ACG Portland Hosts Andy MacMillian, CEO, Act-On Software

September 12th, 2017 – Portland OR.  The ACG Portland membership was the beneficiary of an excellent talk from Andy MacMillian, CEO, Act-On Software. In his presentation Scaling for Explosive, Second Stage Growth, MacMillian communicated Act-On’s history, current state of affairs and vision for the next chapter in the company’s development.

Act-On is headquartered in Portland, OR and provides a subscription-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) product for marketing automation. The product is targeted to marketing departments of between 1 and 15 people. The company was founded in 2008 by Raghu Raghavan. MacMillian took over the CEO role in 2015 as the company planned for its second stage of growth.

MacMillian maintains that we are in an era of business model disruption and sited the demise of Blockbuster and the rise of Netflix as an example. Netflix created a “friction less” new consumer centered model, while Blockbuster penalized consumers with late fees. The competitive result was dramatic.

He went on to cite the effect of leading business model disrupters in what has been labeled FANG, referring to the effect of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google who have executed innovative “winner take all” business models. The FANG group represents some of the best performing stocks in recent history.

MacMillian shared some of the recent accomplishments at Act-On including achieving cash flow break even status, doubling customer retention rates, and increasing revenue per sales head. Under McMillian’s leadership they have created a culture of pro-active customer success.

MacMillian served up some key take-aways to his engaged executive audience:

• Put customers at the center
• Move friction away from customer experience
• Digitize the customer journey
• Use technology to create scalable business models
• Create transparency and winning culture for talent

Thanks to Andy MacMillian for leaving the ACG Portland membership with an excellent presentation and some actionable strategies for excellence.