Giovanni S.

“Giovanni is the kind of leader that makes the difference. I had the opportunity to see him reversing a very tough scenario: move a company to the Cloud and acting on things no one looked at for a long time cutting unnecessary costs while managing a team on creating innovative solutions and products. Giovanni not just tackled the hard problems: he solved then. Instead of just hire more people hoping to move fast, he invested in people and giving his strong technical background made the team felt safe, making the perfect bridge between all the different areas inside the company. Above all, he's a very nice guy, great to be around, and to learn from.”

“I worked with Gio throughout his time with SmartFocus as members of the same Executive Leadership Team. He was CTO, I was COO and CFO. From the first meeting we had after he joined it was clear that he was highly intelligent and focussed as well as being very personable. He inherited a huge amount of technical debt, and outdated, complex infrastructure for which there was no documentation and which straddled multiple geographies on both sides of The Atlantic as well as across The Channel. The business was undergoing a major turnaround, while also preparing for GDPR, which cut right across the business given the sector in which it operates. These two major factors meant that time was of the essence and funding was limited to effect the changes needed, which also included substantial platform rationalisation as well as the sunsetting of old technologies. The fact that Gio was hugely successful in managing all these concurrent challenges, while also supporting the CEO and myself in successfully selling the business in a Trade Sale, testifies to the personal commitment and energy that he brings to his work, and his strong interpersonal skills as well as his highly current technical knowledge. He worked highly effectively across the organisation, especially with my Finance team, showing admirable commercial awareness as he renegotiated many of the core supplier contracts, while massively reducing the cost of our service delivery, and improving the quality of the customers' experience, while also actively participating in customer focussed activities, whether at pre-sale or at renewal time, working closely with the Chief Customer Officer. I will enjoy watching his career progress, given his unusual blend of capabilities which will in due course enable him to contemplate a path of wider general management overlaid on his rocksolid technical knowledge and performance.”