Steering Committee

SSON is privileged to be working with a group of individuals preeminent in the shared services and sourcing space. This group is providing feedback and direction on an ongoing basis to SSON, through the first half of 2009, to help shape its work globally and make sure we reflect the information and networking needs of this dynamic marketplace.

Europe Steering

Tom Bangemann
Vice President Business Transformation
The Hackett Group

Tom has been with The Hackett Group for six years. He has worked on numerous advisory, consulting, auditing and benchmarking engagements in almost all functions of a company, with a deep expertise focus on the world-class finance function. His experience includes a set of over 50 sourcing projects (including shared services and outsourcing). Tom has worked in a range of industries and countries. He is a regular event speaker, chairman and panellist and author (e.g. on Shared Services in Finance & Accounting, published in February 2005). Tom chaired the Hungarian Shared Service Community for three years, and advises other shared service initiatives and company boards.

Chris Gunning
Director Unisys Global Shared Services Europe, Bangalore and Asia Pacific
Unisys   

Chris, an Irish Chartered Accountant, joined UNISYS in 1997 from KPMG, and has held various finance, accounting and audit positions around the entire globe. Chris is  located in Amsterdam, and is the Global Shared Services Director for European, Asia Pacific and India regions, including the Bangalore SSC, with a combined headcount of approximately 400 employees. He is also the Co-Chair of the Conference Board’s European Council for Shared Services, and serves on the Editorial Board for Shared Services News. Chris recently graduated from INSEAD business university, Fontainebleau, France in November 2008 with a Diploma in Executive Business Leadership. He is also an avid music fan, going to many gigs and festivals, as well as supporting Glasgow Celtic Football Club.

Nick Jarman
Partner, Performance Improvement Consulting
PricewaterhouseCoopers

Nick specialises in Finance transformation with focus on Performance Management, Shared Services and Outsourcing. He has worked on global back-office projects (Finance, IT and HR) to establish the most effective way of delivering service to the business through process improvement, Shared Services, BPO or systems replacement. Nick has worked across all industries, from Insurance, through public sector health, Global Foods to bulk chemical manufacturing. More recently Nick has been working on ways to help clients leverage their investment in the back-office systems and processes to provide better MI and reporting.

Robert Horvath
General Manager Europe
Diageo Business Services

Robert joined IDV, the spirits arm of Grand Metropolitan plc, in 1991 as General Manager, Hungary. He went on to become General Manager Central & Eastern Europe in 1994, then General Manager Eurasia in 1996.  Following the creation of Diageo - via the merger of Grand Metroplitan and Guinness plc- he ran the combined spirits business in Eurasia.  He currently runs Diageo's Budapest Shared Service Centre, which was established in 2001 and provides financial services to  Diageo’s European markets from Hungary.

Philip Whelan
Head of European Business Service Centre
BP

Philip Whelan is the Head of BP’s European Business Service Centre in Budapest, Hungary. He’s leading the preparation, set-up, building-to-scale and running of the European BSC to operate Finance, Customer Service and Operational Procurement activities of BP’s Refining and Marketing across Europe.Philip joined BP in February 2009 from Genpact where he was Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Romania and Poland Operations and successfully built Genpact’s European organization across sites in Hungary, Romania and Poland. Prior to his role at Genpact, Philip was European Financial Controller and then Director of European Operations and Finance with Artesyn Technologies International. Philip has an educational background in accounting from the Cork Institute of Technology, Cork, Ireland and is FCMA, Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).Philip also has an MBA, Henley Management College, United Kingdom and is a Certified Six-Sigma Black Belt.

Graham Russell
Global Head of Transaction Processing
AstraZeneca

Graham joined AstraZeneca PLC in September 2007 as Head of Global Transaction Processing, based in Wilmington, Delaware. This was following 6 years at Orange Business Services (a subsidiary of France Telecom, formerly known as Equant) where initially as VP of Finance Systems & Processes, he led the Business Transformation of the Finance Function. Subsequently he became VP of Finance and led the Global Finance Shared Services organization, which supported 200+ countries and territories, eventually entering a Business Process Outsourcing arrangement, which transferred much of the function to India and Poland.

Prior to joining Equant, Graham spent 18 years with NCR Corporation (and AT&T Corporation when NCR was acquired) in positions of increasing responsibility including CFO for Latin America, CFO and Head of Business Operations for Customer Services Europe Middle East Africa and Area Managing Director, Southern Europe.Graham joined NCR from KPMG where he had been Manager of the Financial Consulting Practice following an early career in audit.

Graham originally from Scotland, is a graduate of the University of Aberdeen and a Chartered Accountant of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. As a consequence of his international business experience, Graham has lived in five countries, traveled through more than 60 and has had management responsibility for all geographies in the world. Graham, who lives in Reston Virginia, is married with three children.

