Interview with Alan Fletcher, Chief Product Officer, Demandbase

Tell us about your role and how you got here?

I am the Chief Product Officer at Demandbase where I lead the company’s overall product vision, innovation, and strategic execution. Prior to Demandbase, I was co-founder of Spiderbook, an Artificial Intelligence-driven enterprise sales engine, which Demandbase acquired in 2016. I’d also spent 25 years in executive level product roles at Oracle and other technology companies.

What is the biggest drive to attend the ABM Innovation Summit 2018?

There is so much product innovation in ABM right now. The combination of AI and ABM are creating huge opportunities in what’s possible, from connecting all your data sources to ingesting that data to develop automated insights and generate real action. At the ABM Innovation Summit, you’ll hear about the latest developments from leading ABM companies and also learn how-tos and best practices from seasoned ABM practitioners.

How can Product Development teams benefit from attending the ABM Innovation Summit 2018? What sessions should they be keenly following?

At the ABM Innovation Summit, product teams can hear about the latest advances in ABM technology and also gain a better understanding of the real needs of B2B marketers so they can build better, more relevant ABM products.

There’s something for Product Development teams to learn from each of the session tracks:

• The “ABM Impact” track will highlight the latest advances in ABM technology from leading B2B marketers.
• The “Demandbase in Action” track will showcase Demandbase’s product innovation and solutions across the entire marketing funnel.
• The “Real Life ABM” track will offer insight into the challenges B2B practitioners face, how they overcame those challenges, and the results of their best ABM campaigns.
• The “ABM Innovation” track will provide insight into ABM best practices from industry visionaries.

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How do you see ABM platforms evolving with the maturity of Data Science and Customer Intelligence Analytics?

It’s all about the data. The amounts of data we now have access to is massive, and as a result, traditional methods of analyzing and rationalizing data in spreadsheets no longer work. However, AI and Data Science are powering the potential of that data, connecting it in one centralized place, and then using that data to make appropriate decisions across the whole funnel.

What are your predictions on the “State of Programmatic ABM” platforms in 2018-2022?

In the next few years, B2B companies will no longer settle for stitching together niche offerings, but will instead seek a single ABM solution that can serve all their needs. Marketers will also rely on their ABM solution to recommend the appropriate actions and actually tell them what to do. These two things will effectively require platforms to have a common integrated data layer and a core central AI layer.

What Marketing and Sales Automation companies are you keenly following?

Some of the companies I follow in the space include Salesforce, Optimizely, Engagio and  LookBookHQ.

How do you inspire your team at Demandbase to work with technology?

We have a tremendous amount of talent and experience at the company. On the product and engineering side, we are always investing in our people and encouraging them to explore new tools and learn the latest technologies. We have a “Demandbase Labs” environment where if a particular tool works, we standardize and scale, and if it doesn’t, we move on. We also participate and host data science and engineering meetups to share best practices and get inspiration.

Tag the one person at the ABM Innovation Summit 2018 whose answers to these questions you would love to read.

Steve Casey from Forrester

Thank you Alan! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.