Steenhaut has spent most of his career in sales and marketing, primarily in high tech and IT companies—particularly software—spanning a number of global regions. Beginning his career in sales allowed him to apply that experience into marketing to fully support the sales effort. He has experience in start-ups as well as more institutionalized companies. All of this comes within an international context with the ability to manage and coordinate several remote teams.
While Steenhaut comes to the Hybrid Software Group from Igepa Belux, where he was Marketing and E-Commerce Manager, he spent most of his career at Nuance, market leader in speech recognition, AI, PDF and OCR software. There he ultimately managed the Global Marketing Demand Center, guiding and supporting local marketing teams across the globe. The company grew from $170 million revenue to nearly $2 billion before being acquired by Microsoft in 2021. Steenhaut began his career as a copier salesman for Océ-copiers, quickly developing experience in the marketing departments of Panasonic and Fujitsu-Siemens. He earned a Master’s degree in Applied Economics (University of Ghent) and an MBA from the Management School of Antwerp.
“Hybrid Software Group has undergone considerable growth during the past few years. We are comprised of six business units whose technologies complement each other, but we must act as one company to our customers. While we have contributed to the success of many print providers, we also provide vital OEM technologies to many vendors who use our products and expertise to create digital front ends as well as fast and powerful digital presses. As a group, we are much stronger than our individual parts,” states Mike Rottenborn, Hybrid Software Group CEO. “Particularly given the importance of making a strong presence at drupa in a few months, we are fortunate to be able to rely on Steven’s expertise. We look forward to Steven’s efforts to provide a strong, unified identity.”