Fortude launched in 2012 as an ERP delivery company, built on the deep domain expertise its consultants developed through hands-on implementation work for its parent company. Fourteen years and four markets later, ERP is still core to the business, but the ambition has moved well beyond it. The company now wants to be known as a transformation partner, one that looks at a customer’s digital journey end to end, from agents and automation to data, not only as a vendor tied to a single system.
Anishka Ranabahu, VP Global Marketing and Brand at Fortude, discusses the rebrand, the mechanics of B2B trust, and how formidable partnerships help the company deliver digital solutions that truly matter to its customers.
Fortude launched as an ERP consulting company; what drove the brand shift from an enterprise solutions company to a digital solutions one?
We spun off as a commercial entity in 2012, when our CEO/ President, Arjuna Sirinanda, saw an opportunity to take our deep ERP domain expertise global. Our first engagement that year was in the US, in fashion and technology – a combination we knew well.
Today, we’re far more than an ERP company. That shift happened because the market around ERP changed, more systems layered on top of it, more ways to optimise and build on that base. We responded by building a data and analytics practice across all our markets, a test automation product, and, most recently, agentic AI solutions on top of ERP. It wasn’t one “aha” moment; it was sustained sensitivity to what customers needed, and the in-house capability to deliver it.
That’s really the story of our brand: we didn’t outgrow ERP, we built on it. Every layer we’ve added including data, automation, now agentic AI, still traces back to that original depth. It’s what makes the shift credible rather than cosmetic.
Fortude is in the B2B tech space, where buying cycles are long, deals require 20 to 70 touchpoints, and buying committees can have six to ten decision-makers. What challenge does that complexity pose for marketers today?
The first challenge is that you’re rarely speaking to one buyer. You’re speaking to six to ten people at once, each with a different lens: a CFO weighing ROI, a CIO weighing in on a tech roadmap. One message doesn’t work across that room. The second is sustaining that engagement across multiple touchpoints without losing the thread. Staying consistent, staying relevant, and still being able to trace, months later, what actually influenced the decision.
That complexity is only growing, especially with AI now shaping buyer research. There’s a term for it: generative engine optimisation (GEO), where buyers turn to generative engines in addition to search engines. The B2B buyer journey was never linear, and it’s becoming even less prescriptive. As a marketing team, we’re acutely conscious of that. But in a space that’s fighting for attention, trust is the one thing that cuts through, and referenceability is how you build it.
We now have over 120 customers across four markets: the Americas, UK and Europe, AMEA, and Australia and New Zealand – spanning diverse industries. In the UK, for instance, we’ve built a reputation for on-time go-lives. That’s not something you can manufacture virally – it’s earned, in an environment where the investment at stake is substantial. We’ve even used cross-market referencing to our advantage: our strength in food and beverage in Australia and New Zealand, for example, helped win the trust of a US customer in the same sector.
With four very different markets, what does Fortude’s marketing do differently to stand out in each? Four things. First, we’re building one global brand that positions Fortude as a thought leader. That’s meant a narrative and design refresh in 2026, with new logo details, colours and messaging, across every channel. Consistent messaging, one brand.
Second, we treat content as a revenue driver, not a scheduling exercise. Every asset (website, social, Reddit, Quora, and how we rank on generative AI engines) is tracked and can be traced directly to conversion.
Third, we’re building what I’d call a scalable digital demand engine, testing which channels, messaging, and content formats convert best, and running structured, thematic campaigns rather than one-off pushes. Our current core message positions Fortude in the agentic AI space, anchored to our lane: the Infor ERP ecosystem.
And fourth, our technology partnerships matter. We implement Infor, the fourth-largest cloud ERP provider, and lean on that alliance for credibility and market reference. We’re also deepening our Microsoft relationship. Together we’re building sustainable GTM strategies that reach our target audience.
Fortude’s marketing is leveraging AI agents internally too. How does that fit in?
As a global marketing team, we’re building agents to scale our own capacity across content, operations, and AI-generated brand and video content. That last one has cut production time from about two weeks to two days, which changes what’s actually possible for a team our size. We can now respond to a market moment or a campaign need in near real-time.
But there’s always a human in the loop, and that’s a must, particularly for content. AI-written copy is easy to spot. It tends to flatten tone, over-explain, and lose the specificity that makes B2B content credible. So what we’ve built is a ‘human-centered, agent-supported’ approach. Agents handle the scale and speed, but judgement, nuance, and final voice stay human.
It also matters that we’re doing this at all. We’re asking our customers to trust us with their agentic AI transformations. This is as much proof of capability as it is an efficiency gain.
Looking ahead, what do you want to have built? For the brand, and for the team behind it?
A brand that’s trusted and future-forward. Reliable at the core, always pushing at the edge, from agentic AI to markets we haven’t fully earned yet. And ‘team’ now includes the agents working alongside us. AI for scale and speed, our people for judgement and voice. The brand, the people, and the agents, all telling the same story.