Helping MongoDB Customers Unlock Potential with Industry Solutions

Gabriela Preiss is a senior manager within Industry Solutions at MongoDB and was instrumental in building out the team in Barcelona. She’s now relocated to Austin, Texas to build a team in Mexico City and continue expanding the Industry Solutions footprint. In this article, Gabriela shares more about Industry Solutions at MongoDB and how they’re making a difference for both customers and our internal go-to-market teams.

The impact of industry solutions teams is not lost on the tech industry. I see our competitors and Big Tech alike becoming more verticalized and providing industry-specific solutions to meet their customers’ needs. In 2019, MongoDB established an Industry Solutions team to understand and address our customers’ industry-specific needs and challenges.

In the past two years, our Industry Solutions team has increased by roughly 380% in size and touched over 1,100 customer accounts around the globe. Our tailored, industry-specific solutions and messaging give MongoDB a competitive advantage and lead to higher market penetration, higher customer retention, and increased sales. Not to mention, industry-specific insights gleaned from the field drive internal innovation and product development to propel MongoDB forward.

Industry Solutions at MongoDB

The Industry Solutions team messages MongoDB as a solution or part of a solution to specific industries. We speak the customer's language and understand their industry needs, industry roadblocks, market trends, and competitors. Our industry experts have been in the shoes of the customers and know how to guide them through modernization.

We're an extremely cross-functional team, constantly collaborating with sales, marketing, product, product marketing, and engineering. We work in parallel with sales, and everything we do is ultimately to support them and help drive revenue. This means helping with account prepping, speaking one-on-one with customers, and a lot of sales enablement. Our team holds frequent sales trainings in the form of internal content, office hours, and weekly sessions to coach on industry knowledge.

We also create content to help drive MongoDB’s go-to-market messaging externally. This means highlighting MongoDB as an industry solution through blogs, white papers, video content, and, most frequently, interactive solution demos that allow customers to really get their hands on our products.

Skills for success

While you don’t necessarily need to be a MongoDB expert to join our Industry Solutions team (we’ll train you on that); it’s beneficial to have foundational technical skills and knowledge, like understanding the concept of a database and how it works. As long as you have the will to learn, we’ll shape you into a MongoDB subject matter expert.

I often look for people who have a technical knowledge base, but are also interested in the business solution space. Our team is open for anyone who wants to be part of industry solutions and has the willingness to learn all of the ins and outs of it.

In terms of specific skills, I personally think soft skills are the most essential for success. For example, having a willingness to learn, boundless curiosity, a sense of urgency, and a true passion for your work. However, things like strong project management and time management skills come in handy as our team covers many different industries and regions. Each industry has its own nuances, and each team member is involved in many different projects. The ability to own your projects from end-to-end and juggle multiple projects at any given time is crucial.

Working with AI

AI has become a hot topic, and it's not going away. As a team, we work with industries from financial services to manufacturing, automotive to airline, insurance to telecommunications, and everything in between. AI is affecting every industry, and it's impacting every region. It’s our job to keep our finger on the pulse of industry trends to better enable our sales team and have discussions of modernization with customers. As customers look to implement gen AI applications, it’s important for our team to be able to confidently answer their questions and create relevant content. For the Industry Solutions team, working with gen AI is all about educating ourselves and keeping up with the industry trends to create a competitive advantage for MongoDB.

Opportunities for learning and growth

There are so many, I wouldn't even know where to begin or end. As far as opportunities for learning, you’ll certainly become a subject matter expert in MongoDB. You’ll have the chance to speak with different customers, participate as a presenter at MongoDB and third-party events, hold internal sales enablement trainings, hone in on your content creation skills, and more. You’ll learn some teaching skills if you join the Industry Solutions team, too. A big part of the role is explaining technical concepts to different audiences and sharing information in a way that enables people to learn.

At the end of the day, you’ll be building your brand as an industry expert, building your skills, and building your resume.

In my personal experience, I started as a consultant on the team and am now a senior manager. I was able to build out our team in Barcelona, Spain, and I've recently relocated to Austin, Texas to build out a team in Mexico City, which I'm so excited for. It's been amazing to see the team grow.

In terms of career advancement, there are tons of opportunities for our team members to grow linearly as individual contributors or into team lead and people manager roles. Plus, because you're getting exposure to so many different teams, it's not uncommon for folks from Industry Solutions to transfer into other departments within MongoDB, or vice versa. It’s something that’s not taboo within the company; it's just a matter of having a conversation with your manager.

Building a team in Mexico City and beyond

It’s a really exciting time as we aim to replicate the team that we've created in Barcelona in Mexico City. For prospective candidates, this is a great opportunity to help us build and shape a team from scratch while working on a diverse set of projects in key regions of the business. I would love to see the Mexico City office grow in the same way our Barcelona office has, which, a few years ago was only 12 people and now contains hundreds. We’ll continue to hire for our team in Barcelona and other locations around the world, too.

I’m looking forward to bringing on people who will add unique perspectives to our team and grow their careers at MongoDB for years to come.