To better support continued strong growth, leading New Zealand office technology group, Onesource, is changing its management structure to give its Konica Minolta and Cogent divisions greater operating autonomy.
At Konica Minolta Business Solutions, Warwick Beban, former Southern Region Manager for Konica Minolta has been appointed to the national role of General Manager. At Cogent, Graham Mitchell, a former Telecom senior executive, has been appointed General Manager.
Onesource CEO Evan Johnson says the new appointments reflect
a strategic move to give Onesource Group subsidiaries more operating autonomy with high calibre general management injecting new leadership energy to maintain and increase profitable growth.
Warwick Beban comes to the role after nine months as Konica Minolta’s National Manager, Strategic Accounts and Southern Regional Manager, where he was responsible for all the branch operations of Konica Minolta in Wellington and the South Island.
Beban, who has a Masters of Science degree with First Class Honours from Massey University, joined Konica Minolta from Telecom New Zealand, where he spent five years as Head of Corporate and Business, Telecom Mobile. Prior to that Beban worked for U-Bix Document Solutions, and its sister company, U-Bix Telecommunications Solutions. During his ten years with U-Bix, Beban held a number of sales, branch manager and regional management positions.
Prior to his appointment at Cogent, Graham Mitchell held a number of senior positions at Telecom New Zealand including Group General Manager of business, wholesale and network services in Australia and General Manager of Telecom’s Internet and Directories Division which included Yellow Pages, Xtra, and Connect – Australia’s third largest business ISP and ecommerce operator. During his ten years at Telecom, Graham Mitchell also held senior management roles in Telecom Network, Corporate Finance and was General Manager of First Media.
Continuing to oversee the expansion of the group and providing strategic guidance are Evan Johnson as Group CEO, Mark Crossley as Group CFO and Steve Spain as Director of Sales and Strategic Marketing.
Evan Johnson has proved to be a visionary leader at Onesource and since he took over as CEO in 2003 he has led the group on an expansion programme which has built it from a $150 million to a $250 million company with more than 1000 staff at 25 locations across Australia and New Zealand.
The group has grown particularly strongly since the management buyout in 2005 from Hanover Group, by the Onesource management team in partnership with leading Australian private equity firm Archer Capital.
Last year saw Onesource take major steps towards its strategic goal of becoming Australasia’s leading supplier of integrated office technology solutions following two major acquisitions. These included the group’s first foray into the Australian market with the purchase of Danka – Australia’s largest independent distributor of printer/copier hardware and software. During 2006 Onesource also purchased the Leasing Solutions finance business from the Hanover Group.
Recent highlights at Konica Minolta include a 20 per cent year-on-year growth in the number of office colour units sold into the market and a 10 per cent growth in revenues from the sale of Production printing equipment. Konica Minolta also successfully launched the new C6500 – a revolutionary new full colour digital printing press, which has unparalleled on line finishing capability. The Danka acquisition in Australia has been rebranded as Imagetec is also performing strongly with revenue expected to finish up the year 10% on the previous year, and with trading profit up 20%.
Cogent, has seen its market share continue to grow to be the largest and reseller of PABX systems and is now New Zealand’s largest supplier of integrated voice and data solutions outside the major Telecommunication Carrier’s. In preparation for the impending opening of the New Zealand telecommunications marketplace, Cogent has successfully launched into the Mobile market through a strategic partnership with Vodafone.