Change in senior management - gearing for more growth...

Specialist call centre and communications company Inter-Active Technologies has ratified a change in senior management, to boost its ranks and to ensure a sound management platform as it embarks on what will arguably be its biggest growth year since its inception in 2004.

Taking up the post of Managing Director of Inter-Active Technologies, from her previous capacity of Financial Director, is Jacqui van Staaden. "Having been with the company from its inception five years ago, as well as being a major shareholder, the move to the position of Managing Director seemed a natural progression," says Jacqui.

This is the first of a group of strategic management reshuffles to prepare the company for the next growth phases and new business initiatives. Given the new initiatives on the cards and pipelined business, the company is already looking to increase its financial division, and the board has ratified further appointments of a Financial Director as well as Human Resources Director.

Brendan van Staaden has moved to the capacity of Group Chief Executive - responsible for the global management of the local group operations, including the soon-to-be-launched Inter-Active Money and the international component and BPO arm, ACTIVcontact (Mauritius).

Jacqui notes that in terms of the direction and vision that Brendan has put forward for the company in the last five years - it will remain the same. Understandably, patterns in the industry may result in certain aspects changing, but Jacqui says there is no reason to enforce change onto a company that is already running well. "The aim is to get all employees in the company to work towards a common goal. Essentially, it will be to fine-tune what is already a well-oiled machine," says Jacqui.

Brendan will be at the front-line of new business development, focusing on new business ventures and diversification, while Jacqui will be running the day-to-day operations of the business, including aspects such as organisational activities, operations, sales and finance.

"Given that we are both majority shareholders in the company, we have the same amount of passion and determination in seeing that the business grows further. We also recognise that we cannot keep doing the same thing over and over - we need to diversify our offering. Given the initiatives that Brendan will be working on, I foresee massive growth and diversification within the next year. We have already secured business just on the existing products and services that we offer," says Jacqui.

She adds that before the end of 2010, Inter-Active Technologies will have a number of new initiatives that would have come into fruition. "At this stage, we are still talking with investors, so it's at a strategic level, but within the next two months an announcement will be made, and more detail will be available," explains Jacqui.

Meanwhile, she predicts that her move into the role of Managing Director will be relatively smooth. Having been with the company since its inception, she is familiar with all aspects of the business - not just its financial side. "I have pretty much been there for it all," says Jacqui.

Having started with just one member in 2004, Inter-Active Technologies has grown into a high-quality contact centre and customer service enablement channel with over 500 employees. In addition, the company has grown from a revenue of just R400 000 in the first year to one of close to Rll6 million in 2009.

Initially assisting customers with advice on which switches and systems to use, Inter-Active Technologies specialises in the provision of call and contact centre maximisation services; call and contact centre outsourcing and hosted application service models (ASMs); call and contact centre technologies; business process management; and solution architectures.