AMAG Technology: Sharing the vision

Jennifer Marx, VP Product Management, and Kyle Gordon, Executive VP Global Sales, Marketing and Commercial Excellence, AMAG Technology speak exclusively with ISJ.

What changes have you made to the product management side of AMAG Technology, Jen?

Jennifer Marx (JM): Since I’ve been here, I believe we have brought product management discipline to the company.

We have brought that product-as-a-skill mindset, whereas in the past, product decisions were driven by people from an engineering background rather than a customer background.

What kind of cultural changes have you been making at AMAG Technology, Kyle?

Kyle Gordon (KG): We are building a culture of transparency, accountability and empowerment so people are confident to bring things forward.

I’ve also been focusing on accessibility for internal stakeholders as well as customers.

Whether they are integrators or end users, allowing ourselves to be accessible has created a more transparent culture which didn’t exist as much in the past.

How have these changes impacted the company internally?

JM: I have brought a product development and lifecycle management process to the organisation. The most exciting part about that is how it fosters collaboration from a cross-functional view.

As a result, we are now getting input from everyone – from the manufacturing side of the business to the trainers. This process creates a real sense of transparency, enabling the organisation to know what it is that we’re working on, why we’re working on it and why it’s more important than something else.

Bringing together the organisation centres everyone around an understood, transparent roadmap that we’re all building together.

KG: Jen, myself and Executive VP Engineering, Michael Kobaly speak about upcoming changes to roadmaps on a regular basis, and that’s shared internally, externally – and it’s not sugar-coated. If things change, we talk.

When an organisation sees its executive leadership team being vulnerable and transparent, they also take that note and lead with those same values. We’re not there yet, but we’ve seen improvements internally.

Another way that we’ve seen this work is just having a rhythm around escalations and making sure our team is picking up the phone if there’s an issue. It used to be an email-first mentality – now, by creating a forum where people feel safe to share news in a constructive way, we’ve seen growth.

We’re also having fun. If you’re not transparent with employees, then they don’t know what things to celebrate.

And, if you don’t share the vision, employees don’t really know when you’re winning or losing.

For example, it’s great when you hear people from the commercial team celebrating the product team – but there’s been a lot of foundational work that we’ve had to get done to get here.

How do you think that these changes are now impacting your customers?

JM: I think we’re now having a dialogue with customers in a way we never could before.

I mean, we’re able to talk to them about things that are a year away in a level of detail that we’ve not been able to do in the past, allowing us to get feedback when it comes to prioritisation, requirements and functionality, far ahead of actually investing in the work being done.

For example, we’re developing a new product, and we started with nearly 30 interviews with customers and integrators about our vision.

However, this truly starts with the vision of what it is we think we need to solve for. What are the unmet needs in the marketplace? What are the problems customers have, not only with our own product, but in general, in their organisations?

This solidified a great majority of what we thought we needed to do while challenging other areas.

It enabled us to make changes, and now, I feel confident that we have hit what customers have told us they need, from functionality through to price point.

A customer-first voice is important. And yes, formal events and user groups are critical. However, just as important are ad hoc calls to customers, integrators and technicians.

KG: We’re having authentic conversations that the customers can make informed decisions around. It’s great timing to have this discussion, having just wrapped another one of our symposiums in Dallas [SES 2025 3-5 September].

Our customers have heard the same messaging now for two years and it’s been consistent. When our President Dave Sullivan started, he made clear he wanted to build an organisation founded in transparency and deliverables.

We started talking differently when Dave joined, and I think Jen’s execution on the roadmap has allowed us to walk that talk.

It’s not a drastic swing. It’s not another puff piece. It’s building on the same discussion that we had the last time we spoke with our customers, but with a little bit more detail every time.

This allows them to feel like they’re part of this journey with us. We are coming to have a conversation with them, and they’re seeing a lot of their feedback reflected in our roadmap moving forward.

What are your goals moving forward and what can customers come to expect from AMAG?

JM: Let’s face it, the world is changing.

When thing change, customers should be able to count on transparency – and we should be openly communicating what we are developing, when it’s coming and highlighting how it will benefit them as well as the other impacts we need them to be aware of so that they can prepare, budget and take advantage of the things we are doing.

The other thing I want them to be able to expect is innovation. I think AMAG has delivered very solid product in the physical access control space, but it’s been pretty much the same solutions for the same type of customer problems for a decade or more, and environments for customers are changing.

They should expect us to bring things to them and meet them where they are, help them in transition. This is why I came on board.

One of the terms I disagree with is “next-gen”, because this type of label usually implies there’s been 50 people working in a dark room somewhere who have just popped-up with a new product.

There’s no easy path to get from where customers are today to that “next-gen” of product. My philosophy is that this next-gen concept needs to be brought in for almost every single thing that you’re doing.

Customers should be able to expect innovation in everything that we do.

Finally, what are you working towards and what would you still like to see?

KG: While I can’t think that far out, what excites me is that these changes just become the normal way of doing business. The end goal is that we build a product with a solid foundation that we can build upon.

We build a culture where people are excited to talk about what we’re doing and are excited to receive engagement around that. We build a community that is excited – excited to be a part of the journey with us.

We layer accessibility so that we can innovate, not only from within, but from the community that is coming along with us for the journey.

I think our biggest innovations are yet to come, and they may not even be ones that we’ve thought of yet. They will probably be ones that our customers are going to bring to us, because they’re living in this world every day. We have the tools, but they are the carpenter.

I think that’s where I get excited.