Gijima has moved to fill its crucial sales leadership function, naming IT industry veteran Bill Hoggarth as its new chief sales officer, effective immediately.

According to Gijima, Hoggarth has more than 30 years of executive, general management and sales experience in the IT sector. He joins the company, which has had a torrid time financially in the past few years, from Dataways, a business intelligence company he co-founded in 2012.

Hoggarth has extensive experience in the business intelligence space, having worked in leadership positions at Business Objects, Siebel and SAS.

The need for a strong sales team at Gijima is self-evident. In its most recent financial results, for the six months ended 31 December 2013, Gijima reported revenue from continuing operations had declined by 19% from a year earlier to R741,3m.

However, in the same period, Gijima managed to reduce its loss to R24,8m, from R106,2m in the same period a year earlier. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation was a positive R2,7m, from a loss of R100m before.

The company, still reeling from the loss of important contracts, warned that the market continued to be “tough”.

The full impact of the expiry of two significant contracts from the 2012 financial year, as well as customer delays in awarding contracts, led to “continued pressure to top-line performance”, it said of its interim performance.

However, in the past 12 months, it said it had secured R1,6bn through contract renewals.

The company, which last year was forced to do a rights offer to raise money from shareholders, said it had achieved cost savings of about R200m/year. This was done “without exceeding the industry norm in terms of staff turnover”.