CRM Ambitions for North America Spur Sword Ciboodle's Chicago Office

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

Sword ciboodle, a vendor of customer-oriented business software and services, 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, in its officials' words, to become "the fastest-growing CRM provider in North America."

 

Additional Sword ciboodle consultants will be based in 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 Chicago, while Koenig will operate out of Sword's New York office.

 

Koenig will "drive Sword Group's North American strategy," company officials say, with responsibility for business development and operations across all the group's U.S. business units. Rowley's role will include management of several enterprise customers from Sword ciboodle's North American client base, as well as managing field operations, development of staff and recruitment.

 

The company expects that a significant percentage of its global growth will come from the U.S. over the next few years.

 

Koenig was previously a Partner at Accenture (News - Alert), 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. Prior to Revere, he was also a contributor to Fujitsu's Global Advisory Services and Enterprise organizations.

 

Sword ciboodle will be demonstrating ciboodle at the upcoming Gartner CRM Summit in Washington DC, September 8 – 10.

 

In April ciboodle's Graham Technology (News - Alert) was acquired by international IT company Sword Group. "It is expected that the acquisition will help drive global uptake of Graham Technology's flagship customer interaction platform, ciboodle," Graham officials said.

 

With offices in 16 countries, Sword employs over 2,000 people worldwide and has expertise in sectors including banking, insurance, energy and telecoms. Through the acquisition, Graham Technology officials say they expect to be able to use Sword's resources to "maximize" the company's geographic reach.

 

"We are delighted to be joining the Sword Group," said Mike Hughes, Managing Director, Graham Technology. "Aligning ourselves with Sword gives us the opportunity to take ciboodle to a wider audience using Sword's presence in new markets."

 

"This is an excellent alignment for Graham Technology and Sword alike, enhancing our range of offerings and providing a contact center CRM product relevant to many of our existing markets and customers," said Tony Holland, Chief Operating Officer at Sword Group's software division.

 

Sword is an IT company specializing in the delivery of software and services to regulated industries. It sells Governance, Risk and Compliance Management products to energy, travel and transportation, healthcare, insurance, banking, telecoms and government.