New chairman and leaders of product, marketing and partner alliances at the leading global travel and expense management solutions provider as growth and opportunities accelerate

Philadelphia – December 1, 2015: KDS, a global provider of corporate Travel and Expense (T&E) management solutions today announced a new chairman and new executive management team members. Alex Ott has been appointed chairman of the board of directors and brings to the position his extensive expertise in managing international business growth. He replaces Gilles Samoun who is focusing full time on a new technology company he has founded.

Under CEO Dean Forbes, an inspired KDS team has delivered rapid growth in revenue, increased customer satisfaction dramatically and added a large number of new customers, supported by truly innovative product developments around KDS Neo, the cloud-based solution for corporate travel and expense management.

In order to support its continuing growth, KDS has been recruiting aggressively, growing staff numbers significantly and strengthening in particular its research and development, sales and marketing, customer support and finance teams in the US, France and the UK. The company anticipates further additions to the teams going into 2016.

“The Truffle 100 ranking of top European software vendors shows an average growth rate of 5.2 per cent,” says Dean Forbes. “We are growing at a much faster rate, our innovative solutions being in high demand, and we continue to attract talented new people to join our vibrant team by offering them a real influence over the future of KDS.”

In more detail, new appointments to the KDS leadership team are:

Alex Ott, chairman of the board. Alex has been a KDS board member since July 2007. He is also the CEO of CrossContinentalVentures which he founded in 2002. Alex is a veteran in the enterprise software industry with operational and board level experience on four continents. Alex was an early investor in and is a current board member of QlikTechnologies (Nasdaq: QLIK), widely considered as one of the most successful technology IPOs in 2010. Alex is based in the US but is often in Europe due to his investments and board commitments.
Kate Roe, vice president of marketing. Kate will execute the corporate strategy in pursuit of global growth and affirm KDS as a global leader in travel and expense. Kate previously held senior marketing roles at Digital River, hybris Software, Travelport and Ariba.
Gary West, vice president, alliances. Gary will play a key role in expanding the KDS network of strategic alliance partners. Gary joins from Salesforce, where he led the North EMEA team for the ISV Group.
Rapid growth means there are often new career opportunities at KDS, especially in the US, UK and France. See current vacancies at: http://www.kds.com/job-offers/