More movers and shakers

Continuing with our series looking at people on the move or making the news,  here we see four new appointments in the call centre industry.

Aspect appoints Mike Sheridan Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales

Mike Sheridan

Aspect, a unified communications (UC) solutions provider, today announced that Mike Sheridan has been named executive vice president of worldwide sales reporting directly to chief executive officer, Jim Foy. In this new role, Sheridan will be responsible for providing executive leadership for all sales teams across North America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia Pacific, and the Latin America regions.

Previously, he served as the company’s senior vice president of strategy and marketing, driving unified communications initiatives across product management and marketing.

“Unified communications has the potential to bring significant value to organisations,” said Sheridan.  “In this new role, my efforts will be focused on bringing that value proposition to our customers and prospects
around the world, as well as ensuring the entire global sales organisation has the tools and capabilities they need to help companies maximise their technology investments, manage costs effectively and bring the highest level
of service to their own customers.”

In his previous position, Sheridan was also the executive liaison with the unified communications teams at Microsoft. This responsibility transitions to Andy Bezaitis, senior vice president of corporate development at Aspect.

“Mike has played an instrumental role in cementing the company’s UC vision and product strategy, and as a result, it was a natural progression for him to lead our global sales organisation to continue to raise awareness of
Aspect’s offerings in both software and services,” said Jim Foy, chief executive officer, Aspect. “He brings a deep understanding of our customers’ needs from his expertise in enterprise and contact centre business processes
and I am confident that his direction and guidance will continue to demonstrate Aspect’s leadership in the unified communications space.”

Sheridan brings more than 20 years of experience in communications and technology to his new role. He has been with Aspect for more than eight years in various marketing and product strategy roles. Prior to Aspect, he
held a number of positions in sales and information technology at leading companies like Hewlett-Packard.

Sheridan earned a master’s degree in computer science and telecommunications from DePaul University and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and technology from Bradley University. He currently resides in Chicago.

Ciara Harte

Qire has appointed Ciara Harte as business development manager to further extend the use of Qire’s Interactive Voice Technology (IVM) within the debt collection market.

Qire’s debt recovery solutions help agencies to improve collection rates and increase average payments on unpaid bills and arrears, and can play a key role in enabling agencies to reduce business risk.

Debt collection agencies will benefit from Harte’s industry experience and knowledge of the debt collection and credit management sectors.  Harte will be working closely with agencies to integrate IVM technology into existing debt recovery systems, for a cost-effective means of achieving more direct contact with customers.

According to Harte: “Rising unemployment and increasing levels of business debt have meant that some debt recovery agencies are at significant risk – exposed to bad debt and financial loss.  It’s essential that they take the right steps to improve collection rates and to engage more with their customers, if they are to ride out these difficult economic times.

“IVM technology offers a low-cost way of achieving more direct contact with customers in arrears, automating the process of making telephone calls to named contacts and verifying their identity before connecting them to a live agent, optimising call centre and agent productivity and allowing them to handle more calls.”

Qire’s voice CRM solution is already being used by a number of debt collection agencies for a more integrated and comprehensive approach to credit management.

In the case of Severn Trent, Qire’s IVM technology has successfully recovered over £3m in arrears in the first year of use, with average payments 30% higher, offering notably higher collection rates over dialler and postal campaigns.

Simon Reay

Garlands Call Centres has appointed Simon Reay to the role of Business Support Services Director.

Simon will sit on the company executive board and has a broad range of responsibilities covering Garlands’ people, compliance, and business support activities.  Simon previously held the position of executive assistant to Garlands’ CEO, Chey Garland.

Simon has over 10 years’ experience in the contact centre industry where he has worked in HR, Training, and Compliance positions.  He also has built up extensive HR, product development and business enterprise skills from previous roles in the Utilities, Manufacturing and Electronics sectors – working for Thorn EMI, Northumbrian Water, and GEC Marconi.

Simon holds an MBA and an Accounting degree from Newcastle University.

“We’re delighted to announce Simon’s appointment as Business Support Services Director” said Chey Garland, Chief Executive of Garlands Call Centres.  “His extensive contact centre knowledge and intelligent insight will be invaluable as we continue to develop the company by improving our business processes, making better use of resources, and improving quality and performance on behalf of our clients.”

Nelly Monkhouse

snom technology AG, developer and manufacturer of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephones, has appointed Nelly Monkhouse as UK sales manager.  Nelly will be responsible for looking after snom’s UK distributors and provide them with a commercial and local point of contact.  Nelly will also play a key role in expanding snom’s customer premises equipment (CPE) business by uncovering new business opportunities within vertical sectors and the ISP/Carrier segment.

“Nelly’s’ extensive experience in IT and telephony sales make her a valuable addition to our team,” said Oliver Wittig, VP of worldwide sales for snom.  “Her vertical market knowledge and understanding of the ISP and carrier market will be very important to the strategic growth of snom, especially in the UK.”

Prior to joining snom, Nelly was partner development manager for the telephony software vendor Camrivox where she set up new channels across the UK and USA and managed strategic partnerships with key clients including Salesforce.com.

“snom has a fantastic reputation for developing high quality, Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephones based on open standards for enterprise. I’m really excited by the opportunity to build upon snom’s market leadership position,” said Nelly.