- Major industry restructure – Definition, negotiation and delivery of service level agreements to support water industry transformation in Ireland
- Consortium major UK Telcos – Delivery of an independent assessment of cost impact of regulatory proposals for industry change to ensure correct decisions taken and appropriate budgets allocated
- Neareast Telco - Business plan and market entry strategy for Turkey to become the ‘location of choice’ for the offshore contact centre outsourcing and grow GDP by 3-4%
- Ofgem – Provided assurance to the government and industry that preparations for the introduction of competition would result in a smoothly customer and market operations
- HMG – Energy/FS – Delivering a detailed design for partner relationship and other business functions to accelerated delivery of a complex multiparty start up
- Altnet/Mobile, ESAT – Facilitated planning for a joint venture, subsequently executed, to use railway telecoms assets in Ireland to establish a national SDH network, working with senior technical, marketing and financial managers
- Major utility – Accelerating an outsource transaction, informing decision making with best practice prior to a 2,500 seat outsource.
- Major Telco – Provided advice to reduce risk after assessing the operations, cost base and key contracts of Panamanian customer operations, for business operating in a highly competitive market
- Major Telco, UK – Review of value - for-money and operation of customer service outsourcing contracts to assess scope for reducing operating cost through price reduction or more rigorous application of service credit regimes in the contracts
- nPower – Reducing the risk of repeat multimillion pound fines by the regulator for mis-selling by advising on new supplier and contract
- HMRC – Researched experience in FS and outsourcing organisations with front and back office integration, to apply it to its problems in delivering a reasonable customer experience efficiently and lower cost
- Premium TV – As part of a start up to deliver tax benefits, seconded to run customer services to ensure compliance to tax effcient model, also delivering £2m cost saving in outsource contract
- Utility – Resolved resource issues caused by business preparation workload from major change programme by procuring flexible outsourced service with guaranteed quality at costs 60% below more risky UK internal options
- HMG – Emergency intervention to assess failing outsource provider, identify and recommend improvement actions and provide a view on long term prospects to inform contractual decisions
- Barclays/GHL – Completed integration of Woolwich & Barclays mortgage customer operations, reducing cost. Led team to deliver data conversion, improved processes and new servicing, direct debit and other applications
- HMG Department of Heath – Advised on the definition, procurement and contract negotiation of a solution to meet volatile, large scale, pandemic-driven demand
- HMG Department of Health – Improved customer service through competition and innovative service design, leading strategy development and advising on procurement of £50m contract for outsourced contact centre services
- BBC – Advised the BBC on integration of BskyB services, customer and operational processes to enable it to use digital satellite broadcasting within its delivery infrastructure
- Major Tech retailer – Repairing a failing outsource deal and preparing for a future replacement solution
- Fraud investigator – Design of commercial model and contract schedules to support the replacement of incumbent service providers of outsourced ICT and contact centre services
- Ingeus – Design of target operating model to drive cost out and performance up in outsourced probation services
- As part of a start up to deliver tax benefits, ran customer services to ensure compliance to tax efficient model, also delivering £2m cost saving in outsource contract
UK premium television service provider
Establish and run customer service operations, complying to tax-efficient model
A competitor’s stranglehold on content and high wholesale tax-efficient costs meant a major media business could not profit from its sales of premium TV. With advice from PwC, it established an operation to deliver and sell services to UK consumers from offshore locations. Free trade across the EU, carefully designed intra-group transfer pricing and a precise ‘arm’s length’ operating model enabled the operation to benefit from low rates of value added tax in Luxembourg, the chosen base. The 12% tax benefit was taken as a nett price rise to consumers – i.e. gross, post VAT prices were not changed. It was vital for the operation to have in place a demonstrably competent team in Luxembourg. Operationally essential, this also ensured that Group could show HMRC that all key decisions were being made offshore by people competent to make them. At launch, the team had no one competent to fulfil the role heading of Customer Care. David, with his deep experience in customer service, was seconded to fill this gap.
David’s first challenge was to complete negotiations and ‘operationalise’ two contracts that provided key services to the offshore entity. These contracts were with global business process outsourcing (BPO) provider for offshore order approval and with the Group, for a range of sales and customer care services. The BPO contract had been put in place quickly for launch and had triggers that required its replacement within three months. David showed the contract was highly unfavourable to his client – for example charging c 63 pence per minute for services, roughly four times the ‘going rate’ in the market for similar service, and not committing any useful service levels. His challenge to prices saved £2m in BPO costs. He put in place a set of daily, weekly, monthly & quarterly mechanisms to manage service level and contract performance. David also made operational the contract with Group, developing the reporting and governance required to demonstrate the contract was being actively managed.
David’s work delivered significant and immediate cost savings, and also provided a useful track record for HMRC purposes, showing the offshore entity managing actively and effectively its inputs on an ‘arm’s length’ basis.