GFI vice president vows to focus on channel
New arrival Pat Hume wants to take security software vendor 100 per cent indirect
Former SAP and Avaya sales boss Pat Hume has pledged to shore up the channel culture of GFI Software after being appointed as its vice president of worldwide sales.
Hume (pictured) left SAP in December and told CRN she had turned down approaches from a number of large vendors in order to join GFI, which specialises in web and email security software and hosted solutions for SMBs.
"I wanted to join someone smaller so I could grow something and get my hands dirty, rather than sustaining a plateau," she said.
GFI runs an exclusive two-tier model in the UK and EMEA, but still operates some direct sales in its native US, which Hume said she would work to curb.
"The goal is to evolve to be as close to 100 per cent through the channel as we can over time," she said.
"This requires us to do some things we haven't done historically. I have enough experience in the industry to look at GFI's product portfolio and map that to an appropriate routes-to-market strategy."
Hume was previously senior vice president of channel sales for SME at
SAP - before being promoted to a wider channel role - and before that oversaw global SME channel sales for Avaya.
"At SAP and Avaya I was always involved in SMB, but their mission was broader," she said. "At GFI, we all wake up every morning and think about SMB, and are not straddling sectors."
In the UK, Hume said her mission was to improve predictability and margins for partners.
"We want to become more of a business partner for them and put together annual plans that support growth expectations," she explained.