The CEO of digital employee experience firm 1E has opened up about his ambitious growth plans for the company.

Banfield previously was SVP and general manager at Datto, and then chief revenue officer at LogicMonitor. Last September he accepted the CEO job at 1E — an opportunity that was too good to pass up, he said.

1E’s Mark Banfield

“It’s a cool British company,” he explained.

Prior to Banfield’s hiring, the company was acquired by investment firm The Carlyle Group. Since then it has undertaken “huge scaling” as an organization, said Banfield. He revealed that 1E will add 125 people this year into the business — a 40% increase in headcount. He also signalled heavy investment in its go-to-market strategy and customer success.

Furthermore, Banfield said the firm is “well on track” to get to $100 million in annual recurring revenue within 12-18 months.

Also, despite its London headquarters, most of 1E’s enterprise customers are in North America. Looking ahead, the CEO also said there is an opportunity to extend into the midmarket, as well as more international expansion.

New Executive Team

The company also is putting in place a new executive team. Banfield has been joined by former Datto colleague Ian van Reenen, who takes up the CTO role. Additionally, the firm has hired a chief customer officer, Marie Palmer from VMware Carbon Black.

Additionally, Banfield revealed exclusively that former LogicMonitor colleague Stephen Tarleton is joining as chief marketing officer.

“When I joined LogicMonitor, the value equation plans were not dissimilar to 1E. It was a good technology, good traction in the market, but needed maturity around the go-to-market, the marketing and branding,” said Banfield. “Stephen came in to run the go-to-market transition. Particularly around the branding, the persona development, putting the customers at the centre of everything. Then he rebranded the company and he’s coming here to help us do the same things.”

A Focus on the Digital Employee Experience

Behind the company’s expansion is a growing focus on the digital employee experience, said Banfield.

“Before, companies were creating employee experiences. Now it’s purely digital. We’re seeing companies investing heavily in this because they’re seeing they have to get the employee experience right. If they don’t, their employees aren’t productive, they get frustrated. They end up with high costs and calls into IT. And in the end, you lose people. The Great Resignation is a real thing.”

1E’s digital experience monitoring and management software is Tachyon. The agent allows 1E to interrogate the device to understand every aspect of the user experience.

“To manage thousands of devices you need technology that allows you to do it at scale with speed. We can do this in seconds. That’s why we’ve done very well with large enterprises,” said Banfield.

“If your laptop’s running slowly, if you can’t connect to a VPN, Teams isn’t working, Zoom’s not working, whatever it might be. We find a way to stop that from happening because it’s detrimental to the digital employee experience. [Employees] can’t do their work, plus there’s a huge cost for companies in terms of service desk costs. We can identify the issue and remediate that issue quickly.”

Banfield maintains that “waiting until something goes wrong” and raising a ticket with IT support “is not a good experience.”

Also, he said, “you can’t really do that for tens of thousands of users. You need a way of doing that fast and at scale. That’s where our product comes in. We have an invisible relationship to the device for the user. It means you can interrogate, understand, monitor the user experience and then fix any problems.”

Global Opportunity

1E sells directly and also works with MSPs such as DXC, Unisys and NTT.

“They’re going to market and selling around the digital workplace. If you think about HR, facilities, their whole mindset is around the digital experience because that’s how they can build culture with employees,” said Banfield.

Looking to the future, the CEO says he has three priorities.

“The first is reinvesting in our customers. I’ve been focused on embracing our current customers and helping them get more value out of the product. The second is about expansion in terms of bringing in new customers. The third area is channel and international expansion.

“One of the things I love is that we’re a UK business that’s doing great stuff, and there’s a global opportunity in front of us,” he said. “The bigger purpose here is reimagining the relationship between technology and employees. But it’s in all in order to enable people to work. I think there’s a bigger meaning here, a vision of creating a better way.”