BravoSolution Appoints Jim Wetekamp as its next CEO
By Andrew Bartolini
Last week, BravoSolution, a supply management solution provider, announced that its current SVP of Solution Strategy and industry veteran, Jim Wetekamp, will become the company’s CEO effective October 31, 2014. Jim joined BravoSolution in 2008 via the Verticalnet acquisition and for the last six years has been focused on deepening the company’s footprint of technology solutions and helping the company expand within key markets. I’ve know Jim for nearly nine years and think that Bravo’s board made an excellent choice by picking someone with deep sourcing process and technology expertise and a very strong commercial presence – a potent combination in any corner office.
In a brief interview with myself and our editor, Matt York, Jim told us that he plans to implement a two-fold strategy across its innovation and service-oriented landscape.
First, Jim says he plans to build upon the company’s success in the technology market and develop an even stronger product portfolio. Bravo, as readers may know, takes a unique approach to the market by closely coupling its services and solutions. Bravo’s European legacy was one based in consulting while the acquisition of Verticalnet brought in a US team that had a solutions first background. Bravo’s emphasis on developing and advancing its technology solutions really took hold a few years ago with Jim leading that charge company-wide so it’s no surprise that it will continue. Bravo has been investing in their technology staff and conducting more research and development and, according to Jim, they are already halfway through their ramp-up phase. Second, he plans to standardize the best business practices and solutions that BravoSolution currently deploys across multiple markets and improve knowledge sharing and resource management across the company.
When looking to next year, Jim has two very specific goals for 2015 (1) unifying BravoSolution’s market and brand personas across all markets and (2) continuing to grow within emerging markets.
We congratulate Jim on his promotion!
Iasta Integrates Configurable Contract Approval Workflows into its Solutions
While Selectica’s acquisition of Iasta earlier this year (which we covered here) brought together two specialists in the strategic sourcing and contracts realms, Iasta has also committed to its customers to continue to advance and support its solution suite. As such, Iasta, a Selectica company, recently announced that it is integrating configurable contract approval workflows into its line of Iasta Smartsource Contract Management solutions. Among other capabilities, these new workflows will allow end users to create serial and conditional workflows and assign specific users as approvers, while offering improvements in search and analytics.
ReadSoft Shareholders Agree to Lexmark’s Bid, will Meet in Late October to Discuss Deal
On October 1, Lexmark International received agreement from 98% of ReadSoft’s shareholders for the acquisition of their company. ReadSoft will now hold a general shareholders meeting on October 23 to discuss to deal. Lexmark and Hyland Software had been locked in a bidding war over ReadSoft, a story that we have covered over the past few months on our sister site, Payables Place. But after months of bidding by both companies and speculation over who would acquire ReadSoft, it appears that a deal is nearing completion. In late August, Hyland withdrew its offer just as Lexmark offered a higher bid for ReadSoft. Last week’s announcement that 98% of shareholders have agreed to the deal pretty mush ensures that the two sides can bring the deal to a close. Look for further coverage on Payables Place.
In other technology news…
- Lavante, Inc., a cloud-based supplier management solution provider, recently announced that Frank Harbist has joined the company as its new President and CEO. Harbist comes to Lavante from ActiveScaler, Inc., an infrastructure software start up, where he was also the CEO. Harbist replaces Sam Klepper, who was appointed President and CEO of Lavante in June of 2013.
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