Meet Friederike Hein, Head of Commercial Accounts EMEA and APAC at Nuxeo. She supports our sales engagement in key areas in the EMEA region, the DACH countries in particular, and the APAC region as we continue expanding our business worldwide. Here’s her story.
Q: Please describe your role at Nuxeo.
I joined Nuxeo to support our sales engagement in key areas in the EMEA region and the DACH countries in particular as I’m a German native. However, with the growing global interest in our broad content services platform, I’m also working with interesting companies in the APAC region. We have leads coming in from all over the world, so my daily customer meetings offer a nice and exotic variety. It’s not rare that my day starts with early calls to Australia and finishes with conversations with prospects in the Nordics. It’s great to see how much excitement there is for our company and platform on a global perspective. I’m also working on our alignment with new partners in those areas in order to introduce them to our technology and support them in their projects.
Q: What do you love most about working at Nuxeo?
My biggest motivation to join Nuxeo was the enormous potential the company offered and had just started to leverage. When I did my initial interviews for my position it was a real pleasure to see how enthusiastic everyone is about the product, the company and the future to come. I worked in the Digital Asset Management (DAM) area in my previous position and have a direct comparison of the current technology standards for content services softwares. It was easy to see how far ahead the Nuxeo Platform is and I remember sitting in my first Nuxeo demo with a big smile. It’s also an amazing feeling to be a part of a team with so many talented people with very impressive backgrounds and who joined Nuxeo for similar reasons I did. There’s a popular saying, “When you’re the smartest person in a room, you’re in the wrong room.” I never get the feeling that I am in the wrong room here - I get to learn something every day.
Q: Tell us a little about the Content Services and DAM markets in the DACH and APAC regions. What opportunities do you see here for Nuxeo?
DAM and Content Services have become a significant strategic component for companies across different industries. One can hardly operate without a professional solution in place. The processes we can help companies with are quite similar on a global perspective. Here’s one industry example: We’re currently working with different major banks across Europe to help them with a successful digital transformation that will also help them meet government regulations around content services strategies, such as GDPR or MiFID II. Those are relevant for all organizations dealing with customer sensitive data, it’s a global trend. Another opportunity for Nuxeo in the DACH region is simply to increase awareness and being recognized by more and more companies as THE modern content services platform you want to work with. Being historically strong in the US and France, we can see our brand rapidly making its way to the Fortune 500 companies’ top choice list of softwares in Europe’s key regions. It’s a trend we’re very proud of and supporting it as best as we can.
Q: You regularly engage with prospective customers to understand their content management needs. What are some of the most common challenges you encounter and how does Nuxeo can help solve them?
Whether companies are introducing a professional content services solution for the first time or planning to replace an existing tool for a real enterprise level software, I see a couple of common challenges we’re helping our customers with and here is what I think: It’s important to understand the requirements from all involved stakeholders, on the business as well as the IT side and work with each other from the beginning to ensure that people are engaged, current pain points are clear to everyone, short-term project goals as well as the long-term big picture are clearly defined. If you work with a limited team perspective, there is a risk of choosing a product that covers departmental short-term needs but fails to become the right platform that scales for growing content, interdisciplinary workflows or more diverse use cases across the organization. With its open content management system architecture, hyper scalability and highly flexible configurability, the Nuxeo Platform plays nicely into this big picture as it’s one platform but can be used for several use cases such as Digital Asset Management, Case Management, Document Management, Knowledge Management solution etc. just to name a few. My second advice is: Don’t stop your engagement once the solution is in place. Content management is an ongoing process and not a start-stop project. The best advice I heard came from a customer who successfully introduced a DAM solution in 4 different global locations, continuing their rollout to their remaining offices in Asia. They named dedicated cheerleaders who would advocate from team to team on a monthly basis on how they’re using the new DAM platform and how it has helped them in their daily work routine. You can choose the best product there is but it won’t help you, if your people don’t know how to use it.
Q: You briefly lived in New York before moving to Europe. How was your experience living in New York vs Europe?
I absolutely enjoyed my time in New York City (NYC) and in the United States in general. It’s the positive attitude of the people, the friendliness and openness that I learned to appreciate very much. It makes your day so much easier if you start it with a few “How are you? - I’m doing great “ interactions (You don’t get this in Germany very often). NYC has a certain magic; to me the drive and the vibe were like adrenaline. No matter how my mood was, as soon as my feet hit the streets of Manhattan I felt so motivated to take the day as best as I possibly could. It has incredible energy and dynamism. I really can’t complain now - I live in London and this city has its charms too. It’s a different vibe than NYC, but certainly fascinating. I’m enjoying it a lot. There’s just one thing that I miss a lot - the skyline of NYC, something I could look at forever! Another big difference I found when I moved to New York is the business meeting culture. People in NYC are incredibly busy all the time, and there is no time to look at 30+ PowerPoint slides. They know exactly what they want from a meeting and are very on point. I remember one of my first customer meetings in New York and it took exactly 25 minutes. That’s pretty much the welcome and introduction phase in meetings I was used to in Europe. So when I walked out of the building, turned around and thought well ok, this is NYC… and, I like this meeting culture a lot, it makes you become more efficient with your message.
Q : What do you like to do in your free time?
I’m trying to live a very active lifestyle and find a good mix of activation and relaxation. I workout regularly and if you don’t find me in the gym, try the spa. I’m a massage addict and have tried all kinds of styles there. Wherever I travel I make sure I try one of the local massages. I recently changed my workout routine to include more weights oriented programs and work with a personal trainer once a week to achieve my goals. I like pushing myself beyond the comfort zone. Apart from that, I’m always up for a good coffee or a pint, both of what London has to offer in abundance. I’m still in discovery mode here.