CSG hires IBM's GM of strategic sales Paul Wilson

CSG has recruited IBM sales heavyhitter Paul Wilson to become the publicly listed print and IT company's new chief sales officer.

When he joins this month, Wilson will be responsible for enterprise sales at CSG, including the company's private cloud platform, procurement marketplace, managed print, end-user computing, cloud communications and display solutions.

According to CSG, Wilson was responsible for $300 million of sales across enterprise and midmarket customers at IBM. Before joining Big Blue in 2013, Wilson was Australian managing director of Gen-I, owned by New Zealand telco Spark.

He will be joined by two other new hires: former NEC Australia national manager of infrastructure services Mark Jobsen becomes CSG's general manager of service delivery, and Data Consultants Australia marketing solutions manager Vanessa Harford has been hired as general manager of marketing.

CSG made the new hires to "ensure that we are well placed to execute on the large technology opportunity we have before us, CSG has taken significant steps to bring in new capability into our senior management team."

The company revealed its intention to expand beyond its traditional managed print business into cloud and managed services in 2015.

Last financial year, CSG acquired two companies to boost its cloud business;: it bought Brisbane managed services provider R&G Technologies for $6.6 million, which provided additional cloud and managed services capabilities, and New Zealand's PC Media was acquired for NZ$300,000 allowing CSG to become a tier 1 Microsoft cloud partner.

CSG's revenue was down 1 percent to $244.5 million for the financial year ending 30 June 2017. EBITDA was down 21 percent to $30.3 million, and underlying net profit fell 24 percent to $19.4 million.

Sliding profits were pinned on lower than expected revenue in enterprise solutions due to a shortfall in transactional equipment revenue, which dropped $9.8 million to $103 million for the year.

The company has placed its efforts towards improving annuity revenue and growing its number of technology subscriptions.

Annuity revenue was up $8 million to $126.4 million, which includes technology subscription revenue nearly doubling to $17.2 million. Also included in annuity revenue was print services, which were down $5.1 million to reach $82.5 million, and finance solutions, up $1 million to reach $26.8 million.

CSG had 27,300 active seats as of 30 June 2017, a 104 percent increase from the previous financial year.