CRM News In Brief

SAP AG this week appointed William R. McDermott as the new president and CEO for SAP America. McDermott, who had been vice president of global sales for rival Siebel Systems Inc., will oversee all SAP activities in the United States and Canada. McDermott joined Siebel in May 2001 after having spent a year as president of market research firm Gartner. Prior to that, the majority of McDermott's career was at Xerox Corp., where he began as a sales rep in 1983 and left in 2000 as president of the $4 billion U.S. major accounts operation.

NativeMinds Inc., a provider of Web-based customer self-service solutions, has appointed four executives to aide in the company's growth. Aaron Rosenbaum, newly named vice president of marketing, was the vice president of marketing at OpenDesign and Cohera, now a division of PeopleSoft, as well as a former a senior partner at Cambridge Technology Partners. Richard Schillbach is now vice president of sales. Prior to NativeMinds he held several management roles including vice president of eastern sales for eGain Corp. Jennifer Fell was named vice president of engineering after successive promotions since joining NativeMinds in 1999. Prior to joining NativeMinds, Fell worked at several technology companies including Hewlett-Packard, Rational Software Corp., and Expert Support. Tom Schofield, a former executive at Sapient, has stepped up as vice president of professional services after leading the Professional Services Organization at NativeMinds for over three years.

Help Desk Institute, an industry association for help desk and support professionals, has joined forces with Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of information technology talent, to launch the HDI Career Center. Designed for help desk, support and IT professionals, this new resource was codeveloped by the two organizations as part of their partnership, which was announced in April 2002. The online career center - www.thinkhdi.com/career_center - offers a range of resources, including compensation information (HDI's flagship annual salary report and the Robert Half Technology IT Salary Guide), career-development tools, hiring forecasts, employment trends, and resources for professional training and certification for support professionals.