Thomson Reuters Elite’s EMEA sales head Peter Gill is to join Converge Technology Specialists (Converge TS) as chief commercial officer, we can reveal, as the dedicated legal cloud provider builds up its c-suite in preparation for the next phase of its growth.
Gill, who takes a position on the Converge board alongside CEO and founder Nigel Wright, has previously held senior sales roles at Advanced Legal, Wolters Kluwer and LexisNexis, as well as founding professional services business development consultancy Boreas Partnership.
He starts on 4 June and will be responsible for driving the growth of the business, which in January received investment (the sum was undisclosed) from mid-market investor Tenzing Private Equity.
Tenzing targets high growth UK-based companies with an enterprise value of between £10-50m. Converge TS has achieved over 50% revenue growth year on year in the last three years.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider Gill said: “One of the key advantages is that Nigel is driven and Converge has the ability to be really agile when needed. You can talk to Nigel about things and a day later he’ll call and say ‘Guess what, we’re doing it now.’”
He adds: “I’ll be responsible for the overall UK sales number, which I am at Thomson Reuters for EMEA.” However he adds: “As a board member I’ll be responsible with the other members for the P&L; I didn’t have that at Thomson Reuters.” Gill will also be directly responsible for marketing, which he describes as “an agile team”.
One of the key attractions of working for a smaller company, Gill says, is that he will get to help shape the business. “Nigel has said that he wants me involved driving and improving the business alongside other board members,” he said. Converge is currently in the process of hiring a chief financial officer.
The timing is also right in the market. Gill says: “Small firms have been adopting cloud whether be SaaS or IaaS or PaaS for a while but larger firms are now much more open to cloud in whatever that form that might be and Converge has been positioning itself as a leader in legal and partnering with Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis and BigHand. It’s the perfect storm: get this right and you can really drive growth and adoption.”
As for why Gill has left Elite, he says: “There are edges and boundaries that you have to work in. I’ve worked in big businesses before but I’ve also set up my own business and had to win business, deliver, invoice and debt collect and do the accounting. I loved that and but for the recession might have still been doing it. So the whole flexibility thing is fabulous and Converge is the closest I’m going to get to that. With Nigel at the helm, with his focus and attitude, we have the potential to achieve something quite special.”
Converge is known to looking at further organic growth but also strategic acquisitions. Watch this space.
This article first appeared in our bumper May Orange Rag – for your free monthly issue click here: http://legaltechnology.com//latest-newsletter/