Q&A with Shafqat Islam, CEO at Welcome

Shafqat Islam, CEO at Welcome, is a product and sales guy at heart, with a deep technology background. He loves to manage great teams and lead organizations through/above/around walls. Somehow he has combined optimism and perseverance to build the leading company in his industry. He is also a small angel investor in a few companies, including HomePolish, Engagio, Workflowy, Parsec and Snowe.

Only two things matter when building a startup: the product, and the people. I would say focus on the people first. And everything else will follow



MEDIA 7: Can you please take us through the professional journey that made you a successful entrepreneur today?
SHAFQAT ISLAM:
I only had one job before becoming a CEO — I worked for Merrill Lynch, leading a technology team. It was a really great opportunity that gave me a chance to develop my leadership skills. (As an aside, I always encourage people to get a job before becoming an entrepreneur. That way, you know what it’s like to have a “good” boss vs. a “bad” boss — and hopefully, it becomes easier to emulate those better qualities). After Merrill Lynch, we founded NewsCred. That was an unbelievable ride, and we learned a lot along the way simply by “doing” — until we eventually sold that business and spun out Welcome!


M7: Gartner recognized Welcome, for the fourth year, as a leader in the industry in the 2021 CMP Magic Quadrant. What has been the strategy behind achieving such prestigious recognition?
SI:
We take a lot of pride in our leadership position — that’s a big part of it. We strive to be 1% better every day, knowing we have some stellar companies out there trying to chase us down.  Of course, it helps that our product is world-class. Not only is it rooted in core content features across ideation, editorial planning, creative workflows, publishing, measurement, and more, but we also offer deep campaign planning, asset management, and work management solutions. Together, it’s a product strategy that has propelled us to the very top of the quadrant and the #1 ranking in CMP use cases for four consecutive years.

It’s all part of our mission: to unleash the potential of marketers. We want to help all kinds of marketing teams reimagine the way they plan campaigns, create content, and measure their value. So, we’re always humbled by Gartner’s recognition. We believe it’s a testament to both our product capabilities of today and our vision for tomorrow. But while it’s been a remarkable journey for us so far, our mission is not yet complete!


In order to find a qualified audience, you need to start by understanding who they are, and providing a very clear, immediate value.



M7: How does Welcome help marketing teams optimize their operations using a single workspace?
SI:
First and foremost, Welcome is purpose-built for marketing teams — so everything is designed and engineered with the marketer in mind. We’re not some generic project management tool masquerading our platform for a myriad of departments! Instead, we focus relentlessly on giving marketing teams a single workspace that helps them execute their entire campaign and content lifecycle— from planning to production to measurement and back again. All from within Welcome. All with really thoughtful, purpose-built functionality. 

Specifically, we help marketers:

·    Set, share, & visualize the entire marketing plan

·    Centralize collaboration, manage resources and get more done (together)

·    Create compelling, high-quality content and campaign assets

·    Publish content to every channel, from one location

·    Store assets to make it really easy to find and reuse content

·    Leverage analytics and insights to work smarter, faster, & better


M7: What are the top challenges you see for the industry in general and Welcome this year?
SI:
We speak with thousands of marketers — of all kinds, in all industries, and across the world — and the common themes (challenges) we often hear are around visibility, speed, and measurement. And the symptoms, we believe, can be boiled down to silos. Team silos, process silos, and tech silos.

·    When everything is decentralized, it’s difficult to know what the plan is (or even, has the plan changed?), who is doing what, and where things stand — i.e. visibility.

·    When everything is decentralized, it’s harder to collaborate with the team members you rely on to get your campaigns and content out the door — i.e. speed.

·    When everything is decentralized, it’s (near) impossible to understand what’s working (both from an operational and performance standpoint) — i.e. measurement.

Most of us know (and feel) this reality. Being a marketer today is straight-up difficult. Business demands (e.g. more production, faster growth) are on the rise. But if we’re going to overcome these challenges and meet these expectations, we need to reimagine how we (as marketing teams) work, and the tools we use to help us execute. That’s why Welcome exists.


Being a marketer today is straight-up difficult. Business demands are on the rise. 



M7: What according to you is the best way to find a qualified audience for your product?
SI:
In order to find a qualified audience, you need to start by understanding who they are, and providing a very clear, immediate value. If you do that well, your audience will find you, engage with your brand and/or product, and become advocates (helping to attract other, qualified individuals)! That’s why we launched a completely free version of our product.

Our target audiences are core marketing and creative professionals. And we know the folks moving into leadership roles within those teams are part of a new breed — they’re a new type of buyer. In many cases, they are savvy marketers who want to “feel”, “see”, and “touch” — i.e. they want to be confident they’re making an informed decision. By offering a completely free version of our product, we’re able to provide them immediate value — sometimes in the very first interaction with our brand!


M7: Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self?
SI:
Only two things matter when building a startup: the product, and the people. And in fact, the product is built by the people. So really, the only thing that matters is putting together an amazing team — one that is highly skilled has great core values, and makes it fun to come to work every day. So, I would say focus on the people first. And everything else will follow!

