Live @ IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit Madrid: IBM VP Maria Winans On Smarter Commerce Marketing

Maria Winans, IBM vice president, Industry Solutions Group, has helped champion IBM’s marketing strategy for its “Smarter Commerce” initiative, and has been instrumental in leading IBM’s efforts to reach beyond the traditional IT audience and into the “C-suite,” including most recently, to chief marketing officers.

Scott Laningham and I spoke to a number of IBM execs, partners, and subject matter experts at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit this week, one of whom has been a key driver for IBM’s events catering to business executives.

Maria Winans is a vice president with IBM Software’s Industry Solutions group, and spent countless hours leading a team that prepared for the Madrid Summit, among others.

Maria and her team are laser-focused on helping take IBM software solutions to market by industry, centering their energy on a number of key verticals, including the retail and banking industries, among others.

Maria discussed a number of important issues in our conversation, including the trend towards communicating more with the “line-of-business” customer set, and the requisite changes that that is driving in IBM’s go-to-market efforts.