The company is strengthening its Asia Pacific (APAC) operations with the appointments of senior sales, marketing and technical roles based in Australia. The company is poised to accelerate its growth in the Asia Pacific region after acquiring local corporate clients in the financial services, telecommunications and business services sectors.

Seismic has appointed Richard Kulkarni as its vice president for Asia Pacific to oversee business operations across the region. Mr. Kulkarni has more than 25 years of experience in the Information Technology industry. With a specialty in building high-growth software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, he has held leadership positions at Software AG, CA Technologies, and Qualtrics, among others.

He is joined by Sarah Hayward (Senior Director Global Accounts A/NZ), James Shands (Senior Director Corporate Sales A/NZ) and Joseph Halavasis (Senior Director Corporate Sales A/NZ) who will develop the global and enterprise client base in Australia and New Zealand.

Ms Hayward, a former managing director of Calastone, has been recognized by the industry for her extensive experience as a fintech leader, driving business outcomes with clients in banking, wealth and asset management. Mr Shands comes to Seismic with strong sales management experience at Qrious and Ricoh in New Zealand. Mr Halavazis joins Seismic following leadership positions at McGrath Estate Agents as well as other media and retail brands.

"Companies in A/NZ and Asia continue to leave money on the table because they fail to take advantage of intelligent automation and insights to help customers make purchasing decisions," Mr Kulkarni said. “At the same time, their digital transformation efforts are being impacted by a lack of alignment across their business functions. These are challenges we want to help organizations overcome with AI-driven content analysis and campaign orchestration.”

"In a recent study commissioned by Forrester Consulting, 85 percent believed that buyers would reject a salesperson in the first interaction if they did not receive personalized information," said Mr. Kulkarni. "When you consider today's rapid digitization, the organizations that will prevail are those that can harness analytics to create personalized experiences, delivering the right insights at the right time for their customers."

Seismic has also expanded its Australia-based APAC team with:

• Iris Chan (Director, Marketing APAC), who with more than 20 years in B2B technology marketing, will lead Seismic's regional marketing strategy, drawing on her experience from her leadership roles at IBM and Cisco. Most recently, Ms. Chan, CMO of sales acceleration startup FusionGrove, is also a diversity advocate actively involved in related industry initiatives.

• Hydar Al Ammar (Principal, Partner and Alliances APAC), has 13 years of experience in corporate consulting, organizational development, partnerships and alliances from previous positions at KPMG and Thomson Reuters. Mr. Al Ammar is responsible for building Seismic's regional partner ecosystem and managing strategic alliance relationships.

• Max Verma (Senior Director, Sales Engineering APAC), formerly APJ Solution Architecture Lead at SAP Qualtrics, will draw on customer experience and data analytics expertise from his time at Westpac and Infosys to manages Seismic's pre-sales capabilities and value consulting for clients.

"With enterprises moving to the cloud and an increasingly digital workforce, organizations must change the way they create value for customers," said Seismic CEO and co-founder Doug Winter.

“Building a robust team of local talent on the ground in Australia enables us to better support organizations in achieving greater levels of business agility and customer engagement. Now is the right time to grow our presence in Australia and beyond. We are very proud to have Richard at the helm leading the next phase of our regional expansion efforts. We now have a team of proven leaders to foster stronger relationships with our Asia Pacific customers and partners.”