DAVid wilKinson
David's combination of technical expertise and commercial acumen has made him a successful leader of enterprises ranging from start-ups to regional businesses for global technology companies in Japan & Asia.
Over 25 years, he has used his sales, strategic planning and P&L management skills to navigate companies through rapid growth, acquisition and transformation. He has built and managed talented teams across sales, marketing and strategy functions and used his knowledge and experience of negotiating multi-million dollar contracts to build a strong client base in a number of sectors including enterprise, technology, financial services and payments.
David's core strength is the creation and execution of sales strategy. His success is based on building strong client & partner relationships and on coaching his team to identify, qualify and close sales opportunities.
David started his career with a series of senior technology and management roles within ICL Europe. Following the acquisition of ICL by Fujitsu, David was selected as one of only 6 people to join Fujitsu Japan to help accelerate the integration of the two firms.
His next role was managing director of a Japanese start-up, where he grew revenues from a standing start to $5m in three years and established a new organisation covering sales, engineering and operations. He was then headhunted to turn around another business; he took it from a multi-million dollar quarterly loss to a sustained quarterly profit in less than 18 months through restructuring, vendor negotiation and targeted acquisition of new customers.
After the business was aquired by a global technology company he continued to expand the Japan business before moving to lead pan-Asian teams covering sales, business development and strategic marketing. In these roles, he was responsible for high-value, multi-year vendor and client contract negotiations including company acquisitions.
Brief Career Highlights
David, who hales from Scotland and now lives in Japan, graduated from Glasgow University where he earned a First Class Honours degree Computing Science with Physics and Mathematics
He has held the following roles:
10 years with Fujitsu/ICL in various senior roles in Europe and Japan.
5 years as Managing Director of Japanese technology start-up
15 years at Fortune 500 Global IT company, including:
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7 years as Japan Managing Director
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14 years as Japan Representative Director
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5 years as head of Asia Pacific sales/business development
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4 years as Asia Pacific lead for global strategy and marketing
Other roles and interests
10 years as a member of the board for the Futures Industry Association of Japan
2 years as member of the board for the Asia Pacific Cloud Computing Association
He speaks Japanese (as well as Scottish!)
Specialist areas
Sales strategy and execution
Financial planning and P&L management
Business development and marketing
Client relationship development and negotiation
Financial services & payments technology and ecosystems
Data centre strategies including planning, operation and management
Large scale IT infrastructure, network and cloud strategies