PACT SaaS Roundtable

March 22, 2022 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM (EDT)

Description

SaaS Rountable The SaaS Roundtable is exclusive to SaaS executives (CEOs, Presidents, and Chief Technology or Strategy Officers, etc.), and presents an opportunity to network and develop best practices with regional SaaS executives.

Customer Success/Renewals

How to build the right customer success team, increasing renewals and overall customer engagement

For some SaaS businesses renewals and churn are key components to long term success and are not a given with solutions that are less sticky and easily switched for other options in the market. 

Key topics to be discussed include: 

• Building a customer success team focused on the value the customer gets from your product
• Thinking about renewals not as a singular event but as ongoing processes
• Customer success as customer engagement vs customer support and problem solving

Moderator: 

Ned Moore, Chief Executive Officer, Clutch

Speakers: 

Frank Ciannella, Head of the Cloud Ambassadors Organization at SAP America 

Hilary Curran, Director of Customer Experience, Guru

Josh Smith, Head of Design, United Effects, LLC

Thank you to our sponsors:

AB Bernstein

BDO

Boomi

Cigniti

ORS Partners

SAP

SEI

Troutman Pepper

About our speakers:

Frank Ciannella, VP & Head of North American Cloud Ambassador Organization, SAP America

Mr. Ciannella is responsible for driving successful adoption, deployment, and business outcomes for strategic customers across the SAP SaaS Line of Business solution portfolio.  In this role, Mr. Ciannella has engaged with hundreds of SAP customers across each line of business area, including procurement, human experience management, and customer experience along each phase of the customer lifecycle.  He also created the Cloud Executive Advisory Council as a community to bring together C level executives to engage in peer networking, peer story sharing, and learning.  Mr. Ciannella brings more than 24 years of experience in the enterprise software industry in a variety of roles. 

Prior to leading SaaS Customer Success, he drove adoption and deployment for SAP’s strategic technology portfolio.  Previously, Mr. Ciannella led large scale financial transformation consulting programs across a number of customers and industries, and advised CFO’s and Finance organizations on how best to leverage SAP solutions. 

Mr. Ciannella is a CPA, and previous to SAP served as a public accounting auditor at a national accounting firm.  Mr. Ciannella received his BS in Accountancy from Northern Illinois University, and his MBA from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management.

Josh Smith, Head of Design, United Effects, LLC

In his 20 years of professional experience, Josh has bridged his success in screenwriting, photography, communications design, product design, organization management, and agile software development to create an effective and uniquely tailored skillset that drives technology startups and enterprises forward with confidence in the products they build. He most recently served as a leader in design at three successful enterprises: Elexio Inc., Frontline Education, and Vertex, Inc. Whether discussing his work in the film industry internationally, photographing celebrities for magazines, rebranding multi-platform SAAS portfolios, or operationalizing design to scale, Josh cares most about the people and relationships that make all these things possible, and firmly lives by the principle that all of us are smarter than any of us.

He is currently the Head of Design for a SaaS startup called United Effects and is a SAFe Program Consultant who coaches design leaders on how to integrate product design, UX research, and design thinking into lean-agile cultures and operations of all sizes.

Ned Moore, Chief Executive Officer, Clutch

Ned Moore has been a lifelong entrepreneur in a wide array of sectors including information technology, healthcare, insurance, retail, real estate and the wholesale distribution industries.   He has built high performing teams to support fast growing companies providing vision, strategy, operational skills and leadership during several phases of a company’s lifecycle.  He also has extensive experience in raising capital from a variety of different sources and sectors to fuel companies experiencing rapid growth along with both buy side and sell side M&A transactions.  He has founded and grown several companies.

Currently Ned is the Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Clutch, which provides the leading Customer Management Platform for B2C business in driving more loyal customers through automated relevant experiences.  Prior to Clutch, he was the Co-founder, Chairman and CEO at Portico Systems providing enterprise software solutions into the healthcare payer market experiencing tremendous growth and ultimately being sold to McKesson Corporation (NYSE:MCK).  Over his career he has raised over $60MM in venture capital returning and average of 3-4x for investors and has grown companies from zero to over 250+ employees at exit.  Under Ned’s leadership Clutch was named Technology Startup of the Year in 2014 and Portico was named Emerging Technology Company of the Year in 2009 by the Greater Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technology (PACT).  Both Clutch and Portico were named several times to the Inc. 5000 list.  Clutch has also been named to the to the Philadelphia 100 (Philadelphia Business Journal’s list of the fastest growing privately held companies) 3 times and Portico was named more than 7 times earning a spot in the Hall of Fame.