you have to
manage through change or when you
are facing resistance. Change is a
learning road for all that embark on it,
but the road isn’t straight. Make the
journey as comfortable as you can and
be empathetic and then you will create
followers.
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The Importance of
Purpose
In addition to running Kenja as CEO, I have the
fortune of teaching MBA students part time on
Leadership, Marketing, and Strategy. For my classes
and as a CEO, I think the most important place to start is
with the “Why” - what is your Purpose as an Leader and
as a Company.
Purpose as a Leader
As a leader, the first place to start is with yourself. If
you cannot lead yourself then how can you lead others?
The first thing to know about a leader is their Passion
and the Values that led them to put importance on those
passions. With an understanding of Passion, people can
develop their Life’s Purpose. Purpose is your North Star,
it is your unwavering unchanging goal which your daily
actions will lead you to. Upon setting your own Purpose,
you will need a Plan to take concrete steps towards the
Purpose, Partners to benefit and to help you achieve
your Purpose, and finally Persistence to help you with
the very difficult task of staying focused on your
Purpose.
Passion, Purpose, Plan, Partners, and Persistence are
the “5Ps of Life” - a workshop that I do with students to
help them figure out their Life’s Purpose. 95% of people
do not have a concrete Purpose in life - they let events
and daily to-dos determine their activities. I do not think
that Purpose is something that can be discovered in a day
- often it will take time to think about this and reflect on
it. The point of the exercise is simply to begin the very
important self-dialogue to get to your Life Purpose. It
does not matter how fast you go if you have not figured
out what direction you want to run first.
In Kenja, every person in our company knows that
although I had C level experience in companies like
Vodafone, Verizon Wireless, and Fidelity Investments, I
have always had a dream to found a different kind of
company - one that valued Innovation and Ideas over
Politics and the primary focus on Quarterly Profits. My
passion is for solving problems in innovative ways and
for implementing very difficult projects.
I was fortunate that I started with good co-founders,
people that shared my vision and could contribute
complementary skills. The plan is usually a natural
outcome of a strong purpose and Persistence is usually
achieved by knowing what works for you on a daily
basis. For me Persistence is reinforced by refusing to
consider a return to large company executive jobs and by
daily use of the “Pomodoro” technique. (using 30
minutes interval of focused effort followed by a short
break).
58|
April 2019|

Purpose Driven
Ted Katagi
CEO
Kenja
Purpose as a Company
Just as with Individual Leaders, a company will need to
develop its own clear Purpose. A Clear Purpose gives
motivation to people, clarity to strategy, and a clear
branding for Marketing.
If we are honest with most companies, the Purpose easily
devolves into meeting the Monthly or Yearly Targets.
The Purpose is not merely the result of your actions - the
Purpose describes WHY you are pursuing your goals.
The Clear Purpose is lived by company members so it
becomes a reflection of why people join and stay with
your company.
Company Strategy is strongly guided by Purpose.
Things that lead you off the Strategic Path are rejected
and you can find further value and differentiation in the
area of your chosen competition. Small changes in your
Purpose drives big results in the marketplace. Although
Facebook and MySpace are both Social Networks,
Facebook’s focus on connecting your friends resulted in
many small innovations that MySpace with their focus
on creating cool personal spaces did not.
felt by your customers. It is far more enduring than any
single campaign message or even a business plan for a
year.
Kenja’s purpose is to Revolutionize the way that mid to
large companies collaborate to get work done through
software. In the beginning it was difficult since larger
companies tend to buy from other larger companies but
we have now achieved something not easily copied.
After 7 years in Business, we now have larger
organizations like Mitsui and Company, Randstad, and
JICA (the Japanese Peace Corp) and many mid sized
companies using us. If we had started with consumers
and small companies only, then the functionality,
security, and ease to use (for older employees as well)
would be far different.
Starting with Purpose is not always the easy or obvious
choice. There are many obstacles in the way and it is too
easy just to focus on Profit or KPIs of the company.
However, a focus on Purpose will automatically keep
Employee Engagement, Strategy, and your Branding on
track.
If you are clear on your Purpose, then the Brand is not a
just a slogan on a TV Commercial. It is lived by
employees, reflected in your products and services, and
| April 2019
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