Howard Spode

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 NorthgateArinso). 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. He has also worked extensively as a client-side outsourcing advisor, helping major organizations develop sourcing strategy, evaluate BPO propositions and choose BPO suppliers. In this capacity he was voted "Professional of the Year" by the UK's National Outsourcing Association in 2006/2007.

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

Howard is based in Switzerland and, in addition to being Managing Partner, is BPOpronet's focal point for continental Europe.