F-Secure is today positioned as a trusted enterprise security brand

Sanjay Khera 
Head Channel Marketing - APAC, F-Secure 

“In my views the world of CMOs is not necessarily confined to the traditional area of marketing per se of products or services alone. It is not only an exercise where products or services are introduced smartly and engagingly to wider customer and channel entities—making use of a plethora of ways including ATL and BTL activities.

Rather, marketing, in my perception, is about staying closer to customers and channels perpetually—day in and day out—so that they feel assured and well respected because they simply trusted the words of CMOs and their ‘people’ in the first place itself when they (marketing teams) so passionately and eagerly pitched in their offerings before them. Customers and partners should not feel deserted after the actual sales happen. They must not feel abandoned after the relationships are solemnized. Keeping customers happy is an innate objective of every CMO.

In many ways marketing is the first line of interaction with customers and channel partners. The area of sales is somewhat mechanical in nature, where marketing initiatives make the initial inroads; and once the path is pulverized by marketing teams, sales teams come over and trigger the final precipitation.

Now, the relevance of CMOs is not restricted to the pre-sales efforts alone, the relationships with customers continue even after they end up buying products or services offered. This means CMOs need to ensure that the products or services delivered to customers perform as promised by them in the very beginning of the marketing cycles. Therefore, this is in the interest of CMOs that post sales services and warranties are delivered promptly, effectively—and on time—to their customers and channel partners.

A dissatisfied customer having bad product and feeble support service is the biggest nemesis for any worthwhile CMO. All good work and flashy marketing campaigns can be sullied irreparably by a disenchanted customer. So, CMOs do tend to influence the deliveries of support and service mechanisms undertaken by their respective companies.

When I joined F-Secure, the company had primarily been known as a pioneer in anti-virus space. Our Operator business running over a decade was pretty much in good shape. We were working with majority of telecom operators and ISPs —who integrated the AV functionality into their offerings to end-customers. Our direct consumer business had also been picking up well. However, the enterprise security business was relatively at a nascent stage. The company decided to go the channel way for addressing the enterprise security market nearly a year ago since my joining the company.

My joining F-Secure almost coincided with company’s diversification, and the vision to be a leading cyber security company—offering world-class security to enterprise customers globally. I was entrusted with heading the marketing task of the corporate business unit of F-Secure in South-Asia. So, the immediate challenge for me was to effect this image transition of F-Secure from being a carrier-grade anti-virus company to an integrated cyber security solutions provider.

Supported vehemently by Amit Nath, the then Country Manager of F-Secure, and the team, I took up the initiative for creating dedicated and truly skilled network of channel partners. I’ve this conviction that knowledgeable and dedicated channel partners are the prerequisite for any go-to-market strategy. Gradually, through a well laid out marketing plan—which was culmination of a good mix of marketing activities and aggressive PR and social media push—we succeeded in pitching in F-Secure as a trusted enterprise security brand.

Empowered by the strong R&D efforts, buttressed by a couple of acquisitions, F-Secure continued strengthening its product portfolio offerings by adding new range of cyber security solutions and services. The award-winning technology of F-Secure products gave additional advantage to our marketing and brand building exercise.

We invested heavily in creating a powerful channel eco-system of committed partners by providing them with great value add; enabling them to stay ahead of the competition and doing profitable business with us. We could be able to establish a strong network of PAN India channel partners working closely with us in bringing the award-winning technologies to customers across verticals. Our customer base continued to grow manifold quarter on quarter, and has ever been increasing since then. We appointed RAH Infotech as our National Distributor, followed by Texonic, and then Comguard as a sub-distributor for Mumbai region.

When I look back at this exciting journey of about four years, I draw great satisfaction to see that we could be able to achieve good success on almost every front. F-Secure continued to gain enhanced brand visibility and top of mind brand recall as a leading cyber security vendor equally amongst channel fraternity and customers.”