Board of Directors Appoints New Leadership Team of SaaS Veterans
Toronto - December 3, 2019 – The Vision Critical Board of Directors (Board) today announced it appointed Ross Wainwright as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and a member of the Vision Critical Board of Directors, effective December 2, 2019. It also appoints Riaz Raihan as President of Products effective January 6, 2020.
CEO Scott Miller has stepped down and remains on the Vision Critical Board of Directors. Since the capital restructuring in 2017, Miller successfully transformed the business focusing it on the rapidly growing Customer Experience Management (CXM) sector, transforming the customer base and bringing the company to positive cash flow. In addition, Miller created new partnerships in the market research space. Wainwright will now bring his vast experience in scaling SaaS businesses as Vision Critical enters its next phase of growth. Miller played an invaluable role in planning the current leadership transition and will continue to play an active role as a Board member. The Board thanks Miller for his service and leadership over the past seven years.
Phil Deck, Chairman of the Vision Critical Board, commented, "After a rigorous and wide-ranging selection process, the Board is delighted to welcome Ross and Riaz to the new leadership team at Vision Critical. Ross is an exceptional business leader and a proven CEO with a track record of leading diverse executive teams that deliver high-quality performance in complex enterprise software. Riaz has an impressive history as a global C-suite digital technology executive leading product management and engineering teams. The Board welcomes Ross and Riaz and looks forward to partnering with them and the broader leadership team to build Vision Critical into a leading next-generation CXM company.”
“I am delighted to return to my roots and lead a Canadian technology company to its next level of excellence. I’m excited to get started in establishing Vision Critical as a premier CX partner with the main objective of accelerating business value for our clients across a number of key industries such as Media, Retail and Consumer Goods, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Technology,” said Wainwright. “I am confident that Vision Critical, with its long-standing track record in delivering proactive customer insights, has an exciting future ahead and I look forward to working closely with our talented team to drive innovation for our customers.”
Wainwright comes to Vision Critical from global networking and services provider Dimension Data/NTT, where he led the Americas region as CEO. Prior to joining Dimension Data, he spent over 15-years with SAP, where his most recent role was as Chief Customer Officer for the S/4HANA Cloud business unit. Before this, Wainwright was Global Head of Financial Services with end-to-end responsibility for the SAP financial services industry. He also served as Chief Operating Officer (COO) for SAP and Executive Vice President of Services for North America, where he was responsible for the direct leadership of more than 3,400 professionals in the services line of business, including sales, consulting delivery and education. He also held senior leadership positions within SAP’s License business and also led the transformation of the Services Sales team within North America.
“I’m excited to partner with the leadership team and the board as we continue to move Vision Critical forward in the CXM market,” said Raihan, who will lead product strategy, product management, research & development, engineering, UX design and customer cloud operations for the company. “Both Ross and I look forward to galvanizing employees to drive world-class execution and build a customer-centric culture that is based on growth and a winning environment.”
Raihan has over 20 years of technology and product leadership experience in the United States and Canada. He is a veteran of SAP, Cisco, Infor, and Accenture. He comes to Vision Critical from Cisco where he served as the Global GM for the Internet of Things (IoT) business unit. He led a team of 1,200 engineers, architects and product managers that made digital strategies come to life by harnessing the power of IoT, cloud, analytics and AI/machine learning. Prior to joining Cisco, Raihan spent a decade with SAP. As Senior Vice President & COO at SAP, Raihan was responsible for product operations, value engineering, solution engineering, industry products and centers of excellence.
About Vision Critical
Vision Critical is a cloud-based CXM SaaS company that specializes in gathering and applying the hardest-to-reach customer experience data. Using proprietary technology and processes, Vision Critical is able to deeply engage any audience to increase voluntary customer data capture and apply that data to improve customer experience. With its unique, relationship-based approach, Vision Critical’s Sparq platform enables companies to interact directly with consented audiences of customers. Unlike traditional voice-of-customer methods, Vision Critical unlocks the real-time feedback that companies need to build better products, deliver better services and achieve better business outcomes hand in hand with their own highly engaged, deeply understood customers.
Hundreds of high-performing organizations across multiple industries benefit from Vision Critical’s technology and guidance, including BuzzFeed, LinkedIn, GoDaddy, VMware, and more. To learn more about Vision Critical, follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, or visit us at www.visioncritical.com.