Petar Lafchiev

• Leading a team of 11 MarTech solution professionals in the areas of Adobe, Salesforce, Braze, Bloomreach and CDPs
• Ownership of the Merkle MarTech Practice's P/L - accounting for close to £20m in 2023
• Designing and delivering new service propositions that keep Merkle competitive and ahead of the curve
• Collaborating closely with our Sales, Client Services, Marketing and Alliances teams to cement Merkle on the forefront of MarTech services in the industry

Key Achievements:

• Overachieved 2023 Targets on both revenue and margin - one of the very few departments of Merkle to do so
• Achieved a 100% team retention throughout the year
• Single-handedly kick-started a brand new partnership with Bloomreach and delivered over £1.6m revenue in-year with it

• Accountable and responsible for the setup and growth of our Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) Practice in the UK
• Targeting £3.5m in services revenue for 2021 (including services around complementary solutions like Campaign, Target, Analytics and others)
• Working with our Delivery Practice Leads to ensure our teams are  trained and in place to support our expected growth

Key Achievements:

• Grew Adobe Practice by 20%
• Sold and delivered the first Adobe Journey Optimizer project in EMEA for No7
  

Following from the successful launch of the Adobe Practice in Barcelona and it becoming more self-sufficient, I took up a new objective of securing new business around EMEA for our team.

Key Responsibilities:

• Jumping into new opportunities presented by sales and client service teams by owning requirements gathering, qualification, scoping, pricing, proposal writing and pitch delivery.
• Guiding clients on the selection of the right MarTech tool (like Adobe, Salesforce, HCL, Accoustic and others) by delivering in-depth client personalised software vendor benchmarks.
• Following from there, further supporting our clients with the correct adoption, architecture and use of these technologies.
• Acting as a System Architect and designing complex system architectures and technology roadmaps
• Working as part of a global Merkle community of Marketing Technology experts to provide thought leadership and training to colleagues and clients

Key Achievements:

• Delivered £2.5m in-year service revenue around MarTech in 2020.
• Led on the architecture design and delivery of the first AEP implementation in EMEA through Signify

This role run in parallel to my management and leadership responsibilities within the Adobe Practice for the first year and to the Head of Platform Enablement role in the 2nd year.

As a result of a company reorg, I was asked to step in and lead and manage our Platform Enablement department in London, UK. The team consisted of 21 members who were focusing on delivering MarTech campaign operations, client enablement and best practice consultancy. I managed this role in parallel to my Solution Consultant responsibilities until we managed to interview and hire a suitable candidate to take the role on full time later on in September.

Key Responsibilities:

• Defining the Team's mission and purpose
• Team Management - 1:1s, career planning, performance monitoring
• Establishing key business propositions of the team

Key Achievements:

• Grew the team and ensured a 100% retention rate
• Re-structured the team where necessary to reduce reliance on the head of the department
• Enabled and empowered key team members as team leads and provided them with autonomy and decision making powers
• Aligned the department with my previous team at the Barcelona Center of Excellence in terms of ways of working and processes
• Improve operational and financial efficiency via process improvement and timesheet management
• Interviewed a number of internal and external candidates for the role until finally hiring the ideal one to fulfill this role full time

As part of Comet Global Consulting's acquisition of Merkle Inc, senior management asked me to move to Barcelona and kick off a brand new Adobe Practice alongside our existing IBM and PEGA practices.

Key Responsibilities:

• Interviewing over 150 candidates and hiring a team of 12  people - 9 Campaign Consultants and 3 Technical Consultants
• Designing  and delivering a successful team structure and dynamic
• Creating the necessary training paths required to get the team Adobe Campaign certified
• Mentoring and support on client project work and direct line management
• Working on key client engagements to ensure successful deliveries
• Building an European resource management process suitable to our new scale
• Creating a set of contract and delivery templates in order to ensure standardisation across projects and clients

Our practice's clients included some of the best brands in the UK such as Sainsbury's Bank, Virgin Holidays, Premier Inn, AVIVA and others.

The practice achieved one of the highest scores on the GLINT intracompany engagement survey across Europe. It measures a team's engagement, happiness and view of their company.

A business-technical role focusing on implementing, running and supporting  IBM's marketing technology stack (Unica/Silverpop/IBM Marketing Cloud) for a number of clients.

Key Responsibilities::

• Client requirement gathering
• Database implementation and management
• IBM technology implementation and management 
• Custom solution development 
• Multichannel marketing campaign deployment
• Marketing Reports

• This programme is the equivalent to a level 7 qualification or to master’s degree level and is made up of 11 modules.It is aimed at experienced marketers looking to gain a more strategic understanding of the scope of both on and offline marketing.

• For more information please see here.

Graduated with First Class Honours