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Curriculum Vitae (pdf version over here) |
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Rik
Van Bruggen Tel. +32 (03) 230 32 09 e-mail rvanbruggen@novell.com or rvanbruggen@yahoo.com Nationality: Belgian Date of birth: Place of Birth: |
Education U.F.S.I.A., Commercial Engineer, option Management
Information Systems, graduated with Highest Distinction ·
Member of the university-wide student-body, UNIFAC for two years ·
Responsible for funds-gathering campaigns during two consecutive
years, involving many prospection/sales activities with potential sponsors ·
During the second year, Chief Editor of the UNIFAC-Post, the
university campus’ main weekly magazine Exchange programme in the USA ·
During these months, I gained invaluable experience through both the
academic courses that I was taking and of course the extensive encounter with
American society Sint-Jozefcollege,
Turnhout, 1985-1991 High school: option Latin-Greek (first 3
years) and Latin-Mathematics (last 3 years) Language skills Mother tongue: Dutch French: very good
written and spoken knowledge English: very good written
and spoken knowledge German: good written and
spoken knowledge Job experience Company: UFSIA - Period: 1996-1997 Job: Course Coordinator Information Technology After graduating, the Company: e-COM Interactive Expertise,
Alcatel e-COM, The E-Corporation Period: 1997-1999 Job: Project Manager (1997-1998), Sales and Consultancy executive,
member of the management team (1998-1999) At The E-Corporation (or Alcatel e-COM, or e-COM Interactive Expertise
as it was called consecutively (e-COM was purchased by Alcatel on Gradually however, my job within eCOM took a new, more commercially oriented
and management focused direction. As the web applications and the web
application development business matured, I gradually specialised my
activities into Sales and Consultancy, and became a member of eCOM’s
management team. I left eCOM (The Ecorporation, as it was called by that time) in 1999
when the continued pressure on quality dropped to a level that I could no
longer accept. Company: EDS Belux Period: 1999 Job: Sales support specialist Having worked in the highly unstructured environment of The
E-Corporation for two years, I chose to join the multinational company
Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in the summer of 1999. With EDS, I worked in a
commercial role as a “sales support” specialist. This was a commercial role
in the sense that it was my job to advise the different sales channels
(strategic account management, client group account management and sales
executives) on the business proposition and technological architecture of a
number of web-technology offerings. Unfortunately, I was only able to
fullfill this role for little more than 5 months. Like many of my colleagues
at the time, I was very disappointed in the EDS environment, its continued
lack of customer focus (they were having their 3rd major
reorganisation in 2 years at the time), the nature of the job and its
possibilities. In hindsight, I still look upon this period as a positive experience,
in the sense that I feel that I learned so much about corporate politics in a
very short period of time. Company:
SilverStream Software – Novell Period: 1999-2002 Job: Sales manager Having gained the sales experience that I had at The E-Corporation and
EDS, I took the job of Sales Manager at SilverStream Software in 2000,
successfully carrying a revenue target of more than 1.5 Million Euros for 3
consecutive years. In this job, I found myself to be growing into this role
of a customer focused account manager, who knows that he will be meeting his
revenue targets if he succeeds in solving the clients problems in a way that
exceeds the customer’s expectations. During this period, I had the chance to
practice and refine different types of sales techniques, ranging from a
technology-oriented solution sell to a more broader, all-encompassing
solution that includes products and complementary services. My period at
SilverStream/Novell was and still is a period of maturity and personal
growth. Skill profile As you’ve probably noticed from the CV up until now, you know that I
am not an specialist in any specific domain of expertise right now. I have a
very good feel for information technology and all its related aspects, but
even there – the area where I currently make my living – I don’t consider
myself to be a specialist. I can talk about it for hours, but there isn’t a
single technology or application that I consider myself an expert in. I am a
true and genuine generalist, someone who knows quite a bit about quite a
large number of things, and who is capable of translating these isolated ‘things’
into a coherent mindset, and who can communicate this mindset to customers,
colleagues, suppliers, recruits and many other people. To me, this means that I am focusing on finding the right balance
between Technology, Business and People. I am convinced that the combination of these three
generic skillsets can make me a valuable addition to a company. I’d like to
make this a little clearer: 1. On the technology side of
things, I have had ample opportunity to get to know technologies like CORBA,
J2EE, .Net, Public Key Infrastructures, Secure Identity Management, Directory
Services, meta-directory services, etc. 2. On the economical side, I
have carrying management responsibilities for quite some time, and I know
what it means to meet revenue targets, and ensure financial stability and
profitability for a company. But even more important than this sense of
financial efficiency, I also want to stress that I have the ability to ensure
operational (more process oriented) efficiency in an organisation. The two
aspects of course need to go hand in hand. 3. On the people side, I have
grown to realise that people skills are among the most important of any
responsible job in today’s organisations. I think that over the years – in
working in professional teams on many projects – I have acquired the
communicative, motivational and organisational skills to manage a group of
people and build amazing results together with them. It is clear to me that my personal strength does not lie in any of
these individual skillsets, but in the creative combination of them all. As a
consequence, this truly is what I want to look for in any future job:
combining these three aspects, rather than specialising in any of them.
Currently, I am thinking that sales and general management challenges match
these characteristics best. Presentations and Publications During my time at the Through the expertise that we built up at Alcatel e-COM regarding
various elements of web technology, we presented at a large number of
IT-related workshops and seminars, organised by organisations like IT Works, Array Publications (Database Systems 98 & 99) and Euroforum (Systems Management 98).
The topics covered were (among others): ·
The Intranet
LifeCycle ·
Network Computing
Strategies ·
ECommerce Strategies ·
Web application
servers Throughout my other jobs at EDS and SilverStream/Novell, I was able to
supplement my presentation skills in many corporate seminars and public
speaking opportunities. Hobbies Outside of the intense work experience at Novell, I try to spend as
much of quality time as I can ·
doing sports like
Orienteering, Mountain Biking or Squash ·
listening to and
making my own music ·
travelling to remote
parts of the world, off the beaten track (on our last two ‘expeditions’, me
and my wife visited remote parts of ·
surfing the web, and
learning more and more about the amazing world of information technology ·
visiting a museum,
concert hall or a theatre once in a while ·
reading a relaxing
yet intriguing book |
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Feel free to contact me here |
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