Outsourcing and Business Services

Gareth DaviesDirector UK Lead Outsourcing &Business Services gareth.davies @veredus.co.uk07970 180 408

www.veredus.co.uk

Gareth is the Head of Outsourcing and Business Services practice at Veredus. His background is strongly focussed in the services market including periods in marketing consultancy and as Managing Director of a services provider in the financial services market before moving into executive search and selection.

He has spent 17 years as a head-hunter, much of this working in the outsourcing and broader business services markets where he has established a leading presence. His wider, generalist experience crossing a number of sectors including the public sector, major utilities, defence prime contractors and professional services businesses adds to his ability to source and engage with markets into which the outsourcers are selling, to contribute to clients’ thinking on search targets and to be part of the broader debate in the industry.

Gareth is recognised for his collaborative style and advice around key appointments just as much as his provision of outstanding shortlists. Gareth graduated in Economics from the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth and followed this with a PGCE.

Spare time is divided between the necessary work in the garden - which he says is more ‘fighting back nature’ than gardening - walking his dogs and indulging his passion for things with two wheels, which includes mountain bikes and motor bikes, both on and off-road.

Some of Gareth’s thoughts and impressions on the outsourcing industry:

The very essence of outsourcing needs to be innovation. When the industry was first born, simple concepts like labour-arbitrage and transformation were sufficient to achieve the cost savings and efficiency improvement which were promised to clients but this has now been done and clients themselves are infinitely more sophisticated.

So, we moved to a partnering approach, integrating more deeply with our clients to ensure that we understood their business and their objectives before delivering changes; sometimes even being bold enough to suggest changes to the business model or even the objectives themselves. As this closer model was developing, so too were external factors such as the available technology, the regulatory environment, reputational issues and even public opinion.

“Gareth has worked with me on a some very difficult requirements for senior IT roles. He provided excellent advice on the brief and approach and demonstrated great flexibility and responsiveness as the process evolved. He has delivered

excellent results, and some of the candidates he has found have gone onto bigger roles within the group”

Martin Spooner, Divisional IT Director, Capita Asset Services.

Integration has become so deep with some clients that it is difficult to see where the client stops and the outsourcer begins and this, to me is an attractive state. While some question the future of outsourcing as an industry I believe its future is not only secure but brighter than ever – it is just the title that needs to change. Clients no longer like the idea of handing over services to someone else but they will always like the idea of services being delivered in a better way so that their customers are delighted; in a cheaper way so that financial targets can be achieved; in a more compliant way so that reputations are protected or enhanced; even in an innovative way so that they can stay ahead of their competition.

New outsourcing arrangements should be able to deliver all of that.

I can’t end without mentioning Data. The ownership and treatment of data has always been an important and delicate issue in outsourcing and a potential banana-skin as many of the early outsourcing press scandals demonstrated. Well now, data has a different meaning or, to be more precise, a number of meanings and implications: Data isn’t just about security and compliance, data is now about opportunity - for strengthening reputations and relationships, for developing new approaches to customers, for creating efficiencies and for developing new, more joined-up offerings. The old adage ‘knowledge is king’ remains true, but it now has a new footnote: - ‘data is opportunity’.

“Gareth has worked with me on a number of critical appointments. He contributes to and understands the brief,

is tenacious in his search and gets candidates engaged. I have enjoyed working with him and value his results.”

Graham Renn, Divisional Business Development Director, Capita Asset Services.