Former chief evangelist for Mendix takes marketing helm at pivotal time for enterprise digital transformation
Mendix, a Siemens business and the global leader in modern enterprise application development, announced that low-code veteran Nick Ford has been promoted to chief marketing officer at Mendix. Ford, based in London, was previously vice president of product marketing and chief evangelist at Mendix. He joins the C-suite leadership team for the low-code category leader as it drives low-code from a supporting role to the center of the application development stack to fuel Mendix’s next phase of hypergrowth.
Mendix, with global operations across Europe, North America, China, India, Australia, and the Middle East, pioneered the enterprise low-code market beginning in 2005 and was acquired by Siemens in 2018. The company’s enterprise low-code, model-driven approach has emerged as the mainstream paradigm for enterprises creating new business value with digital solutions. Researchers estimate that the $13.8 billion global market for low-code development will continue to see 44% annual growth through 2028.
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Post-pandemic demands accelerate enterprise low-code adoption
“Today, enterprises are being challenged to respond to accelerated demand for industry-specific digital transformation,” said Ford, Mendix’s new chief marketing officer. “This is coupled with a tsunami of pandemic-influenced tech innovations coming to market. It’s harder now for businesses to separate the signal from the noise. Mendix’s dynamic app development platform is the near- and long-term strategic choice for enterprises to overcome these pain points and lead in the digital-first economy.”
Ford added, “The Mendix platform is widely recognized for its best-in-class ability to modernize core systems, improve operational efficiencies, digitize customer engagement, and rapidly launch new products and business models. These strengths enable Mendix to meet the enterprise at any point on the arc of their digital transformation journey with customized solutions to stay competitive in their target markets.”
From a coal mining town to the C-suite
Coal mining was the main industry in Dinnington, a small town in South Yorkshire, England, where Nick Ford spent his childhood. Ford credits his father for introducing him to computer programming by gifting the young teenager a ZX Spectrum kit, enabling colorful, programmable gaming. Thus inspired, Ford launched his 30-plus-year career in the software development space, beginning as a COBOL programmer and software consultant for north England’s steel industry.
“My experience working with a fourth-generation programming language set the stage for appreciating the need to build software better, and seeing the value early-on to leverage abstraction in software languages,” said Ford.
In 2010, Ford joined Mendix as solutions architect/sales engineer when the young company had fewer than 40 employees. The same year, Ford helped launch the company’s first branch in the United Kingdom. As a product expert and technical entrepreneur, Ford spent a decade in multiple product expert roles, from Chief Evangelist to Head of Solutions Architecture, for platform launches that transformed Mendix into a multi-million-dollar, low-code industry leader. Ford cites his “appetite to change, adapt, and purposefully chase opportunities” as the drivers fueling his rise from software developer to chief marketing officer of a global enterprise.
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A modern “chief growth officer” using marketing data to fuel growth
In his new position, Ford is responsible for more than 100 employees, overseeing Mendix’s product marketers and evangelists, sales enablement, digital operations, and data teams. “We have access to a tremendous amount of information detailing who is using our platform, how they are using it, and why,” Ford said. “The enormous potential of these metrics should change the practice of every CMO. I plan to explore metrics far beyond traditional core marketing KPIs. By examining external data and marketing trends in combination with internal marketing to improve the organization’s product and processes, a modern CMO is well positioned to accelerate enterprise growth and revenue.”
“Nick has a unique strategic vision for data-driven marketing,” said Tim Srock, Mendix’s new CEO. “Combined with his unmatched mastery of our platform and clear understanding of how low-code can and will become the centerpiece of enterprise app development, he is the right person at the right time to steer marketing to deliver the revenue growth we are targeting.”
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