Alfresco

Background

Alfresco’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software enables more than 1,300 leading organisations to digitise processes, manage content and information more securely.

Clients include Cisco, Bank of NY Mellon, Liberty Mutual, Capital One, the US Navy and NASA.

The company pioneered open-source ECM software. It then saw a gap in the market and created Alfresco One – a hybrid ECM platform that allows storage of data on-premise, on mobile devices and in the cloud.

The company was founded in 2005. It is headquartered in San Mateo, California with an EMEA HQ in Maidenhead.

Requirements

Alfresco needed high calibre salespeople to grow its EMEA operations – but struggled to find them because they misunderstood its offering.

Some still viewed Alfresco solely as an open-source provider, unaware of the advantages that its freemium Alfresco One platform could deliver.

Alfresco needed Oakstone to challenge and change these high calibre executives’ perceptions of its ECM solutions and build a strong EMEA sales team based in the software company’s EMEA HQ in Maidenhead.

Oakstone's Solution

An Oakstone team led by Divisional Director Andy Strong met with Alfresco’s newly appointed worldwide vice president of sales.

Andy impressed him with the breadth and depth of knowledge in the space and his understanding of how to engage with and educate key performers who would have otherwise ignored the opportunity.

Alfresco allowed Oakstone the opportunity to source an EMEA vice-president experienced in ECM and Business Process Management (BPM) sales plus an elite sales team for the UK, Germany, France, the Nordic countries, Benelux, Italy and Spain.

Andy and his team worked in close co-operation with Alfresco’s management team to secure these crucial hires.

Andy highlighted “our exceptionally harmonious working relationship with Alfresco’s internal recruitment team.

“This transparency and open communication has made it easy for both teams to achieve their objectives,” he added.

Andy and his colleagues at Oakstone worked on both a retained and an exclusive contingent basis to secure all the sales hires – enabling Alfresco’s internal team to concentrate on technical hires.

Benefits

Sales executives hired by Oakstone enabled Alfresco to deliver a new go-to-market strategy which led to significant and consistent growth year on year.

26 Hires.

Our Expert

Andy and his team have supported many high profile companies in landing and expanding across EMEA, playing a fundamental part in them building highly successful teams (many from scratch) which have enabled their businesses to successfully IPO – including exclusive work with Coupa, Splunk, SuccessFactors & Eloqua.

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Over the last 4 years, I have worked closely with Andy and his team at Oakstone. I value their insight and their honest assessment of candidates that they put in front of us as well as their ability to deliver. They have really taken the time to understand Alfresco and this comes across in the quality of the candidates. Oakstone has placed strong senior sales and marketing talent within Alfresco and we often retain Oakstone on senior level searches throughout EMEA. Andy has personally successfully led retained campaigns for us in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Benelux and Spain. I consider Andy and Oakstone to be a real partner to myself and Alfresco.

— Paul Hennessey: Global head of talent at Alfresco Software