I wouldn’t wish this company on my worst enemy. Micro-managing and insanely elongated timelines is the corporate culture. Initiatives that normally take a few weeks in most companies take 12-16 months here. Department Directors / upper management don’t have the necessary background or industry knowledge in regards to basic marketing concepts (KPI, ROI, segmentation), and when suggestions on improvements to strategy are made and outside of their limited skillset, the work environment quickly changes to one of harassment and hostility. 20% of the people, do 80% of the work. Those 20% are in for 50-60 hours a week, while the other 80% will work less than a 40 hour work week. Executive management is no help in alleviating this situation as they also oversee the customer service department, and have been vocal that their priority is not managing marketing. Executive management also has no background in marketing, so they have no idea what industry standards to hold directors/upper management to. As such, directors have stagnated the company and operate with outdated marketing tactics because they are only “kind of” being held accountable. Additionally, since they aren’t being held accountable they take advantage, I have never seen directors leave work hours before their staff, daily.
I have frequently been told by upper management that they don’t have time for strategy because they are doing tactical initiatives and I shouldn’t really put much effort into growth. The expectations are also unrealistic: for example 1 person to manage social media, lead gen, content development, website improvements, CRM cleanup and management on multiple products in 30+ countries, or 1 person to send out email campaigns for over 30+ products in over 40+ countries, in 20+ industries. Talk about running thin.
The company as a whole doesn’t value marketing and because of this, everything is run on the bare minimum. There is no importance placed on analytics, trends, growth or improvement upon processes. The owner doesn’t believe in investing into his employees. He frequently holds town halls and says that he wants to make Vistex a fun place to work. When asked what plans or improvements he has in place to achieve this, he said, “Nothing. Why would I need to do that? It will just be a fun place to work all on its own.”
Lastly, there is no training. Multiple people in my department have been here for years and have never seen a demo of what we sell, let alone know what the software does. When asked executive management what our competitive advantage is compared to competitors, our department was told “we don’t need to know that”.
