TouchStone Software Names New President

Moving to bolster its management ranks and root out costly mistakes in sales projections, TouchStone Software Corp. on Wednesday hired Larry Jordan, a top sales executive at another Orange County software company, as president and chief operating officer.

C. Shannon Jenkins will remain chief executive of Huntington Beach-based TouchStone but will relinquish the title of president and turn over control of day-to-day operations to Jordan, formerly head of sales at FileNet Corp. in Costa Mesa.

Jordan said a big part of his job will be to make sure TouchStone does not repeat the costly mistake it made last quarter, when the company disclosed that expectations for big profits in 1995 had been dashed by a huge oversupply of TouchStone’s WIN ’95 Advisor program.

TouchStone had shipped 178,000 copies of the program, which helps computer users prepare their machines for installation of Windows 95, a popular operating system launched in August. But two weeks ago, TouchStone acknowledged that more than half of those copies have not sold and may be sent back by retailers and distributors, partly because demand for Windows 95 upgrade kits was weaker than expected.

Jordan, 51, said one of his key tasks will be “to get some better warning systems so we can get a better handle on that.”

Jordan also will be responsible for building international and corporate sales, freeing Jenkins to concentrate on new product development and making other long-term plans for TouchStone, a company she helped found in 1982.

Jenkins “has always been our visionary,” said Ray Norberte, director of investor relations at TouchStone. “The company has grown so much over the last two years that we really needed to get someone to help with day-to-day operations.”

TouchStone, which reported sales of $9.7 million over the first three quarters of 1995, ended the year with about 60 employees, nearly double the number of workers the company had at the beginning of last year, Norberte said.

Though TouchStone officials said the company had been looking for a new executive for some time, Jordan said he stumbled into the job largely by accident.

Jordan and Jenkins worked together in Honeywell Information Systems’ sales department in the 1970s. The two hadn’t spoken in years, Jordan said, until he called his former co-worker about four months ago after seeing her quoted in newspaper stories about TouchStone.

“We got together and had breakfast one day, and we began to see that there was potentially a good fit for me at TouchStone,” Jordan said.

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Profile: Larry Jordan

Title: President/chief operating officer

Company: TouchStone Software Corp.

Age: 51

Education: Bachelor of science degree in economics from Arizona State University, 1967

Background: Senior vice president of sales at FileNet Corp., 1984-1995; vice president of international operations and southwest district manager at Prime Computer, 1976-1983; branch sales manager at Honeywell Information Systems, 1972-1976

Residence: Long Beach

Source: TouchStone Software Corp.