Ensuring customer businesses feel understood and supported is Dan Dudley’s primary focus as assistant vice president of customer success at Odessa, especially since implementing and adopting new technology is a significant undertaking for any organization.

In his role, Dudley has the unique opportunity to interact with almost all of Odessa’s customers. Leveraging his technical experience and industry knowledge as a Certified Lease & Finance Professional, Dudley works with customers to apply best practices to business and technology processes, helping them derive maximum value from their investment in Odessa solutions while looking for ways to meet their business objectives through products, services and innovation. With this level of customer access and understanding, Dudley is deeply familiar with the challenges lessors are facing, allowing him to be the voice of the customer internally.

As a leader, Dudley emphasizes education and empathy. He believes it is imperative to be a lifelong learner and to ensure the same for his team, cascading and sharing in upskilling and key information to build more engaged and impact-producing individuals. In addition, as a leader in customer advocacy, his main tool is empathy over everything, particularly during times of difficulty such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I have been in the industry for a number of years and in that time, I have seen a shift in mindset in how businesses prioritize technology as a means to their continued success,” Dudley says, noting that this has been Odessa’s philosophy for a long time but that it is now being more broadly adopted across the industry as organizations seek nimble solutions for business agility and technology innovation.