In 2024, project and workplace management tools like monday.com have become critical for businesses navigating the complexities of hybrid work and global collaboration. With streamlined workflows, enhanced communication, and data-driven insights, these platforms encourage teams to stay productive, agile, and connected in our increasingly dynamic and distributed working world.

It makes perfect sense to see monday.com continue its rapid growth and go from strength to strength, refining its product proposition and expanding its workforce and global footprint. Earlier this year, the business opened a new office in London to continue its UK and EMEA expansion. Integral to that expansion was the addition of the company’s first-ever General Manager of EMEA to corral its regional strategy.

“I really have two mandates, and why Monday thought that a GM EMEA was necessary,” Pierre Berlin, General Manager of EMEA at monday.com, told UC Today. “The first mandate is really regionalisation and getting the focus and attention of our customers and employees. I’ve been hired to build a leadership team, to have a specific marketing person, HR person, and sales leader dedicated to Europe.”

“The second part is not specific to EMEA,” Berlin continued. “Of course, my action is in EMEA, but it’s helping the company transform as we grow. We passed $1 billion of revenue, and we are a very product-led organisation. Our fastest segment today in terms of growth is the enterprise segment. By growing even faster in the enterprise segment, we need to address that specific kind of population of customers slightly different than when you are in product-led growth.”

“So, if you want, it’s a bit more sales-led growth than product-led growth and a little bit of rebalancing.”

What does this mean concretely?

“It means that we need to be closer to our customers,” Berlin explained. “When you are in product-led growth, it’s more difficult to really understand your customers, to know them, to know exactly what they are doing and how the value is getting delivered.”

“When you are starting to be a market-addressing big organisation, we need to be close to them. We need to understand how they are using our solution and what the value is. So, going through that product-led growth, keeping the great performance marketing engine and product-led growth mentality that we have, we need to strengthen the sales-led growth and bring those skills and that mentality to better serve our customers.”

When In Rome

One of the critical aspects of regional expansion is tailoring messaging to the local audience. Is this an area Berlin and monday.com have viewed as a challenge?

Berlin clarified: “I won’t say that we are building a different product per market. Let’s be absolutely clear: Work management, CRM, services, and dev are not specific to the UK, France, or Germany. I think the effort is really on the knowledge of our customers and the relationships that we are building.”

“Of course, providing local support, the local language, and being able to support a German customer in Germany is increasingly important” Berlin added. “I’m a real believer in the community aspect of the culture, that nuance. It’s more from a relationship and how we are partnering with our customers that we need to adapt. I won’t say that our product is different per market.

Berlin highlighted that every few years of working in SaaS sales, you have a trust moment with customers about contract renewal. He stressed that this aspect of sales forces all companies, including monday.com, to adapt to the evolving relationship between customers and sales and the importance of close proximity for understanding that relationship and bringing that value.

“Otherwise, 12 months later, the people will leave,” Berlin said matter-of-factly. “So localisation, really with our community, delivering our support and our marketing in the local language. I would also say we’re travelling quite a lot to be in the cities and to be with our customers right now because that’s the only way I believe to succeed, particularly in that enterprise segment that is growing significantly.”

Has Berlin identified any markets or opportunities unique to Europe in his eight months so far?

“Yes and no,” Berlin answered. “Like any company, we analyse our customers and where they are in which industries. But the beauty of our solution is that we are touching the need that can come from any industry. If you are thinking about project management, helping any employees be more productive and to be the best version of themselves at work, somehow, it can be anywhere.”

However, Berlin underlined strengths in certain industries compelled by monday.com’s product and vision, including retail, media and manufacturing in the UK, and manufacturing, retail, technology and pharma outside the UK.

What about AI? The acronym on everybody’s lips is certainly a global phenomenon, but has Berlin noted a distinction between European interest in the technology compared to monday.com’s more established market in the States?

“Monday, as a company, I would say we are more advanced in the UK because the UK is the first country where we have grown outside of our headquarters,” Berlin said. “So this is something that I feel particularly in the UK, but it does not mean that it’s not the case in France and Germany, for example.”

“It means that our presence is much stronger there, so I feel that we have more momentum and more discussion right now in the UK than in other countries. But yes, more to come, and I can’t comment here, obviously, but this is high on our priority list.”

Berlin stressed that AI is “at the heart of (monday.com’s) roadmap”. Monday recently launched AI-powered Monday services, and although it’s still in beta, Berlin said that the solution is “starting to see really good traction, specifically in EMEA”.

