Movers and shakers

chey-garland-iod-120 The first in a regular new series looking at key people on the move or making news in the call centre world.

Chey Garland spoke last week at the IOD conference. GN Netcom appoints a new MD and SpeechStorm have appointed 4 new people.

Last week Chey Garland, Garlands’ Chief Executive, was invited to speak at the prestigious Institute of Directors’ Annual Convention.

Chey was taking part in the IOD Panel Session speaking on an industry panel designed to educate delegates about successful business management. Also on the panel was a range of top industry figures including: Nils Blythe, BBC Business Correspondent, Brendon Riley, Chief Executive, IBM UK and Ireland and Russell Taylor, Customer Service Director, T-Mobile.

On the move

Karsten Hald Pedersen

GN Netcom has appointed Karsten Hald Pedersen as Managing Director of UK and Ireland.

Karsten Hald Pedersen together with the UK Sales and Marketing team will expand GN Netcoms’s existing reseller base, targeting in particular, switch resellers where headsets offer an easy value add in conjunction with a communications solution. “We are working with our channel partners to include headsets in all PBX sales” comments Karsten Hald Pedersen. “A great example of this is our relationship with BT, who have been including headsets in their bundles for quite some time”. Drawing on his previous experience in building up the channel for GN Netcom, Karsten will work closely with the UK team to identify and implement a series of new initiatives to provide continued support to GN Netcom’s existing and new channel partners.

Karsten will draw on his strong channel management experience to spearhead GN Netcom’s drive to become the channel’s preferred headset vendor by demonstrating how financially rewarding and easy it is for resellers to incorporate headsets into their existing portfolio.

Karsten has worked for GN Netcom for the past eight years, having held several senior executive roles. Most recently he was Managing Director for the Nordic countries, having been promoted to this position only one year after becoming Managing Director of the company’s home market, Denmark.

Before joining GN Netcom, Karsten spent seven years working at Sensortech, GN Netcom’s biggest distributor in Denmark. During this time, Karsten was responsible for increasing Sensortech’s share of the headset market to 40 per cent. In 2000, Sensortech was bought by GN Netcom. Since then, Karsten has played a key role in securing a healthy 60 per cent of the headset market in Denmark.

SpeechStorm have appointed three sales professionals and a new marketing manager.

Nina Kalra is an experienced marketing manager with several years of service in the European software industry. Nina joins SpeechStorm as its new marketing manager having previously managed and overseen marketing and communications strategies for Enigmatec Corporation, DataDirect Technologies (a division of Progress Software) and eBusiness platform provider, IONA Technologies.
Jakub Pawelczak, a native Polish speaker, joins SpeechStorm to lead sales in Poland. A former sales manager at IVO Software in Gdynia, Jakub is an experienced sales professional whose roles have included sales strategy, new business sales, partner sales and managing major accounts. Jakub will be based in SpeechStorm’s Gdansk office in Poland.
Andy Hill brings more than 30 years’ experience in the communication industry to SpeechStorm. A seasoned business development professional Andy has in-depth experience of voice self service and contact centre solutions. Formerly business development manager at Eckoh, Andy was responsible for closing a number of significant new business sales opportunities and developing ongoing business in large customer accounts. Andy also spent some 30 years in a number of key roles with British Telecom, latterly responsible for its global service’s voice self service business.
Eoin McCarthy joins SpeechStorm to focus on leading sales in the Irish market. Eoin comes to SpeechStorm from Sentenial, a payments services and solutions company, where during his 4-year tenure he successfully implemented sales strategies selling in to SMEs and large Irish corporates.

Oliver Lennon is CEO of SpeechStorm and explains, “I am delighted that we have attracted this extensive talent in Nina, Jakub, Andy and Eoin to help us deliver on our goals in the UK, Ireland and Europe. Nina will play a pivotal role in helping SpeechStorm to deliver hard-hitting marketing campaigns that capitalise on our innovation and expertise and help to increase our market penetration and success. Jakub, Andy and Eoin are seasoned sales professionals whose expertise will further deepen our share of the phone self service market and open new territories and business opportunities for us and our partners.”

Have you got any news on any movers and shakers? Please send them in and we will see if we can publish them.

6 May 2009

Filed under Call Centre News