During my career, I’ve been part of countless software implementations. I’ve been in the thick of it, managing technical logistics, integrations, and onboarding deadlines. As a customer success lead, I’ve been on the vendor side, managing SaaS roll-outs for teams with thousands of employees spread across different time zones, geographic regions, and different skill levels. I have also logged my fair share of time from the customer side, forced to figure out next steps when a solution failed to do the very thing the vendor promised it would.
In all my time of managing complex software implementations – two decades to be exact – one project remains a capstone experience for me, setting the bar for how I wish all implementations would go. The vendor? Pramata.
Yes, once upon a time, I was a Pramata customer – it was my very first experience with the company and, ultimately, the primary reason I signed on to be Pramata’s first ever Chief Customer Officer.
My love affair with Pramata: I was sold from the beginning
What made my first project with Pramata so successful and feel so seamless? From the get go, the project status was set to “green” and remained moving forward until it was fully rolled out. Change management was a breeze and the intuitive nature of the UI enabled entire teams to embrace Pramata’s platform with little to no pushback, rapidly accelerating the software’s time to value.
Once the platform was up and running, we quickly realized that this radically simple solution delivered on multiple fronts. Yes, the legal team suddenly gained full visibility into their contract management program and could also run revenue protection analysis while managing risk and compliance issues – but the benefits rippled through other departments as well. The sales team became more productive, able to identify renewal opportunities before it was too late. This, in turn, made the finance team ecstatic as new revenue streams took hold.
By the end of the first year, with Pramata underpinning the company’s contract management program, the sales team reported it was truly transformative for their side of the organization, ranking it as the most impactful sales tool innovation they’d had the benefit of using.
How my time as a Pramata customer influenced my career
As a tech project lead – or really anyone in the tech space – you don’t forget an experience like the one I had as a Pramata customer. It wasn’t just the ease of implementation and onboarding that stuck. During my initial experiences with Pramata, I built lasting friendships with many of the company’s team members, including CEO Praful Saklani and CRO Justin Schweisberger. When the opportunity arose to be part of the organization as the Chief Customer Officer, it felt like the planets had aligned in my favor professionally and personally and I jumped at the newly created role.
The thing that stuck with me most during my time as a Pramata customer was the platform’s ease of use and rapid time to value. It is a true product differentiator and something I’ve often thought about as I oversaw customer success programs throughout my career.
These two, very specific, differentiators are unique within the SaaS ecosystem. Way too often, software implementations come with too many red lights and headaches that negatively impact the overall customer experience. That wasn’t my experience with Pramata – in fact, it was the very opposite and it shaped how I thought about customer success initiatives going forward.
I’ve used my initial experience with Pramata as a guiding light when managing massive software development projects. Whether I was overseeing a federal contract with thousands of requirements for a multiyear waterfall development project, implementing a new CRM system for 3,000+ sales reps, or signing up to lead Salesforce’s customer success initiatives – I always thought back to my time working with Pramata and tried to insert the same experience into other projects.
As Pramata’s Chief Customer Officer, my primary focus will be our customers, ensuring they are using the platform to its fullest extent to maximize their investment in Pramata. Here’s what that will look like on a day-to-day basis: most of my time will be spent meeting with customers, asking about their experience with the platform and aligning our solution with their most critical business goals. I will also be keeping an ear to the ground, monitoring market trends and conditions. Part of my role includes working directly with our own Success Managers to design and execute customer onboarding programs that drive high adoption rates and maintain radical simplicity. Ultimately, I want to be the “voice of our customer” for our product engineering team, helping to build the product roadmap as we move forward and scale our solution to meet our customers’ essential contract management needs.
Things you should know about me
While my career has included some amazing experiences – overseeing major software implementation projects and leading customer success programs for companies like Salesforce – my professional life started in the most unexpected places. Much of my creativity stems from the year I spent in NYU’s film school and working in NYC’s art world. I also spent time in NYC’s book publishing industry before moving to Colorado where I had been an avid outdoorsman. Once upon a time, I even considered becoming a professional snowboarder. That didn’t pan out, but the sense of peace I gain from being outdoors, racing down a mountain on a snowboard or bike, has remained a constant in my life.
For a number of years, I served in various communications roles before landing in the field of customer success. All it took was one wildly successful onboarding project that moved the needle in a big way for a major customer and I was hooked. More than two decades later and I still live in Colorado with my wife of 25 years, our two teenagers, two cats, and beloved dog. I’ve long felt like I won the lottery, living in the magical surroundings of Colorado’s mountain ranges with 300-plus days of sunshine a year – none of which would have been possible without my wife.
But now I have the added indulgence of a dream job with a company that sets the bar when it comes to customer success programs. The truth is that most CLM solutions do not inspire a rabid fan base – too many platforms take too long to onboard, come with too many unnecessary (and under-used) features, and, most importantly, fail to provide full visibility into contract data. Pramata is the real deal. I know because I’ve seen firsthand how we are able to deliver a quality solution that is loved and embraced by contract management teams as well as sales, operations, finance, and procurement departments.
My job is to spread this joy, recruiting as many ContractMVPs as possible while making sure the community we’re building stays intact and active. The next few years at Pramata are going to be a blast. We have so much room for growth among our customer base and so much potential with our radically simple approach to contract management. I am grateful to be part of it all.
