By hiring a high-profile executive from a rival, Getronics NV hopes to boost its sales in the United States.
The Amsterdam information and communication technology vendor is probably best known in U.S. banking circles as a developer of branch automation software.
But Gary Cawthorne said he plans to emphasize Getronics' other services, including help desk, deployment management, network maintenance, and network security.
Early last month he was named the North American president and general manager, a newly created position.
He said the opportunity to work with industries beyond banking persuaded him to join Getronics from Unisys Corp., where he spent 28 years, most recently as a vice president and the managing partner for the Blue Bell, Pa., company's $1.8 billion global banking practice.
In Getronics, "I saw a market that was growing very dramatically, a company that is very well focused, a company that has great services, and a Who's Who client list," Mr. Cawthorne said in an interview Thursday. "It seemed like a great chance to be part of an organization where I could make a difference and help it grow."
Despite its relatively low profile, Getronics is an important provider in the U.S. financial services market. It ranked No. 10 in American Banker's FinTech 100 ranking of technology vendors in November. Though financial services is the company's largest market, it provided only 34% of its $3.4 billion worldwide revenue in 2004.
Getronics organized a formal global financial services practice last year and set goals of achieving leading market positions in the United States and the United Kingdom within three years while maintaining its leading market position in the Netherlands. Last year $558 million, or about 16%, of its revenue came from North America.
In announcing Mr. Cawthorne's hiring, Kevin Roche, a vice chairman at Getronics and the executive vice president of the Americas, emphasized his company's position as an information and communication technology provider.
"Gary's appointment comes at an important time for Getronics' business, as we leverage our recent successes and growth in workspace management ICT solutions with both U.S.-based and global Fortune 500 organizations," Mr. Roche said in a press release.
Analysts said Mr. Cawthorne's prominence could improve Getronics' sales efforts.
"He's very well known in North American financial services, and banking in particular," said Stessa Cohen, a retail banking analyst at Gartner Inc. of Stamford, Conn.
Jeanne Capachin, the corporate banking research director at Financial Insights Inc., a Framingham, Mass., unit of International Data Group Inc., said Getronics could use the boost.
"They're not very good at getting their message out," Ms. Capachin said. "Having Gary on board will certainly help."
Mr. Cawthorne said he wanted to help Getronics expand in other markets, including retailing, government, and manufacturing. However, he acknowledged the importance of financial services for his company, and he said he would take advantage of the connections that he developed at Unisys.
"It would be my expectation that those relationships will create business opportunities for Getronics and benefits to those end customers," he said.
In February, Getronics announced its largest-ever financial services contract, with Barclays PLC. It valued the five-year contract at nearly $260 million.
"Getronics' workspace and application management services provide us with the support and flexibility we need to continue to evolve and optimize our IT environment cost effectively," Paul Idzik, the chief operating officer of Barclays, said in a press release from the vendor.
Mr. Cawthorne said Getronics does not focus on strategic or customer-facing the services. Instead, he said, it helps clients' employees in-house with things like technical problems, so the employees can focus on business issues.
He emphasized the company's worldwide network of operations, from Singapore and Budapest to Boston and Mexico City.
"If you want to have a standard set of solutions and to do business with a single organization that can follow your employees into the sunset, we can be an important solutions provider there," Mr. Cawthorne said.
Ms. Cohen said Getronics' approach is to provide a framework for applications integration - a concept similar to that used by competitors such as Fidelity National Information Services Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., or S1 Corp. of Atlanta.
"Banks are in a constant process of channel renewal and replacement. They need to keep up with the technology, but they also need to focus on aligning the bank and its business strategies," she said. "This may be a good time for this, especially for banks in the midtier that are caught between outsourcing everything and innovating everything."
