Pax8’s Craig Donovan Promoted To Chief Experience Officer

‘One of the things we’ve done well at Pax8 is it’s not just about their experience and how they interact with Pax8, what actually matters the most is what’s your experience as a business, as a partner or as a vendor,’ says Craig Donovan, chief experience officer. ‘They have their own things that they’re looking for and when we understand that experience, we can go deliver services and solutions.’

Cloud distributor Pax8 has promoted Craig Donovan to chief experience officer, a newly created position, to better align partners, vendors and end customers through experiences with its ever-evolving cloud marketplace.

“The channel itself is sort of splitting away from this legacy distribution model, which is very linear, into more of an ecosystem play where you’ve got three completely independent players and stakeholders,” Donovan told CRN. “Customers are adopting this new buying behavior where they’re increasingly going direct to vendors. They’re doing their research, a lot of times it’s six, seven months before the partner even knows about it. You’ve got this triangle structure, each of them has their own independent experience and their own independent needs. At Pax8, we want to sit in the middle of this and help connect those dots.”

He said the experience is both “deeply personal and relational,” and the newly created experience team will be advocates both inside and out for Denver-based Pax8, the vendors, MPS and end customers.

[Related: Here Are 16 Additional Vendors Coming To Pax8’s Marketplace This Year]

“One of the things we’ve done well at Pax8 is it’s not just about their experience and how they interact with Pax8, what actually matters the most is what’s your experience as a business, as a partner or as a vendor,” he said. “They have their own things that they’re looking for and when we understand that experience, we can go deliver services and solutions.”

Donovan officially assumed the role on Aug. 1 and will lead the 25-person experience team and will continue to report to Nick Heddy, chief commerce officer.

“Delivering the best-in-class experience for our partners, vendors and customers is Pax8’s top priority,” Heddy said in a statement. “Craig has a proven track record of leading partner enablement and services, and I am excited to see how his innovative vision will ignite a stakeholder-centric culture across our entire organization.”

During his tenure at Pax8, Donovan has held multiple roles, most recently as senior vice president of services, and he designed the Professional Services Automation (PSA) integrations for Pax8’s cloud marketplace. He also developed the company’s professional services program and helped launch Pax8 Academy.

In his new role, he said there will be a lot of listening going on and a grassroots effort to focus on aligning the needs and the experiences for the vendors, MSPs and customers into one common marketplace. His biggest focus, though, will be supporting the overall marketplace development.

“MSPs have been the center of our go-to-market and in our ecosystem, that’s not changing,” he said. “The ecosystem itself is changing, buying patterns may be changing and we are now starting to pay attention to the vendors and those end customers. But it’s all designed to drive the traffic and the ecosystem with partners at the center. They will remain the hero of this ecosystem.”