Zilliant, a leading cloud-native pricing and revenue optimization software vendor, has announced the appointment of two executives. Adi Kavaler has been appointed Chief Technology Officer, and Claude Sammoury, SVP of Partnerships and Alliances. Kavaler replaces Shams Chauthani, who left Zilliant in May 2023 to become Chief Technology Officer at MDO. What is unclear about the appointment of Sammoury is whether Joe Leyva, currently Vice President, Global Partners and Alliances, who is a 19-year Zilliant veteran, is retiring or stepping down from the role.
Pascal Yammine, Zilliant CEO, said, “Adi and Claude are the ideal executives to further our vision for building a different kind of pricing company that touches many departments and functions. Pricing is a core business process and has expanded to include key sales processes like CPQ. Adi and Claude have demonstrated they have the experience and insight to evolve our partner ecosystem and products to support that vision.”
Adi Kavaler
Kavaler is an experienced leader with more than 25 years of experience. He began his career as a developer at IBM, Top Tier and SAP. At SAP, he rose rapidly during a 15-year career there to the position of Senior Vice President, Global Head of Product Management & SAP Fiori UX. After leaving SAP, he moved through a series of positions, each lasting 2 years or less.
They include a stint as CEO at 1533 Systems Inc. Most recently, he was Chief Strategy Officer at Quali. At Zilliant, Kavaler will lead the engineering, technology and IT teams on product development and innovation to help customers adapt to the fast-changing pricing market.
Kavaler commented, “I’ve long admired Zilliant’s leadership in the world of pricing software. There’s so much opportunity there to incorporate generative AI and proactive automation that will allow companies to become much more efficient, and I’m excited to get started.”
Claude Sammoury
Sammoury is another experienced executive who began his career in sales and has had a variety of roles in the software industry. Most recently, he has held Chief Revenue Officer positions at Revolent Group and Halosight. He also spent nine years at the Advanced Technology Group with responsibility for revenue, alliances and business development. His experience in the Quote to Cash sector and the relationships he developed at atg may well help him in this new role. It will be interesting to see whether he can extend the existing partner ecosystem.
He may also decide to revamp the partner architecture, which currently consists of only technology and consulting partners. There is currently no partner search functionality on the website, and it is not easy to locate a partner of choice either, from the image of logos. It is also out of date. For example, Carlisle&Co are now Duckker Carlisle (and have been since 2022).
Sammoury commented, “As we expand our partnerships, we’ll empower our customers with more flexibility and options to achieve pricing excellence. Pricing is a complex challenge with high impact and high reward for organizations. We are focused on equipping businesses with the technology and expertise to master strategic pricing, drive smarter decisions and accelerate revenue growth.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
These two have their work cut out. Kavarer joins after a seven-month period without a Chief Technology Officer. Whilst Sammoury has a clear understanding of some of the challenges he faces in the months ahead. It will be interesting to see the impact these two have on the organisation. Can they help raise Zilliant into the leader quadrant of the G2 grid for Pricing Software?
