FinancialForce names NetSuite's former marketing chief as its first CMO
Fred Studer is FinancialForce's first CMO.
FinancialForce, a cloud enterprise resource planning company that runs on Salesforce's platform, has hired its first chief marketing officer, Fred Studer.
Studer brings to the table more than two decades of senior marketing leadership, including time at Microsoft, Oracle and as CMO of NetSuite. He most recently served as CMO at Gigamon.
FinancialForce's new CEO Todd Nielsen brought Studer on board after serving as a "strategic mentor" for Studer for years, Studer said. "He trained me in the art of always knowing your audience."
FinancialForce's new leadership adds to its momentum in the ERP market -- the company, founded in 2009, said it grew by more than 40 percent in the last year and recently hit the $100 million annual revenue run rate milestone.
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There's opportunity for FinancialForce to make inroads against major legacy players like SAP or Oracle. IDC forecasts the ERP market will grow at a healthy clip over the next few years -- exceeding $68 billion in revenue by 2020 -- in part because of demand for cloud solutions. Studer contends the major ERP providers are struggling to meet that demand.
"There is no question cloud is a valuable thing to adopt, but I don't think some companies have done a good job at making the move to cloud very easy for something like ERP," he said.
"The new currency is speed," Studer continued, "and how can you help companies get faster and faster about doing what they do best to solve their customer problems and ultimately drive growth and revenues."
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