In conversation with Valérie Thomassin, Chief Marketing Officer, Cegid
Making every change a positive one
Valérie is the Chief Marketing Officer of Cegid, a leader in cloud-based management software serving the Certified Public Accountants (CPA), retail, HR and finance professionals and very small businesses.
Marketing, brand, external and internal communications, customer experience and pricing are all in Valérie’s remit, and she is also responsible for creating a successful sales enablement strategy.
In what ways have you seen your business change over the past two years?
We have been super busy! Like many other companies we had to navigate the pandemic but we stayed on course and leveraged our industry knowledge and deep understanding of customer needs to react and help our clients to both weather the storm and embrace the new opportunities coming their way.
It has been a success! We have doubled our revenue in just four years thanks to a mix of organic growth and well-targeted acquisitions and are now a European leader in cloud-based management software solutions.
What kinds of changes have your clients experienced?
The pandemic has hugely disrupted our clients, making digital transformation a reality and challenging the status quo.
Retail’s shift to omnichannel has dramatically accelerated. We have been helping clients get set up quickly with tools that are optimised for their audience, both online and in physical stores, with an even better experience true to their brand.
HR professionals have been through fundamental changes. They are now managing hybrid working while finding ways to better retain and source talent, as well as ensuring, in the back office, that the payroll team keeps up with constant new regulations. In short, it is now about rethinking work experience for lasting performance.
It's also worth mentioning that finance teams are having to navigate the current economic situation, ensuring their businesses are primed to seize opportunities when they arise. These teams are looking to optimise their business’s agility with better risk mitigation while seeking reliable and secure management tools including adaptable ERP, state of the art treasury and cash management, expenses and travels or tax submission tools.
How is Cegid at the forefront of helping businesses through this time of change?
We have adjusted, fast and furiously, to the needs of our clients as and when they have altered. Digital capabilities are now a must-have. The cloud went from being an option to becoming a necessity for businesses. We have been focused on optimising their back-office capabilities, supporting their fast-paced transformation and helping them to better understand their audience. Our seven User Clubs have helped us make sure our solutions are meeting the most pressing client needs. These discussions give us a chance to get feedback from our clients on our solutions and their upcoming challenges so that we can better support their needs. Working together has made digital transformation journeys easier and our co-construction mantra even more pertinent.
Our mission to deliver useful and innovative solutions to support our clients’ businesses across the world has never been so relevant. We have brought both new technologies and new capabilities to market, helping them to realise their full potential through changing some of their metrics or even their business model. When you think about the CPA as an example, we have been automating their repetitive back-office tasks thanks to machine learning, enabling them to collaborate more with their own clients and add more value for a greater impact on their business.
How have you engaged your sales and marketing teams during this time of change?
At Cegid, we always believe in the power of the team. Sales and marketing alignment is not an option. It’s an absolute must to ensure the full power of enabling business growth is in play and people see the impact that their work has on the entire strategy. By bridging the gap between sales and marketing, we can give our audience strength and clarity in our value proposition and engage the team with a shared goal and purpose. We have rallied all the troops under a common unified brand and have aligned on what this means at each step of customer engagement.
We have also created a sales enablement practice to ensure our sales force can control ‘the agenda’ towards their audience with innovative and engaging digital tools.
Bringing the teams together is one of our biggest achievements in the past few years. It has enabled us to build the sales pipeline with shared KPIs, which gives everyone an incentive to work together to create the most impactful strategy with clarity on each team’s contribution.
How have your sales and marketing teams adjusted to working more closely together?
Very positively. We are all working towards the same goal, and this – along with a constant dialogue – has enabled us to remove some of the barriers to effective collaboration. It is part of our culture to value other people’s contributions, and we have seen this come to the surface by sharing our mutual goals and combining the engagement meetings and reporting. It is now easier for people to grasp the value in the expertise that others bring. In meetings we are talking the same language which allows for constructive conversations. We do not always agree but never fight and stay focused on the outcomes to meet our common goals.
As a business that always embraces change, what’s next on the agenda for Cegid?
We have just started our second strategic plan called ‘Forward’ with the goal to double our revenue again by 2026! Our SaaS-based business model is a solid foundation and on top of that we are now exploring ways that we can provide a superior, distinctive and memorable customer experience through all parts of our business.
Right now, we are taking the time to really understand the science of customer experience as a B2B business; we want to be the first in our field to make a difference. Part of being an expert and a leading business is knowing when you should act quickly and when you should pause, learn and take stock to get more out of the transformation process. My great team, as well as my colleagues in sales, R&D, and the other back-office functions, are all set to put customer experience at the centre of our business. This is another ‘revolution’ we have decided to start, and we are up to the challenge!
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