It is an exciting time at Orienteed. In the past six months, we launched Valido, our new SaaS-based visual validation tool, consolidated our growth plans and supported our staff through a successful transition into a global team.
Earlier this month, Stefano Zauli was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of the Italian division, as a result of Orienteed’s expansion plan in Europe. Zauli has extensive experience in the ecommerce environment, with more than 20 years developing successful IT projects for major European brands.
In this article, we share our chat with Stefano, where we discuss his vision of his new role and Orienteed's expansion into Europe and beyond.
Just recently you’ve joined the Orienteed team as the new CEO in Italy. For our partners and clients to get acquainted with you, could you please tell us a bit about yourself and your background?
Stefano: Most of my professional career has been devoted to digital commerce. The first ecommerce project I led was in 1999. Since then I have been involved in a number of national and international projects. I have held numerous roles, from project manager to solution architect, and from CTO to COO in this field. For the last 3 years I have been the CEO of Tecla and the Head of Digital Commerce at Lutech.
What do you see as the biggest strengths of Orienteed right now?
Stefano: Orienteed was originally conceived with an international outlook, stepping beyond its borders. Its initial clients, projects and consulting experiences were outside of Spain. It also immediately developed the norm of working in a distributed way, with professionals from all over the world. It is a young, competent, dynamic, well-organized and growing organization.
It has an excellent modular support service called L1, which I prefer to call "Intelligent Support" due to the variety of high quality value-added services. Not to mention Valido, a SaaS-based visual validation tool that has the ability to evaluate the entire UI design and visual experience of any ecommerce site.
How do you see Orienteed Italy evolving within the next year, two years or five years?
Stefano: Orienteed Italy is only part of a broader strategy that will be completed within the next 2 years. At a national level, it will be strengthened through strategic alliances and partnerships that will allow it to grow rapidly.
What can Orienteed Italy offer to European and International customers?
Stefano: It would be easy to highlight the experience of the team which includes people with twenty years in the industry, but what we want to offer customers is a new vision of the relationship. We want to work together to reduce technological lock-in and allow companies greater freedom to govern their business from a technical point of view without being forced to depend on a single supplier.
What do you think are the biggest challenges that the ecommerce environment will face in the next 5 years?
Stefano: The next 5 years will see the affirmation of the main trends, which have been underway for some time; the preponderance of multi-tenant public cloud applications over single-tenant cloud applications, and a substantial growth of the B2B business model compared to the B2C one. The technological paradigm is changing from monolithic architectures to microservices that will allow frictionless purchases and above all, new business models.
The biggest challenges for both the market and operators will mainly be in the field of innovation, from the creative use of emerging technologies such as automation, AI, IoT and even blockchain, that will completely reshape digital commerce. Talent Management will be fundamental, along with playing a role of educators towards the market.
Last but not least, tell us your life motto!
Stefano: One of my favorite thoughts is to honestly evaluate yourself, because that's the best way to improve yourself. But since work means organization, my real obsession is: "Let's do it together".
