Howard Spode

Leader, Headhunting and Managing Partner of BPOpronet

Howard has worked in the BPO field since the mid-nineties and has hands-on experience at every stage of the BPO life-cycle, from strategy development to operations, from both supplier and customer perspectives.  He has been a founder-member of three major BPO businesses – those of PwC (now IBM), Ernst & Young (now Capgemini) and RebusHR (now Northgate). He has played key roles in major ground-breaking deals around the globe; for example, he was instrumental in establishing and operating the world’s first multi-country outsourced shared services centre in the late 90’s.

For the last few years, he has been a client-side outsourcing advisor, helping major organisations develop sourcing strategy, evaluate BPO propositions and choose BPO suppliers. He was voted “Professional of the Year” by the UK’s National Outsourcing Association in 2006/2007 and until recently he was Managing Director, Advisory Services at NelsonHall, the world’s leading BPO analyst firm.

Howard is an occupational psychologist by academic background, and prior to moving into BPO, he operated in the fields of management development, organisation development and change management. He retains key skills from these areas that are directly relevant to BPO; for example, organisation design, culture-building, group facilitation, learning design and delivery, etc.