NICHOLA BALMER

Nichola Balmer originally trained as a linguist, and has developed her career in sales, marketing and general management during the last 20+ years in a variety of business-to-business roles, latterly holding senior board level positions in UK PLCs including Interserve (formerly Tilbury Douglas) and Lavendon Group plc. She has worked extensively in Europe, the USA and the Far East and held senior management roles in sectors ranging from automotive to earthmover tyre sales to fire detection, and steel industry metrology equipment and robotic/automation systems to civil engineering and construction.

She holds an MBA and an MA in Marketing with distinction at UCE where she is now a Visiting Fellow, teaching Strategic Marketing and Customer Relationship Management on the MBA and MSc programmes, and helping develop future undergraduate degree courses. Nichola is a Chartered Marketer and longstanding member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), the Chartered Institute of Management and the Institute of Direct Marketing, and is a Fellow of all three. Nichola is regularly asked to speak, train and write for a wide variety of organisations in the public and private sectors.

RICHARD CASE

Richard Case was a founder member and Technical Director of VeMIS Limited, a company formed in 1991 that developed an on-board computer system for large goods vehicles to reduce fuel consumption by improving driving standards. Richard was heavily involved in the design and development of the original system. The system was adopted by many large fleets and quickly became the market-leader in in-cab systems. In 2000 VeMIS Limited was sold to the worldwide automotive group DaimlerChrysler.

In 2001 the company was renamed DaimlerChryslerServices FleetBoard UK and Richard was appointed Managing Director, a role he carried out until the end of 2005 before joining Perceptis. Richard has extensive general management experience at senior level and has core expertise in managing the design and development of practical, cost-effective, IT based solutions which help companies operate more efficiently. He specialises in translating real business practices and procedures in the fields of marketing, sales and operations into clear and user friendly IT systems which save time & money and improve productivity. Richard is a member of the British Computer Society (BCS).