David Smith 01732 759725 ONE-TO-ONE 46 David Smith, Group Marketing Director, Xeretec spoke to Michelle Ryder about the changes both in terms of technology and customer needs, he’s witnessed over the past ten years Step back in Like many long-serving industry people – myself included – Smith’s career in the print sector began when fax was the next big thing. He first joined the sector in 1988, working alongside print territory sales reps but specialising in the early days of fax machines. “It just so happened that the postal strike hit just after starting and the world went crazy for fax,” he explained. When asked about what it was that attracted him to the print sector, Smith said: “To be honest I was drawn by being master of my own destiny, the attractiveness of working a large geographical patch, and getting my first ever company car!” Moving into marketing When at school, Smith’s holiday jobs included marking targets for rifle shooting at Bisley ranges – which couldn’t be further away from what he does now in terms of driving marketing excellence. His career highlights include working in competitive marketing for International Computers Limited (ICL). “I focused on analysing strengths and weaknesses versus key competitors like IBM, DEC, Wang, Burroughs, Sperry and Honeywell,” he said. This was at the very birth of the personal computer (IBM’s Charlie Chapman global campaign), the heyday of ‘office automation’ with Wang, and mainframe and mini systems such as the DEC Vax PDP 11, IBM’s 3090 mainframe (code named Sierra). “ICL had just introduced a product that they called the ‘One Per Desk’. I wrote some research about the foreign content of IBM products used in the UK public sector and it caused a debate in Parliament about inward investment versus UK money going abroad,” Smith shared.
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