Outsourcing and Business Services

Our Practice brings great strength in supporting the Business Process Outsourcing industry, and our consultants offer an excellent track record of search and selection for senior BPO roles as well as industry-side experience.

We are often asked to support recruitment for roles which require a really deep understanding of the business. For example, we recently conducted the search for a Transformation Director for one of the UK’s largest BPO providers. This role was truly ground-breaking, with a brief to improve the process through which outsourced operations are transformed, as well as to take responsibility for operational outcomes across the company’s businesses.

We understand the challenges facing the industry as it matures and becomes more competitive, with second and third generation outsourcing and the changing nature of the relationship between clients and BPO firms.

This means we can find the best people to position our clients in this growing market, particularly in specialist roles, such as:

• Bid management, to ensure that the major investment of bidding is as effective as possible;
• Proposition development and client management, to align strategy and create long-term partnerships;
• Key operational roles, including transition, transformation and operations.

We see ourselves as part of the industry, and work with leading players to develop capability and capacity across both BPO firms and clients. For example, our series of business forums bring people across the industry together to identify issues of common concern and find common ground.

By engaging as a partner in this way, we can leverage our search and selection expertise to add more value than simply recruitment.

As a UK-based firm we have the capacity to deliver locally through our business centres in Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds and London. We also have a strong, multi-lingual research capability that enables us to penetrate candidate markets throughout Europe, the US and Asia.

Whatever the requirement, we understand that recruitment is an expensive investment decision, and that our clients should expect and receive a return on that investment.

For example, when Gas Safe Register won the contract for safety accreditation of gas installation companies, we had already worked with them through the bid process, and therefore had a deep understanding of the challenge ahead for them.

Together, we identified an issue: the complex public affairs and communications environment they were about to enter, with many interested parties, including trade representative associations and a high media profile.

We supported the company to develop the innovative role of Stakeholder Relations Advocate, to lead on building strong channels of communication with these new audiences, and conducted the search and selection which led to the appointment of a candidate who had previously been a Board Member of Uswitch and brought a totally new skillset – and mindset – to the organisation.

A key strength of the practice is the depth of our combined experience in this space. We are able to leverage over 25 years of experience working across the public/private interface, supporting large corporations in recruiting whole teams to take advantage of emerging markets. Recent examples include the recruitment of two divisional Managing Directors for a FTSE 50 company to take advantage of the emergence of large-scale resourcing contracts resulting from the drive for efficiencies in the public sector.

Start up, turnaround and turnkey expertise is at the heart of everything we do. We have the capability to identify genuine leadership talent at Board level combined with specialisms in Finance, HR, IT, Programme and Project Management, Shared Services and Transport.

The wider Practice handles roles across a breath-taking range of businesses.

For example, we recently recruited the CEO for a business in emerging technologies with medical applications. We were invited back to find four senior heads of function for this rapidly-growing company, and this team has given investment partners the added confidence to agree new venture capital funding to support an international expansion programme.

Many of our searches are international in scope, and we research candidates and recruit from (and to) senior roles worldwide.

For example, we recently recruited the Managing Director for the Sri Lankan subsidiary of a UK-based engineering group. The search was global, and the successful candidate was a German national previously based in New Delhi.