Planful Inc. has announced the appointment of Richard Parke as Chief Customer Officer. He takes on the role from Melissa Dreuth, who added the role to her responsibilities in February earlier this year. She took it on after Kimberley Simms left the company in October 2024. Dreuth continues in her role of Chief People Officer and has now added Chief of Staff to the CEO, going forward. Parke brings over 25 years of experience in managing large-scale, global operations and driving customer solutions for enterprise clients and end users. Unusually, he has also worked for only a small number of firms before joining Planful.
He joins the customer facing organisations within Planful at a time when it has already made significant investments in the organisation’s customer facing programs. In 2024, it doubled its account relationship teams and tripled the number of technical resources to support and resolve customers.
New tools
It also introduced new engagement tools. Last year, it introduced a new One-Touch Customer Portal. The new portal is a component of Planful’s Essential Support program. Customers get access to expert knowledge and curated resources.
It also introduced Planful Admin Managed Services (PAMS). A premium service that provides customers with a dedicated Planful resource to help manage, optimize, and evolve their Planful environment. It means that customers can rapidly increase value from their Planful system. Without dedicating staff to learning the platform beyond what they initially need.
Parke will oversee Planful’s customer engagement with over 1,500 customers. He joins the company at period of rapid growth and development. It recently announced Analyst Assistant, an agentic AI assistant purpose-built for finance. Analyst Assistant redefines how finance teams work by removing the burden of manual analysis and empowering them to focus on strategic decision-making.
The appointment is also the first senior hire by John Herr, Chief Executive Officer at Planful, who was appointed at the start of October. Herr commented, “As we expand our customer base and enhance our award-winning capabilities with Planful AI, Richard’s appointment shows we’re committed to providing stellar support and service.
“Richard’s extensive experience leading global customer operations and his proven ability to scale customer-centric organizations will help us take our customer programs to an even higher level. His focus on customer success will be instrumental as we continue our growth trajectory and help finance teams tackle their most complex challenges.”
Who is Richard Parke?
Parke joins from Avetta where he spent a decade rising increasingly senior customer facing leadership positions to the role of SVP Global Customer Support. As part of the Avetta leadership team, he oversaw a team of over 250 people, supporting customers across 120 countries.
Before Avetta he spent 16 years at Convergys (now Concentrix). Where he oversaw operations of a global portfolio of Fortune 1,000 clients in Financial Services Industry. His duties included customer strategy development and deployment, full P&L responsibility including revenue and profit growth, contract and relationship management, performance delivery, management and development of professional staff, and matrix leadership.
Parke has an MBA from Regus University and a Bachelors in Business Administration from the University of Phoenix.
Parke worked closely with Herr at Avetta where they helped guide the company through significant global expansion. A success that they will be keen to replicate at Planful.
Richard Parke, commented, “I’m thrilled to join Planful at such an exciting time in the company’s journey as it accelerates its global expansion. Planful’s innovative solutions are transforming how finance teams work, and I look forward to ensuring our customers achieve maximum value from the Planful platform.
“By building on the strong success programs already in place for customers, we’ll continue to evolve our customer organization to meet the growing needs of our diverse user base.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
There is little surprise that Herr has brought in a trusted leader into a senior position. Both will know how the other works and they will hope to repeat the synergy between them at Avetta. That he has recognised the contribution that Dreuth has made to Planful and her organisational knowledge by making her Chief of Staff is a smart move. It will be interesting to see whether this is enough to retain Dreuth in the longer term.
It will be interesting to see how Herr and Parke develop the go-to-market for the organisation into 2026. And maintain and even improve the growth and customer success that Planful has had over the last few years.
