Following the momentum created by a highly successful streak that saw the company expand into new markets, open operational branches overseas and more than double its client portfolio, Adgistics has started 2012 buzzing with energy. Our first announcement of the year is the appointment of Wolfgang von Enckevort, a business process management expert with over 20 years of experience, as acting Chief Technical Officer. In his new role, Wolfgang will oversee Adgistics’ research and development, ensuring our offering supports an ever more ambitious business strategy. In conversation he is cordial, excessively polite, highly competent and contagiously enthusiastic. His laughter goes well with a name any self-respecting James Bond villain would kill for; he doesn’t have a cat. Wolfgang’s prior achievements speak for themselves but do not shed much light on his opinions. How does one find glory in the age of uncertainty? Does the future lie in turnkey software or bespoke solutions? Should we develop what we believe to be the best product imaginable or the optimal version required? A man who has been at the helm of the industry since before the world saw hybrid cars, the Kyoto Protocol and James Cameron’s Titanic, Wolfgang von Enckevort is an interesting man to talk to.

 
Emil: You have an impressive breadth of experience in marketing technology, how has the industry changed since the time you started?

Wolfgang: The advent of cloud-based marketing management solutions has been the major driver of change in the way marketing, advertising and media production professionals collaborate. Those solutions have quickly become virtual operating systems supporting an entire business process throughout its lifecycle, the virtual ecosystems that allow a great number of users from different countries and companies collaborate on tasks, projects and digital assets across all media channels. Without this development marketers would never have gained control over their own brand assets (and the processes that create them) and ‘Decoupling’ – the ability to select multiple suppliers – would not have the relevance it has today.

What about the Digital asset management (DAM), what are the trends that are going to define the next decade?

DAM is becoming an enterprise-level application in the way the EDM (electronic document management) systems have always been. As such, the success of DAM systems vastly depends on their ability to seamlessly integrate into other enterprise applications like ERP (enterprise resource planning) and PIM (product information system). In the future we will see DAM, CMS (content management systems) and document management solutions merging into a single software category that will not only cover all marketing operations but also service adjacent departments like sales, trading and product management.

What are the three most important prerequisites for a medium-sized independent tech company that wants to be number one in its niche?

1. Know your niche better than anyone else
2. Have a comprehensive plan to internationalise your business
3. Actively manage your product

Obey these three and you will be recognised as a serious contender.

Does the future lie in highly bespoke or standardised MRM (marketing resource management) solutions?

There is no simple answer to this question as it greatly depends on how seriously the organisation considering one or the other is willing to accept change management as a fundamental part of the solution implementation process. MRM is a resource and lifecycle management discipline and as such needs to be embraced (or at least accepted) by various process participants across a number of departments as well as their partner organisations. Once the change management team has scoped, scrutinised and re-engineered the workflow process (under consideration of the agreed business requirements) it is time to invite the vendors of both solution ‘flavours’ to demonstrate their tools’ abilities to form the backbone of the agreed workflow scenario.

Should a company looking for a cloud management solution choose one vendor, like SAP, or a number of suppliers, experts in specific fields?

I think in the future we will see more and more expert solutions, connected via an enterprise bus architecture into the corporate ERP and finance account management solutions. However, there will be a number of formerly rather disparate software disciplines merging into new solution propositions: DAM/CMS/EDM on one side and MRM/CRM (customer relationship management)/campaign automation/e-commerce) on the other. We also see that the “Big Data” – the market leaders in the enterprise application and business analytics space like SAP, SAS, Teradata and others, today do not really deliver seamless end-to-end solutions to fulfill all of the marketing and sales needs. Gartner and others have repeatedly underlined the fact that across-the-board integration is largely an illusion.

Should product development be client-driven or vendor-driven – should the vendors develop the perfect solution and make their clients and prospects understand why the solution is perfect or should the vendors listen to their customers and develop something based on expectations?

Product development needs to be vendor-driven. Product selection, configuration and customisation can, and should, be driven by the client side. In the past years we saw an increased willingness by the client-side marketeers to review and, if required, even re-engineer their processes in preparation for a solution implementation. In cases where this is an option, it is extremely valuable if a vendor can offer ‘best practice’ advice in the form of a well thought-out product, forged to suit real life workflow requirements. On the other hand, it is considerably more economical for vendors, and eventually for their clients, to rely on a standard software solution. Also, it is only a software product that has proved to work across a number of different clients that can be deemed robust yet flexible enough to easily cope with changing business requirements within each of these organisations.

How important is marketing? We are talking of business-to-business solutions, provided the product is great, there is really no need for extensive marketing, the customers should come to you, right?

Many solutions out there look great and are in the market certainly with the right intentions. This is why recommendation marketing is key. Word-of-mouth probably is the best, if not the only way to convey a business solution proposition composed of well-designed and fit-for-purpose software products backed by a skilled team of pre-sales, sales, implementation and support experts who bring the solution to life and guarantee on-going service reliability.

You are familiar with Adgistics’ product and service propositions, what do you believe are our unique selling points, how do we differ from other players?

Adgistics distinguishes itself through its rigorous focus on user experience and brand value improvement. Smart software solutions should be taken as a given, but the art of developing a deep understanding of a client’s needs and processes is often overlooked by other players in the field. I see Adgistics at the forefront of a new generation of enterprise software solutions that truly aim to make the lives of marketeers and other creative professionals both easier and more productive.

You are quite known in the industry as an MRM consultant. Would you like to see Adgistics’ consultancy offering expanding over time or would you prefer it to concentrate on developing more advanced products?   

Consulting is an integral part of any enterprise solution. Once a supplier is chosen, there needs to be close collaboration between the vendor and the client stakeholders. Naturally, vendor-provided consulting work is focused on solution design and training approach whilst the client’s team masters KPI definition and change management aspects of the implementation task.

What would you do differently in your professional life if you knew 10 years ago what you know today?

So far I have been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and in the right role. I have witnessed the drastic changes the media and advertising industries went through over the past 20 years and have been lucky enough to always be at the forefront of change. From the advent of desktop publishing, digital scanning and image setting systems, followed by the Internet revolution and, eventually, the transformation of ‘software’ into ‘business process solutions’. It has been a very exciting journey so far; not sure my initial career aspirations would have been anywhere near as eclectic – I wanted to become a dancing instructor.