Michael Allen… Building and collaborating with local partners will help us win new clients in the Emirates

Michael Allen is the Vice President of Worldwide Partner Business at Dynatrace and has been regarded as a key visionary in this market. He is responsible for motivating and guiding the teams that are in charge of the company’s regional selling partners and ensuring the best results for the company’s growth.

We had an exclusive press interview in which he discussed the most important issues related to the overall activities of his company “Dynatrace”:

Q.1.Where do you find yourselves in the circle of competition?

Ans. While we’re doing well in the Middle East, we know we could do much more with the help of our local partners and a new sales team from Dubai. Building and collaborating with local partners will help us win new clients in the emirate, a huge and important market for us. This has been our successful approach across 40 countries, and we will do the same in other global markets.  

In Dubai, we are not seeing the traditional competitions that we usually face in other regions. But the main challenge for us here is to establish Dynatrace as a technology brand that offers a best-in-class software intelligence platform for the automation of cloud operations.

Q.2. Why do you put Dubai as a centre for your launch?

Ans. I have been coming to the region for probably 20, 24 years now, and I’m just super impressed by the speed of its transformation. It’s incredible. We have been getting good leads not only in the UAE but also in Saudi Arabia, another huge market. The region presents us with significant growth opportunities across industries.

Q.3. What are the challenges you face to build, manage and scale a sales team, especially operating a product line focused sales organization?

Ans. Like any business enterprise, Dynatrace also faces a myriad of challenges. We need to make sure that our sales team fully understands our product or industry.  This entails hiring the right people. Please note that there is no single definition of a successful salesperson, as it varies widely from product to product. But we need someone who is patient, detail-oriented and able to adapt to our specific sales motion, which is our method of delivering our product.

Fostering a customer-centric culture rather than focusing too much on sales growth is just as critical as building the right teams. A sales process should be dynamically aligned with customer demands. This will eventually serve as an engine that will drive long-term growth, win new customers, upsell existing products, and predict growth trends vital to your success.

When it comes to the quality of a product, most users only look at it from their perspectives. Given this, it is important to do research and conduct surveys to better understand your clients and create an appropriate approach to win them over.

Q.4. How do you control costs and time of re-building applications?

Ans. Cost management covers the full lifecycle of a project, from the initial planning phase to measuring the actual cost performance to project completion. The resource planning process of an organization or a project determines what resources will be required in the future.

Work activities and tasks are completed by evaluating and planning the use of physical, human, financial, and informational resources. Work involves people in most cases but some activities require materials. Other tasks involve creating an asset using mainly information inputs (e.g., engineering or software design).

In our case, we offer a software intelligence platform. We offer applications and cloud-based systems that integrate all functions into a single software to save costs. This requires less human effort and time since everything is connected through cloud-based systems. We have also made sure to provide industries with a flexible and easy-to-use platform.

Q.5. What are the advantages of cloud-native architecture for companies?

Ans. With modern innovations, more and more companies are adopting cloud-based technology to simplify project processes, increase efficiency, and streamline data for better collaboration among stakeholders. Cloud technology, commonly called cloud computing, is not a new concept, but its integration in the construction industry has grown significantly. This is attributed to the growing market demand, particularly in the UAE where the construction sector is highly competitive, as well as the increasing role of technology in society.

To meet the increasing market demand and address the industry challenges in projects, many use cloud-based systems to ensure better coordination and collaboration. Industry professionals and stakeholders can access faster and more flexible resources through cloud storage, database, servers, software, analytics, and networking.

With more than 27 years of experience in the IT industry, Michael is regarded as a thought leader.  He has spent the last 24 years at Dynatrace, building and operating a sales organization that was focused on a pan- European product line. He also has a proven track record in the strategic development and management of profitable revenue growth. Prior to this, he was involved in many of Compuware’s key acquisitions when he joined in 1998. He was also the manager of a global customer engagement program at Madge Networks, where he maintained alliances with Madge’s partners like Dell, Microsoft, and Compaq.