Xplanation Creates New Sales Role, Hires Industry Veteran Dave Ruane

Globalization solutions and sales veteran Dave Ruane has joined Belgium-based language service provider Xplanation as its new Enterprise Business Development Manager. Xplanation employs more than 120 staff and produced approximately $20 million in annual revenue in 2014. The company originated as a spinoff from German industrial conglomerate Siemens.

In terms of industry verticals, Xplanation generates approximately 40% of its business by servicing clients from manufacturing areas such as engineering, food processing, and other technology like pumps and valves. Clients in medical devices and finance contribute around 20% each, with the remaining 20% coming from clients in a number of verticals, including fast growing online retail and e-commerce.

Slator reached out to Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Véronique Özkaya for more details. Özkaya joined Xplanation in 2012 from Moravia, where she was also running Global Sales and Marketing. She informed us that Ruane was appointed to a newly created position reporting to her and is based in Chipiona in Southern Spain. Ruane manages five key relationships for Xplanation and is responsible for getting more business for two of the company’s four core sectors: medical devices and manufacturing. Ruane’s geographic scope is EMEA. Xplanation is in the process of hiring a junior salesperson to report to the newly created position.

Ruane has 20 years of experience in the localization industry. He started as a software development engineer for Microsoft before embarking on a career in the language services market at Lionbridge, where his last position was Manager for Localization Engineering and Technology Organization. He had since been in various senior roles for companies like language service providers Zinacle and Tek Translation International. His most recent position was Director of Sales for Europe, Middle East, and Africa at VistaTec. “I am very pleased to join Xplanation,” Dave told Slator. “My focus will be in-depth in a number of our key verticals and will strive to enhance how we make localization and translation easy for our customers,” he said about his role.