Clive Swan, the former SVP for application development at Oracle, has joined de Novo Solutions as non-executive director. We don’t usually cover appointments, but this hire is a significant feather in the cap for de Novo, which is effectively a start-up led by former Certus and Accenture execs, Mark Sweeny and Tim Warner.
Swan’s career at Oracle spanned more than 30 years – all in application development – ultimately leading the HCM product roadmap.
Commenting on his appointment, Swan said: “Having worked with Mark and Tim for more than 15 years, their total dedication to service excellence and the success of their customers has always stood out. That is why I am excited to be supporting them on their new de Novo journey”.
Swan’s appointment is significant in that it strengthens de Novo’s governance board and adds an additional layer of credibility to the ambitious management team. de Novo’s pitch is to build industry specific experiences using a mix of Oracle and ServiceNow technologies (read the Q1 2022 issue of ERP Today for the latest on both vendors vertical and experience ambitions).
We covered de Novo’s plans last year and since then the firm has established a base in Wales and hired a number of industry veterans. de Novo says that with a projected services to product ratio of 3:1, the total addressable market size of the professional services industry, supporting the experience economy, is estimated at $330 billion – the opportunity for an alternative approach to project delivery compared to the big SIs is significant. However, we are yet to hear of any major project wins and it will be interesting to see how the new appointments will impact the firm’s ability to win over customers that are looking for an alternative approach to the incumbent players.
Commenting on the appointment, Mark Sweeny, chief executive, said “A decade ago Clive was instrumental in our investment in Oracle SaaS applications as we pioneered the technology across the marketplace. With Clive becoming a non-executive director we now get the opportunity to work closely with him again and his knowledge and insight of Oracle will be of significant benefit to the company as we move forward into the experience economy. We all look forward to welcoming Clive to the team”.
