CEO Today Business Women of the Year Awards

51 www.ceotodaymagazine.com CEO Today Business Women of the Year Awards 2019 UNITED KINGDOM JULIE PURVES CEO and Founder of B2M Solutions ABOUT JULIE PURVES Julie Purves is CEO of B2M Solutions, a thought-leading, mobile enterprise management software company based in the United Kingdom. She founded the company in 2002. B2M delivers innovative software solutions that provide valuable insights and actionable analytics for the mobile enterprise. These real-time, business-centric analytics can be acted upon immediately to optimize operational efficiencies, increase employee productivity and improve customer satisfaction. A business visionary and international entrepreneur with 25 years of leadership success, Purves has assembled a senior-level team of sales, marketing, technical and financial professionals focused on developing and deploying mobile solutions that deliver outstanding business value. Even in the early years of her career, Purves demonstrated an uncanny talent for identifying and nurturing emerging opportunities to help people and businesses reach their full potentials. A deep understanding of the partner and channel relationships grew into the motto that she carries with her today, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Add to that her “I never thought that I was wrong – I knew that the market would wake up to the opportunity” confidence in the B2M company vision, Purves accumulated funding and built the team to be at the right place at the right time, today, when the market has caught up to her initial business idea. Her early career was a fertile training ground to help Purves become the business leader she is today; from learning to manage teams and complex projects through to providing the early insight that led eventually to the founding of B2M Solutions. Purves’ multi- cultural track record includes delivering major IT projects and engaging customers. She has extensive experience establishing new businesses, board level strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, staff empowerment and company-wide change management. Prior to founding B2M Solutions, Purves was director of development and operations at Idesta Group Limited where she led the company’s operations and product development. Reporting to the CEO, Purves was also a member of the Idesta Group board. In 1999, Purves joined Intermec International as project director, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), where she established the company’s major project capabilities focusing on large mobile deployments. As the architect of the company’s European solutions business, she led a major project to provide a 5,500 parcel delivery staff with a mobile collection and delivery solution. At the time, this was the largest mobile contract in the world and resulted in a 20% delivery efficiency improvement. This experience gave Purves the idea to understand how people are using the device to optimize the process, ultimately leading to the B2M vision. Before joining Intermec International, Purves was vice president, Partner Consultancy, Fujitsu TeamWARE Group, where she championed change management initiatives and improved product time to market benchmarks. She also established Europe-wide support and consultancy centres in the UK, Finland and Holland. From 1995 to 1996, she was manager, Messaging and Connectivity Product Centre. During this time, Purves gained substantial international experience by spending two years in Finland managing multi-site development projects. She also managed delivery of Electronic Mail System to European Union, General Secretariat to the Council of Ministers. From 1990 to 1993, Purves was worldwide support manager and Vienna migration manager with ICL. She began her career as a team leader with Northern Telecom Data Systems in 1986. Purves holds a BSc Hons 2(i) in Mathematics with Computing from the University of Bath, 1982. In 1997, she graduated from “Millenium Program,” jointly run by ICL and Ashridge Management College (UK) – a program designed to provide the foundation for ICL/Fujitsu’s next generation of board- level directors. www.b2msolutions.com ™