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ESM Solutions welcomes Richard Forrest as Chief Product Officer

ESM has successfully transitioned to 100% SaaS-based cloud solutions and established strategic partnerships with the dominant ERP providers in both the K-12 and higher education sectors."

With over two decades of experience as a leader and highly-active member of the global EdTech community, Richard is to lead ESM’s spend management portfolio.

ESM is thrilled to welcome Richard Forrest as ESM’s Chief Product Officer. In his role, Richard is responsible for innovation, vision, and product creation across ESM’s suite of procurement solutions.

As the leader and mentor of ESM’s product management team, Richard will be at the forefront of product innovation, ensuring that his team is creating outstanding products that deliver value to our education and supplier communities. Richard joins ESM Solutions with over 20 years of EdTech product strategy expertise as well as leadership experience from his work with market leaders Cayuse and Haplo Services.

In his most recent role of Senior Vice President, Global Operations at Haplo Services, Richard provided operational control and oversight for the research company’s international growth strategies across Europe, the Middle East, India, and Asia Pacific. He played a pivotal role in the merger of the UK business with the US parent company, restructuring the organisation for growth into new markets and achieving both short- and long-term targets. 

Previously, Richard held senior roles at Oracle Corporation, serving as both EMEA Director for Higher Education and Global Lead for Student Experience. In these roles, Richard was an evangelist for sales, marketing, and technical delivery, which led to the creation of a constituent-centric platform that delivered enhanced teaching and learning, and administrative processes.

As well, Richard held numerous key roles at ESM’s strategic alliance partner, Ellucian, with product and market responsibilities across both North America and their global markets.

Richard earned his BSc in Chemistry from the University of Manchester and holds a postgraduate diploma in computer science from Staffordshire University. 

“I am delighted to join the team at ESM at a pivotal time in the evolution of their solutions,” explains Richard. “ESM has successfully transitioned to 100% SaaS-based cloud solutions and established strategic partnerships with the dominant ERP providers in both the K-12 and higher education sectors.”

“By combining the ability to identify real opportunities to create transformational change in collaboration with partners such as Ellucian with a future-oriented technical environment that is composable and dynamic, we can present a very different type of product outlook,” continues Richard. “At ESM, we genuinely have the opportunity to make a real difference by demonstrating how this approach can benefit the whole ecosystem of supply chains within education”.   

“ESM invested during the pandemic and throughout 2022, building new technical teams and consolidating all of our current services.  We are delighted to announce Richard’s arrival and to move forward with the plans we have for new investments, said Joshua Faith, CEO, ESM Solutions. 
“Our ecosystem of education customers, suppliers, and strategic partners are sharing new challenges with us – ones that need new solutions. We believe we can solve these challenges and enable new experiences for suppliers and institutions,” continued Faith. “Technology can help empower these relationships in new ways by delivering insight and driving further efficiencies. It’s an exciting time, and we are excited for Richard to join us as part of our leadership team.”  

 

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