San Francisco, CA , March 13, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hearsay Systems, the trusted leader in social selling and provider of the Hearsay Advisor Cloud for the financial services industry, today announced the appointment of Frank Defesche to its Board of Directors. Defesche currently serves as Senior Vice President and General Manager for Veeva Systems, a leader in cloud-based software for the global life sciences industry.
Defesche was an early cloud pioneer and brings over a decade of industry cloud experience to Hearsay Systems. Defesche joins current Hearsay board members Bryan Schreier of Sequoia Capital; Jon Sakoda of Cisco-backed Catalyst Labs (formerly of NEA); Steve Garrity, Hearsay co-founder, and Hearsay CEO, Clara Shih as the company redefines how financial services advisors acquire and service clients.
“Frank brings tremendous insights to Hearsay as we continue to transform and modernize the financial services industry,” said Hearsay Systems co-founder and CEO, Clara Shih. “Over the past several months, Frank has served Hearsay as an advisor, during which time he has provided exceptional counsel. His focus on growing Veeva as a vertically focused company, as well as his experience at Salesforce.com, enable him to share a unique and valuable perspective. We are thrilled to welcome Frank to our Board of Directors.”
Defesche has spent the last 11 years as an executive at Veeva Systems. He is currently responsible for the strategic direction, growth, and customer success of Veeva's applications outside life sciences. Since joining Veeva a decade ago as its first post-sales hire, Defesche built and ran its professional services function. After Veeva surpassed a market capitalization of $10 billion, he was tapped to start its newest business line, Vault. Defesche has played an instrumental role in Veeva becoming the leading technology partner to the pharmaceutical industry.
Prior to Veeva, Defesche spent several years in both engineering and sales at Salesforce.com. By working on product development as well as sales for the world’s leading CRM, Defesche cultivated a deep understanding of how a product can influence the customer journey. It was after Salesforce pioneered a new pay-as-you-go business model focused on customer success on Veeva’s cloud platform that Defesche made a full-time move to Veeva in order to apply his knowledge to a specific vertical market.
“A laser focus is required to win in today’s environment, and Hearsay has long demonstrated this commitment,” said Frank Defesche. “Similar to Veeva, Hearsay maintains a strong vertical focus in a heavily regulated industry. To stay ahead, we must persistently ask how our respective organizations can evolve to better support the customer experience and deliver compelling solutions that meet the real needs of our users. I look forward to working more closely with Clara and the exceptional Hearsay team to conquer that challenge.”
About Hearsay Systems
Hearsay Systems offers the Hearsay Advisor Cloud for financial services, digitizing painful manual processes and freeing up advisors to provide proactive, timely service for clients.
Hearsay’s pre-built industry workflows for insurance and wealth management provides one-click actionable suggestions for advisors to engage with clients efficiently and compliantly using social media, websites, text and email to engage with customers, build stronger relationships and grow their business. Built for the enterprise, Hearsay Systems connects these advisor-client interactions and data to corporate CRM systems and digital marketing programs and provides efficient compliance supervision and review workflows – all on a secure, enterprise-ready platform.
Hearsay Systems is used by more than 150,000 advisors and agents at the world’s largest financial services and insurance firms. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with locations throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Connect on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the Hearsay blog.
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