ABOUT WELCOME

Welcome transforms how marketers run marketing. It is the leading marketing orchestration platform used by the world’s most ambitious brands to strategically align teams, take the friction out of execution, and demonstrate meaningful results. Only Welcome offers a platform purpose-built for the complexities of modern marketing that can scale to support the largest teams in the world. It is a new layer of the marketing technology stack where marketers can work better together, connect other MarTech tools, and measure performance. Welcome unleashes the potential of marketing.

If you’re interested, you may visit them at www.welcomesoftware.com, watch a quick 2-min product overview video, and/or get started (for completely free) today!

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Ingram Micro | December 12, 2023

Ingram Micro is enabling thousands of channel partners worldwide to do more with more as a Premier Amazon Web Services (AWS) Consulting Partner and an award-winning Geo and Global AWS Distributor Partner of the Year recipient. Demonstrating its deep and wide technical knowledge and professional services expertise, Ingram Micro has been honored by AWS with two high profile wins – 2023 Global Distributor Partner of the Year and North America Distributor Partner of the Year. Both awards recognize Ingram Micro for playing a key role in helping channel partners worldwide accelerate success and move businesses to AWS through all phases of complex migration projects, including discovery, planning, migration, and operations. The North America honor is a back-to-back win for team Ingram Micro. Announced during AWS re:Invent 2023, the Geo and Global AWS Distributor Partner of the Year Awards shine the spotlight on Ingram Micro’s high-performing team and continued investments in advanced AWS technical talent, professional services and cloud migration competencies. “Through a strategic alliance with AWS, Ingram Micro has played a pivotal role in empowering Keystone Technologies to take the lead in healthcare EHR data solutions,” says Andy Belval, Chief Revenue Officer, Keystone Technologies. “Ingram Micro’s expertise in cloud solutions, coupled with a dedicated relational partner approach, not only enhances their own business value but also significantly contributes to Keystone Technologies’ ability to deliver better outcomes and cost savings for our healthcare customers.” In 2023, Ingram Micro’s AWS business continued to grow with more and more partners leveraging Ingram Micro to progress through their AWS Partner Network (APN) journey. Ingram Micro navigates AWS partners through APN programs while also expanding their services capabilities including assessment, design, deployment, and management of cloud migrations with greater speed. Additional differentiators to Ingram Micro’s success with AWS channel partners include its wide and deep executive relationships, as well as its Center of Excellence, strategic acquisitions of technical talent, and expansion of its Professional Services portfolio as it relates to cloud and migration services. “Ingram Micro’s early adoption of Cloud, understanding of an entrepreneur's needs and focus on the success for us to become one of their largest AWS resellers is what we were looking for in a distribution partner to grow our business and improve our value in the eyes of our customers,” says Dao Jensen, CEO of Oak Rocket. Ingram Micro provides channel partners access to experienced talent and professional services that can help them accelerate the customer cloud adoption journey including the technical personnel, tools, education, technology, and technical support needed to ideate, deploy, and manage AWS solutions. “AWS is a gold mine of opportunity for an MSP yet remains a heavy lift for most,” says Duncan Robinson, vice president, growth partnerships, Ingram Micro. “We’re here to help our channel partners optimize their sales cycle and effectively design, deploy, and manage AWS solutions that improve the customer’s experience, performance, reliability, and agility, while reducing the total cost of ownership.” Ingram Micro’s long-standing and successful relationship with AWS includes earning several AWS Competency and AWS Service Delivery designations in recent years, including being the first global distributor to earn the AWS Migration Competency and more recently being awarded the AWS Data & Analytics Competency. Other designations include the AWS Cloud Management Tools (CMT) Competency, the AWS DevOps Consulting Competency, and the AWS Config Service Delivery designation. “The experience that Mxmart has had working with Ingram Micro as a strategic partner of AWS has been fundamental for our growth,” says Dario Gomez, CEO Mxmart Solutions. “The support we’ve received technically, commercially, and via programs has added invaluable strength to our company.” About Ingram Micro Ingram Micro is the business behind the world’s brands with the ability to reach nearly 90 percent of the world’s population. Our diverse solutions portfolio includes advanced and specialty solutions, cloud, mobility, and commercial/consumer technologies, while enabling a global circular economy with full-service IT Asset Disposition and reverse logistics and repair services. Leveraging investments in technical, financial, and marketing resources, Ingram Micro helps customers run their businesses better and grow their technology practices faster. Ingram Micro operates in 59 countries and reaches close to 200 countries. We have approximately 26,000 associates committed to providing our more than 161,000 customers and 1,500 vendor partners worldwide with a superior experience. Our fully digital, AI-driven business platform, known as Ingram Micro Xvantage™, eliminates the friction of doing business in IT and allows our customers to have a more insightful experience both buying and managing technology. We are also fully committed to being a global steward with world-class ESG practices.

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