“Again, the privilege of being where the headquarters is and where the product is developed is that the first natural partnership between the product team, the sales team, and our customer is done in EMEA,” Berlin outlined. “We have quite a good number of customers in Europe who are currently on Monday Services, and this is clearly a big area of focus. Then, to address the customer needs in the enterprise segment, we are really strengthening our product offer, particularly in the work management space, in 2025.”

“We believe we are at the centre of generational shifts in technology and the way people work that creates significant opportunities for our business. Our goal is to become the go-to platform for all core aspects of work. Our unique product architecture enables us to improve our platform and build superior products rapidly and efficiently. We choose new products according to customer needs, which is how Monday CRM, Monday dev, and Monday service came to fruition.”

“Over the past year, we have received 1,700 feature requests from our customers – many of which have been implemented into our platform,” Berlin added. “We intend to continue making significant investments in research and development and hiring top technical talent to enable new use cases, serve more verticals, and increase enterprise-grade features on our platform.”

What Will Successful Expansion Look Like?

Naturally, a successful regional expansion is illustrated by fulfilling strategic milestones. For Berlin and monday.com, there are several, including talent, which Berlin described as the company’s “number one priority”.

“As I said, we are recruiting significantly, a large number of people. Being able to attract, retain, and develop talent is completely in the heart of what I’m doing. We have big growth. We are looking to have new offices. In three years, I’m hoping that we will have helped a lot of people to grow in their skills and in their careers and that we will be 80,000 square meters in London. It’s potentially 600, 700 employees, it’s pretty big.”

The second priority Berlin asserts is that, as monday.com scales and grows, the processes and the way it operates will have to follow accordingly. “Building the foundation of processes that support our growth and our revenue and number of customers,” he expanded. “We have 225,000 customers in the world. It’s pretty big. So it’s in the system in terms of operational excellence, if you want. This is absolutely central. Otherwise, we won’t support our growth.”

The third milestone is linked to Berlin’s mandate: helping EMEA become closer to its customers and transform into more sales-led growth. “Don’t think of sales as just the guy who’s selling is the sales customer success,” he said. “It’s really about better knowing our customers and really providing them with the level of services that they are expecting. That’s really necessary.”

Then there is the international expansion.

“International expansion is definitely something that is on our radar,” Berlin expounded. “I can’t say I want to be close to my customers and then do everything from my room. So, at some point, we will investigate all the markets.”

“Of course, doing some proper work takes a bit of time. But regions like the Nordics, France, Europe, and Germany. How do we manage them? How do we replicate the success we had in the UK? I mean, we already have a lot of success in those countries. But how do we bring what we have been able to learn from the UK into the heart of our priorities for the next three years?”

The final milestone is product-driven: significantly supporting companies “help companies help their employees be the best versions of themselves”, as Berlin put it.

“What I’m saying is really moving the unnecessary burden that we are all facing with so many tools with different sources of truth,” he added. “We believe that we can really impact people’s productivity and make their lives a bit easier in a world where we are all connected, and it is too much. We believe it, but we need to be aligned with our partners and our customers around those aspects. So being seen and really being a strategic partner of our customers is something that we want to be.”

“We want to really build the next level in terms of strategic partnership with our customers because we can bring value to the work management space, as well as the CRM, services, and dev spaces.”

What Does The Future Hold?

Of course, the product itself is vital to fulfilling all of these milestones. What does Berlin envision as the future of workplace management tools, as articulated through monday.com?

“The way we are positioning ourselves on Monday is a multi-product solution,” Berlin said. “What we envision in our 2025 focus is going upmarket, given we have the most growth right now in the enterprise segment. Bringing a new number of features and capabilities (to the platform) is also clear. But the more long-term thinking is we want to serve any knowledge worker and not specifically only through the work management capability.”

Berlin highlights that today’s monday.com users are also using that work management solution in a natural context, working on an area that previously was only thought of as a marketing or sales operation. It is, in effect, trying to democratise work, project, and product management.

“We can see that the product management solution and what people are thinking is really across any department in the organisation. So my sense is that where we (previously) were a limited number of people, project managers, and certain specific functions, Monday, by the simplicity of the usage of the product, is now democratising the solution.

“I guess that success for Monday in the next three to five years would really be that democratisation.”

Democratising work management is certainly a noble and exciting ambition—in the EMEA and beyond.



from UC Today https://ift.tt/o4Jj3BA