Our latest interview is with Karolina Eklund, Head of Marketing, Anite
About Anite
Anite plc supplies software and solutions to companies around the world operating in two distinct markets: wireless and travel.
In the wireless market, Anite focuses on providing mobile device testing solutions (Anite’s Handset testing business) and network testing systems (Nemo Network Testing).
In the travel industry, Anite provides systems that help companies, primarily in the leisure sector, run their business more efficiently.
Anite plc has a staff of 500 and its HQ is based in the UK. They have offices in 14 countries throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East.
About Karolina
Karolina joined Anite’s Handset testing business about eight months ago to shape the company’s marketing focus. With a proven background and aptitude for selling, positioning and marketing high tech products and solutions, Karolina has successfully opened, developed and closed business opportunities with major telecoms operators such as Orange, 3 and T-Mobile as well as major systems integrators such as Alcatel, Thales and NSN. She specialises in formulating and implementing effective international marketing plans for multi-national companies.
The Interview
(Sandra Malone, Marketing Director for marketingmoves, interviews Karolina Eklund)
SM: Hi Karolina, tell me about your new role with Anite
KE: Hi Sandy. We’ve got a small core team focused on supporting Anite’s growth through a range of integrated marketing techniques. For example, we produce seminar series, global customer newsletters, we’ve recently launched a new website and we’ve also been doing some very targeted telemarketing to mobile network operators.
SM: You sound busy! In talking with other marketing professionals, they tell me that more and more, there’s a need for a very different sort of marketing professional to keep pace with and drive corporate growth in this economic climate. From your perspective, what sort of marketing professional is needed to cope with the challenges facing companies today.
KE: Core marketing skills and capabilities are important, but even more so, a good cultural fit is important. Being able to understand and work within a company culture allows a marketing professional to deliver their best results. It’s also important to be able to challenge appropriately within that context, to multi-task and to understand the big picture.
SM: Cultural fit is always an interesting topic-sometimes it’s the key reason why people struggle with achieving their objectives. When they don’t ‘fit’, they struggle for internal advocacy and that prohibits progress, both personally and professionally. Are there other attributes that you think are critical for a marketer of today?
KE: In more technical areas, such as the ones that Anite operate in, being able to look at the product features and convert them to benefits that resonate to customer groups makes the difference between competitive products. Customers want to see that we can articulate our capabilities and we usually do that through a thought leadership approach or through running bespoke seminars in our regions. Product Managers will define the product road map, but they value the efforts of marketing to define the messages and the plan to drive growth, which is what we provide.
SM: Karolina, that’s been really interesting. Thanks for your time.
