A Message from Nick Emanuel, Director of Product

  • 1 March 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 57 views

Thank you for being on the site and an active member of our community. Frank and I wanted to take some time out to talk through what we do here in Webroot, and how our Product team use the data and information provided through this community.
 
Taking a step back, Frank is the Vice President of Product and I am the Director of Product responsible for our Business services and offerings. Our team comprises both Product Managers and Product Marketing managers, dispersed around the globe, but all working to ensure we maintain our focus on cutting edge Cybersecurity protection and innovating new products and services that complement each other, keeping our customers and partners safe and protected.
 
Each Product Manager has full life cycle control of a product. From research and innovation of new ideas, development of in-service offerings, through to the deprecation and end of service for those products that no longer meet market needs.
 
Our Product Marketing team helps tell our products story out to our customers as well as helping to ensure our Sales, Engineering and Support teams understand the technology, the benefit it brings to a customer and how to talk about it. In addition they help create the collateral, guides, and help text to make using the product as easy as possible.
 
Every month for the next 9-10 months, a member of the product team will be available to answer any specific questions you may have about what they do, what we are working on now, and our plans for the future. As the team members rotate through, you will have access to the Webroot colleague who owns and drives a given product line or service. Ahead of time, our community team will post a small bio of the team member including their specialism – after that it’s over to you. Our team will gather in the questions and the product team member will answer as best they can.
 
We will also be spending time reviewing the Business Feature Request area on a monthly basis. Every month, we will review the new ideas that have been submitted, try and give udpates to existing ideas, and provide context when available. 
 
This additional activity doesn’t replace the normal review process that the Product team conducts on questions and queries from the community but Frank and I hope it will help lift the lid a little on who we are and what we do.
 
Kind regards,
 
Nick Emanuel
Director of Product
 
 

3 replies

Userlevel 3
One question I have is why in the program and features uninstall panel in windows does the Webroot program version appear to be so old? Yet the icon in the taskbar say the most up to date version of the client?
 
Also at times depending on what user profile the software was initially installed on if that user profile doesn't exist and you try to uninstall the existing client to reinstall does it fail becasue it can't find the original installer?
 
I think this should be addressed somewhere and how to fix it without having to recreate folders and put install file in the exact location it is looking for.
 
Thanks
Userlevel 5
Badge +24
@ - Thanks for taking the time to communicate with the community.  I am looking forward to the sessions, and hope that they are productive for your team as well as the community.  Thanks for putting some focus on the feature requests - I think that is needed.  
Userlevel 4
Badge +16
@  I have a meta-feature-request: You guys need a wiki.  I also want to give kudos to one of your support staff...
 
We're an MSP and migrated to Webroot last summer.  Love the product, best AV hands-down.  But since then we've spent tons of time troubleshooting all sorts of issues I've been unable to find KB's on.  I've figured-out some stuff I desperately wish we'd known at the beginning, from tidbits on 3rd-party forums or responses on support tickets.  The forum's a little light on technical info since so many threads simply get referred to support: that's fine in one sense, and it's great that you always have plenty of support resources available, but in some cases it's costing you money and us time unnecessarily.
 
Good example (and a heads-up about someone you need to promote): Our first seven months we submitted tons of tickets inquiring if various application issues might be caused by a conflict with Webroot.  Even when they weren't, we spent tons of time trying to figure it out in a fog of uncertainty.  Then one day I got some unusually good responses on a ticket from Stephen W (ticket 141021), and on a whim asked if he had any tips for how we could diagnose this stuff ourselves.  He replied with an essay-length post that has totally changed how our company approaches and deals with application conflicts.  It's saved us tons of time already and in the long run is an incredibly huge deal.  It's also saving you lots of support time, and when I do submit a request, it's brief and to the point (ie please review and whitelist this specific file).  Don't know what kind of metrics you use, but if it looks like Stephen takes too long on tickets, it's because he's saving you tons of money that unfortunately can't be reflected on a spreadsheet anywhere.  Two words: promotion material!
 
Anyway, a wiki's the best way to organize and collaboratively create documentation. I'd be happy to share hard-won info on there, and I'm sure lots of other GSM and Labtech admins would as well. 

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