Key U.S. location provides a sales and operations hub for growing software firm
Chicago, IL & Glasgow, UK – August 26, 2008 – Sword ciboodle, provider of customer-oriented business software and services, today announced it has established its North American headquarters in Chicago. The office will initially be staffed by key U.S. sales and operations personnel, with further expansion via a major recruitment drive over the next 12 months as the company seeks to become the fastest-growing CRM provider in North America.
Additional Sword ciboodle consultants will be based in key Sword Group locations in North America, including New York and San Francisco.
Sword has appointed Howard Koenig to head up North American operations for the group, while Rick Rowley has been appointed as Sword ciboodle’s U.S operations director. Rowley will be based out of the new Chicago location, while Koenig will operate out of Sword’s New York office.
Koenig will drive Sword Group’s North American strategy, with responsibility for business development and operations across all the group’s U.S. business units. Rowley’s role will include management of several large enterprise customers from Sword ciboodle’s growing North American client base, as well as managing field operations, development of staff and recruitment.
These appointments further support Sword ciboodle’s ambitious North American growth plans. The company expects that a significant percentage of its global growth will come from the U.S. over the next few years.
“The opening of the Chicago office is a key milestone in our North American growth strategy, giving us a central hub from which to effectively serve our new U.S. customers, while also providing the base from which our sales efforts in the country will be driven,” said Mike Hughes, business unit director, Sword ciboodle. “Rick is an excellent addition to the SWORD ciboodle team, and is the ideal person to spearhead the our growth in the region, while Howard brings the leadership and vision that will help us to capitalize on Sword Group’s overarching North American strategy.”
Koenig brings Sword Group a strong track record in executive level management in the software industry. He has been a Partner at Accenture, a senior executive at Oracle, and has been the CEO of two venture-funded Software as a Service companies.
Rowley comes to Sword ciboodle from The Revere Group, where as Principal he worked at client executive levels, addressing multifaceted, mission-critical and international project issues. Prior to Revere, he was also a key contributor to Fujitsu’s Global Advisory Services and Enterprise organizations. He has extensive professional services and software experience, including management consulting, strategy, domestic and foreign field operations, interim CIO/COO and several senior leadership positions.
Sword ciboodle is the award-winning business-process-driven CRM software product for multi-channel contact centers. Targeted primarily to large companies in sectors such as banking, insurance, utilities, telecommunications and retail, it is the only BPM-based CRM product that enables all service channels natively from a single platform. In the U.S., the company has already announced customers including PacifiCorp and JP Morgan Chase, and is currently delivering ciboodle solutions to several significant new clients.
“With an incredible track record in delivering outstanding software solutions across the globe, Sword ciboodle is a company that is ready to crack the U.S. market,” said Rowley. “I am very excited to be part of the team that is responsible for achieving this, and look forward to our success in doing so.”
Sword ciboodle will be demonstrating ciboodle at the upcoming Gartner CRM Summit in Washington DC, September 8 – 10. Key U.S. executives including Koenig and Rowley will be present as the company demonstrates the capabilities of the latest release of ciboodle. A range of functionality will be shown, with a focus on ciboodle’s agent productivity optimization features. These features include channel blending, which allows agents to move seamlessly between channels in a single session, and ciboodle’s “swing” capability, which allows contact centers to easily switch agents dedicated to handling a single channel to another channel, depending on demand. Interested parties can visit the company between summit sessions in the Solution Showcase area.
About Sword ciboodle
Sword ciboodle helps improve the way large organizations interact with their customers. The combination of award-winning, process-managed CRM software and specialist consulting and delivery services help Sword ciboodle’s clients achieve higher revenues from their customers and reduce operational costs. Sword ciboodle is consistently recognized by industry analysts as one of the world’s leading customer-centric technology providers. For more information, please visit www.ciboodle.com.
