Running the teams nobody notices until something breaks — and making the case that shared services is a strategy, not a cost centre.
I’ve led operational teams across four continents, managed a $12M budget, navigated a major M&A integration, and run a shared services function serving seven internal business lines simultaneously. The consistent lesson: operations is never just a support function.
The data infrastructure, the process design, the platform decisions, the training programs — these are strategic choices that shape how fast the business can move. When shared services works well, nobody notices. When it doesn’t, everyone does.
This pillar covers the leadership side — roadmap management, stakeholder alignment, platform migrations, global operations, and M&A integration. The unglamorous work that compounds.
“Shared services is a strategy, not a cost centre. The teams that prove it get the budget. The ones that don’t get outsourced.”
Leading distributed teams across time zones, cultures, and reporting structures — from follow-the-sun coverage design to global performance frameworks.
Running the ops workstream of a merger or acquisition — org design, people mapping, process unification, and the training that gets two organisations operating as one.
Moving a company from one platform to another — PSA migration, CRM transitions, BI environment overhauls. The change management layer that separates a clean migration from a two-year recovery project.
Leading global technical support across North America, EMEA, and APAC with 160–190 staff and a ~$12M operational budget, the mandate was clear: achieve continuous 24/7 coverage without adding headcount. The Follow the Sun model mapped GMT-based shift handoffs across four regional centres. Implementation required full telephony reprogramming, a rebuilt reporting engine, and a handoff protocol that kept institutional knowledge moving with the sun.