A couple of years ago I did an interview with a new, high-profile hire for cloud ERP vendor NetSuite. NetSuite had seen a progression of marketing staff and this hire was the first “big hitter” to really run marketing at the vendor.

Fresh from running marketing for Microsoft’s Dynamics division, and with a previous history in marketing at Oracle, this hire was seen as a secret weapon. The fact that he had, in a past life, worked as an accountant, gave him yet more cachet with the financial executives that NetSuite was courting as customers.

I came out of the interview with my hair swept back (metaphorically, I’m a crew-cut sort of a guy so hair sweeping isn’t particularly possible for me). Fred Studer, the big hitter in question, was a breath of fresh air — an energetic and obviously passionate individual, he regaled me with plans to reinvent marketing at NetSuite with a new, customer-centric angle. This focus was reinforced at NetSuite’s next SuiteWorld conference where Studer certainly shook things up.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.