Santa Clara, CA September 26, 2001 The CEO of Webango has stepped aside to make way for an enterprise-software veteran, the e-sourcing solution provider announced today, signaling a shift in the company's focus toward global customers.
New CEO Charles Jepson will focus on enhancing Webango's global presence to support deployments for multinational clients, as well as expanding the company's strategic alliances and accelerating its sales initiatives, according to a statement today from Webango.
Webango's founding CEO, Rami Goraly, will now head the company's enterprise products group as executive vice president. In a statement, Ravi Mohan, a Webango board member, offered praise for Goraly, saying, "Rami's expert domain experience coupled with his product vision have been the catalyst behind Webango's early market success."
"Chuck" Jepson comes to Webango with more than three decades of senior management experience at enterprise-focused organizations. Most recently, he served as CEO of Inference Corp., a provider of customer relationship management solutions that was acquired by eGain Communications in April 2000.
As CEO at Inference, Jepson helped give the company a more global focus, and Webango will apparently be looking for him to pull off a similar feat. Mohan said that while Webango has made a name for itself in the e-sourcing market, Jepson's background was "a perfect match for the company" as it looked to target multinational customers.
Jepson's goals will include ensuring Webango can support the e-sourcing needs of global enterprises that want to deploy the solution provider's e-sourcing tools in multiple countries. The company recently opened up a London office as part of this international expansion.
"We've had, in the last few months, a lot of business start coming up from large, Global 2000 companies," said Dave Packer, Webango's new senior director for marketing, in explaining the need for the solution provider to put the necessary infrastructure in place to support customer that want to do international deployments. Packer previously worked with Jepson at Inference.
In the Webango statement, Jepson said: "The global sourcing of highly complex, specialized goods and services by major corporations and institutions is a hugely underserved market opportunity. Webango has done a great job at establishing a leadership position in this market and I am confident we will build it further into the dominant player in this strategic new enterprise software category."
Prior to his tenure at Inference Corp., Jepson was CEO of Interlink Computer Sciences, which developed Internet technologies for mainframe communication and which Jepson took public in 1996. He also previously was CEO of Touch Communications, the predecessor company of Worldtalk Corp., and has worked at Hewlett Packard Co., Software Publishing and Convergent Technologies.
Webango's e-sourcing suite, offered as a hosted solution, enables procurement organizations to automate the sourcing cycle. The company competes with such e-sourcing companies as B2eMarkets, eBreviate, Frictionless Commerce and Ozro, as well as e-procurement solution providers such as Ariba and Commerce One.
Webango remains privately held, with investments from Battery Ventures, Concord Ventures and Redwood Venture Partners. While not going into details, Packer said the company remains financially sound.
