Hi Amit, tell us about yourself and share some background about Anodot (how you ended up joining the company)
I just love data. It’s amazing to see how easily data is collected today and how it can inform and optimize business decisions. I actually studied psychology and it always amazes me to see how data can be used as a tool to make organizations work smarter and to support effective conversations between peers and to communicate needs and results up and down the organization.
I joined Anodot three years ago after leading data and product teams for some of the most successful startups in Israel. Soon after I joined Anodot to lead our product management team I was asked to head marketing. Now I find myself spending more time with our PR team than with our engineers.
eCommerce was booming in 2020; how did it affect Anodot? – What are you going to focus on this year?
Companies with a strong digital and online presence appreciate what the Anodot platform does. Our algorithms analyze more than 500M metrics every minute – there is no other solution that can analyze 100 percent of the data collected at that scale. As the pandemic started, consumer patterns immediately changed – travel companies saw a steep drop in performance while gaming companies saw a spike. Every vertical was affected. And what seemed like a momentary change turned into a ‘new normal’.
Our customers were the first to react. Anodot alerted them to these changes in usage trends as they were happening. What is equally important is that our algorithms learned the new norm very quickly – and they did it autonomously. Anodot’s alerts enabled customers to proactively monitor their customer behavior, keep customer experience seamless and protect revenue streams.
Lastly, there was a widespread focus on costs. Many companies invested in cost-reduction initiatives and we were able to leverage our capabilities to help manage to spend where it was most unpredictable – the cloud. Our cloud usage alerts are helping customers change course so they don’t find unexpected surprises in their cloud services bills.
How much has the eCommerce industry evolved in the last 2-3 years with the arrival of automation, customer experience, and data-driven insights?
The eCommerce industry is booming and will continue to do so. This means there’s a lot of latent potential in making processes more effectively automated. An autonomous monitoring process will continue to drive faster and smarter decisions. In the coming years, customer experience teams will increasingly use automation to improve eCommerce SLA and customer retention.
Tell us about the VP Marketing Role role in a pandemic crisis – what role digital transformation has in this crisis?
It is a challenging and a fascinating time to be facing the market.. Markets are being created, destroyed, or completely changed in front of our eyes and it is all happening so fast. During this time, it’s been very important to listen to the market and to your customers, and to understand your offering and how it can be adjusted accordingly. The digital transformation enables companies to test different assumptions and use insights to adapt to market change within days and sometimes even hours.
Another thing that’s been unique is managing a team that’s completely remote, and onboarding new team members in this climate. I found amazing straight and residences within Anodot and specifically within our amazing marketing team which enabled us to be more agile, and react quickly to the changing nature of marketing during the pandemic.
How is Anodot changing the e-commerce landscape?
Anodot’s vision is to optimize business autonomously. We enable companies to focus on their growth and to not worry about operational glitches. We have our customers’ back. We alert them when an issue could impact their revenue, which enables them to look ahead and grow their business. It changes teams from being reactive to proactive.
What makes Anodot different from your direct competitors? And how is it different from legacy players in your space?
Anodot is the fastest and most accurate way to monitor your business. We truly understand our customers, in depth, and oversee their entire data, from business KPIs to application, IT and system metrics.
Legacy systems are slow to react, need lots of maintenance, and are hard to integrate. We offer an autonomous approach and we put the business first. If you want to monitor the entire ecosystem of your business – partners, customer experience, revenue, and cost – no other system can match our capabilities.
Do you think working from home is good or bad for employee experience? How is Anodot planning its office strategy in Post-covid-19 days?
Anodot has always made a huge effort to maintain the company culture, but that became a bit more challenging when we went remote. On the team level, we meet regularly online to sync and share ideas. And we are assigning new hires a “buddy” to help orient them to how things work and make them feel welcome. We also meet as a company to share progress and changes, as well as fun activities. For the holidays, we actually had a comedian-magician perform and, surprisingly, he still managed to make his tricks work over Zoom. Clearly, everyone has had to adjust.
As for the future, we hope to use our office for at least half of the workweek, but will keep things flexible, allowing each team to decide what’s the right balance of office/remote work.
