“Transforming & Developing the Company Relentlessly”

With over 18 years of experience leading marketing and sales teams, delivering multi-million-pound growth and profitability along the way, Radmila Blazheska is an accomplished senior marketer with proven success in both B2B and B2C environments. As CMO, Radmila is responsible for SecurityHQ’s global marketing and communications strategy. This includes new commercial strategies, product launches, events, webinars, and marketing campaigns, developing digital and print content streams, and leading internal re-branding projects.

When Radmila started, Si Consult (Now SecurityHQ) had no marketing function. It did not exist. “Why Feras Tappuni, CEO, hired me was because the company was doing fantastically, but it was kind of like a well-kept secret. No one knew about Si Consult,” she says. “Management and the founders agreed that they needed a marketing department to get the company to where they wanted it to be. They just needed someone to get them there.” The first conversation that Radmila had with Feras was laying out what the company's vision was/is and what are the goals. “When I looked up the company, my first thought was that we needed to refresh the brand. Not just with regards to design but with regards to the whole operation, the name of the company, the brand awareness, that’s the transformation.”

From talking with customers and employees, Radmila could immediately see that this company was/is solid, that it has the trust of customers, and that SecurityHQ has a big loyalty base. “However, when you look at it from the outside, it did not look that way. It was not represented properly. So, the first thing we had to do was reshape everything, refresh the brand, to make it look exactly like what the employees and the customers know what the company is,” she explains. “We needed to introduce the company to not only existing customers and our existing database, but to establish partners in new markets and channels. For me to do that, I had to set up the marketing function, make sure that all the processes were in place internally.”

Without a marketing function, there was no source where the sales team or SDM could generate any marketing material or customer material they needed. There was also nowhere for customers to discover their services and knowledge about all of their offerings and features. “Myself and my marketing team set this up from scratch, we had to build everything, to make it easier to inform sales teams, SDM’s and customers regarding changes and updates of the company, to introduce them to our new services, to introduce them to the products and our offerings,” she adds. “Now, thanks to our marketing efforts, not only do we now have a glowing new website and a brand-new app for our customers, but we have also released multiple new services.” As a result, SecurityHQ’s partners and customer base have grown substantially over the last year and witness growth and develop a Security Operating Centre opening soon in the US.

With this rapid expansion, Radmila’s marketing team has re-branded the entire company globally to show off their award-winning services across all platforms. SecurityHQ won the 2021 IBM Beacon Awards for Outstanding Security Service. SecurityHQ’s success is largely due to its Incident Management & Analytics Platform, powered by IBM QRadar, IBM Security SOAR, and IBM X-Force. This being a unified security management platform to orchestrate and enable collaboration, prioritize incidents, visualize risks, and empower integration.

For Radmila, sharing the knowledge is crucial in order to empower women in the industry. “I am working and have worked with brilliant women in my career who were both mentors and leaders,” she says. “Over the years I have had the exposure and opportunity to learn from these women. From how they tackle, lead, and manage a project and a team, and as well as how they balance work with private life.” There are four things that Radmila thinks are important in terms of being a woman, and being a successful leader:

• Setting realistic, attainable goals

• Being confident and vocal to be heard

• Being prepared to face constructive criticism

• Loving what you do

“In summary, my advice to future CMO’s, and to anyone wanting a successful career is to set up ambitions and goals and accept constructive criticism and feedback and find the balance between work and your private life.” IE