Americas Steering

Peter Allen
Group President, Strategy & Business Development
Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC)

Peter recently joined CSC as Group President, Strategy & Business Development. He was a member of TPI’s North American leadership team and TPI’s Executive Board. His responsibilities included advisory operations for the CFO Services and Financial Services Operations groups. Additionally, Peter served as one of TPI’s key thought leaders. He directed the TPI Index, the leading indicator of trends and developments occurring in the global sourcing industry, monitored quarterly by global equity analysts, media and industry observers. He is a frequent speaker at industry events focused on sourcing strategies and trends and is a regular spokesperson for TPI in the media and is often quoted in key business publication such as the The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek and has appeared on CNN/fn and the NBC Nightly News as an expert on technology and sourcing trends. His expertise spans the domains of outsourcing, offshoring, shared services and organizational transformation. Previous positions within TPI include Chief Marketing Officer and leadership of the company’s business process advisory services. Peter joined TPI in 2001, after serving as Chairman, President and CEO of a NASDAQ-listed outsourcing service provider, delivering consulting, data center, software testing and offshore applications services from operations in Ireland.

Dave Griebl
VP Finance Shared Services
Monster Worldwide

Before joining Monster Worldwide in December 2002, Dave served as the Chief Financial Officer for Brillion Iron Works, one of the largest independent foundries in the United States. Prior to Brillion Mr. Griebl led the consolidation of financial operations for the two $6-billion organizations Case Corporation and New Holland, implementing world-class financial processes for sites within the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and South America. He has also performed various roles from managing FP&A to Operations Controller with Springs Industries and Wickes Companies. Dave holds a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin and a Masters of Business Administration from Marquette University.

Deborah Kops
Chief Marketing Officer
WNS Global Services

Deborah has a unique perspective on the transformation industry, having served in executive positions as buyer, provider and advisor.  She is currently Chief Marketing Officer of WNS Global Services, formerly British Airways’ captive back office. Previously, Deborah was responsible for developing strategies and tactics for sourcing non core business processes for a global investment bank. Her main focus was on the transformation of purchase to pay processes through the implementation of the financial services industry’s first comprehensive purchase-to-pay (P2P) outsourcing, and the development of “Smartsourcing” tools and rules for the bank. She has also served as a Managing Director, FleetBoston Financial’s Fleet Services Group, directing delivery of a range of corporate services. Prior to joining FBF, Deborah was one of the founding partners of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). In that capacity, she managed strategy, technology, product development, innovation and investment for processes including finance and accounting, procurement, human resources, real estate, and applications process management. 

VN (Tiger) Tyagarajan
Chief Operating Officer
Genpact

As Chief Operating Officer, Tiger leads service delivery across business verticals and geographies. He is responsible for managing global operations, driving operational excellence, best practices and building domain expertise across Genpact globally. Prior to this, Tiger was Executive Vice President and Head of Sales, Marketing & Business Development, and the Americas Operations. Under his leadership, Genpact built an effective sales engine, resulting in the winning of a marquee list of more than 80 global clients in the last three years.

Tiger is widely known as one of the leaders who built Genpact. In 1999, he took over as CEO of Genpact (formerly GE Capital International Services) and played a key role in growing the company from 2,000 to 12,000 employees. In 2002, he moved to GE Commercial Equipment Finance as Senior Vice President, Quality and Operations based in Connecticut and rejoined Genpact in February 2005. Tiger is a Mechanical Engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He began his career with the Unilever Group, and then worked with Citibank.

Phil Fersht
Research Analyst and Founder & Author of Horses for Sources Blog

Phil Fersht is an acknowledged and well-recognized industry analyst, practitioner and advisor across Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT services worldwide. He currently serves as Research Director for leading analyst firm, AMR Research, where he studies business process and IT outsourcing issues for the company's buy-side clients. You can visit his blog "Horses for Sources" at www.fersht.typepad.com for all issues outsourcing, offshoring, shared services and globalization.

Lee Coulter
Expert in Shared Services, Information Technology, and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

Lee has a unique combination of technical and change management skills developed over more than 20 years leading profit centers, operations and staff positions in some of the world’s largest companies such as General Electric, AON and Kraft. Most recently he was Senior Vice President of Global Shared Services and leader of Kraft’s corporate wide “Organize for Growth” initiative. In this role, he generated more than $130 million in annual savings and eliminated $90 million a year in capital by outsourcing IT Operations, HR Administration and Facilities Management functions worldwide. While with Kraft, Mr. Coulter received Chairman Roger Deromedi’s CEO Award for his efforts.

Prior to joining Kraft Mr. Coulter served as Vice President of Infrastructure Services at AON Corporation. There, implemented ITIL and shared services, reduced costs by more than 35%, and integrated legacy infrastructure from a long acquisition strategy, and finally outsourced IT to CSC.

Lee spent 15 years with GE. He was an IT Services provider managing the IT Services Business in the Western U.S.; spearheaded the Company’s global Y2K initiative and served as a technical and operating executive in its Medical Imaging Business, including as an expatriate in China. He received the President’s Award from GE CEO Jeff Immelt.

Mr. Coulter holds a BS in Electronics Engineering from DeVry University and has completed all course work for a BS in Electrical Engineering and a Masters Degree in Biomedical Engineering at California State University at Long Beach.