Last week, WhatTheyThink.com reported on recent events surrounding Noosh. The story offered an in depth look at their recent launch of Noosh Direct, Noosh's commitment to printers, the acquisition of Digigroups and their expansion into other areas of e-procurement. (Click here to see that story.)

Dave Hannebrink is Noosh's Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. We were able to catch up with him last week to gain a little more understanding about the company and their recent moves. Executive management skills at Noosh? Dave carries solid credentials and is one reason Noosh has been able to navigate from dot com hysteria to now during what some call a recession.

In 1984 Dave Hannebrink founded Covalent Systems, the leading supplier of enterprise software and data collection systems for the printing and electronic publishing industries. Until 1989, he was the company's VP of Sales and Marketing, responsible for the strategies and programs that helped Covalent attain more than 35% of the market share.

From 1989 to 1991, he was COO and presided over the acquisition of Automation, Inc., the industry's leading supplier of web press monitoring and paper waste control systems. From 1992 to 1995, Hannebrink was President and CEO of Covalent. During that time he transformed the company from a turnkey systems supplier, to a vendor of open systems application software, data collection products and related services, with 1200 customers in 15 countries.

After Covalent's acquisition by Logic Associates in 1996, Hannebrink started a management consulting firm called A25 Associates. Over the next 18 months he worked with more than a dozen founding teams, providing management, sales, marketing, strategic counseling and financing assistance to companies in the enterprise software, Internet services and printing markets. Three of his clients achieved liquidity and several others received financing.

Before founding Covalent, Hannebrink started his career at Hewlett Packard, where he held various marketing management positions. Hannebrink holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, an MS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and an MBA from the University of Santa Clara.

We reported last week that key staff members with duties that involved Noosh Direct were let go. What about Noosh Direct - what will happen here?

We are proud of the Noosh Direct product and will continue to actively promote it. Noosh Direct is a much needed and desired product for printers.

The circumstances around our staffing changes will have no effect on our desire to market it. In fact, the staffing changes were related more to our acquisition of Digigroups than with anything to do with Noosh Direct. Right now, Brian Miller (VP of Product Marketing) and myself are handling distribution arrangements and communication to our customers. We have been in discussions with several companies like Pitman and general MIS print software firms who have the relationships to sell software products direct to printers.

What is really happening on the print landscape as it relates to web based workflow?

We have been working hard with several large printers. The mood has changed from the feverish "What do we do now?" mentality to a methodical implementation of sell-side solutions. Companies realize that they need infrastructure and cutting edge applications to compete in the future.

PrintTalk - is Noosh committed to this group?

PrintTalk is a much-needed effort. Standards should be discussed and the topic will become even more important in the future. For now though, it's difficult to set aside development staff to work on implementing PrintTalk because the demand for it from printers is just not there yet. Collaboration solutions like Noosh benefit suppliers because they enable improved communications with their clients. This doesn’t require a complete integration into the print management system of a printer. Printers are used to reentering orders when they get them over the fax, receive calls or get emails. The printers are in the best position to insist that their MIS and equipment vendors exchange standardized information with their clients’ systems. printTalk certainly will make this a lot easier but there just has not been a ground swell yet to get the traction needed. Of course it is what should be done and Noosh will support these efforts.

We reported that many of your customers are requesting Noosh to diversify from just print. Is Noosh reaching out to other areas of procurement?

Customers have transacted over $130 million of custom goods and services using the Noosh platform. Most of that is print related. We have and will expand our platform to meet customers’ needs where it makes sense. In June, we launched Noosh 4 which provides customization capabilities for companies that want to use our system to procure other collaboration intensive products besides print. This is a large area of purchasing, including IT contracting, professional services, capital goods and ad-hoc spending. Our platform is easily configurable and scalable to make the transition.

One of the consultants we spoke with for last week's story said Noosh would be a nice acquisition target for your print component - the idea being that Fortune 1000 companies will desire e-procurement for all goods and services on one platform. Is Noosh looking to be acquired?

First, let me say we are not for sale. Selling in this environment would be a mistake for technology companies and usually indicates that the seller is missing something – technology, customers, cash or management. Noosh has all of these. This said, you always want to be an "acquisition candidate" - that means you have value in your business. We recently acquired Digigroups, a transaction that really says we are here to build a sustainable business. Noosh has a strong balance sheet, committed investors and an even more committed customer base. We'll be around.