Managing Director, India | Outsourcing Service Provider with Global Growth Ambitions

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NGS Global sourced a dedicated and experienced delivery center executive for a fast-growing professional services firm.

Background

For over 30 years, our client served as the ‘go-to’ accountant for restaurants, bars, pubs, and other hospitality brands that desired financial management from experts who truly understood the hospitality industry. In addition to outsourced finance and accounting services, our client provided business support services like business forecasting, analytics, pricing, product design and the like.

With a global team of over 1,000 professionals, our client supported hundreds of hospitality clients across Europe, America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Their diverse client base collectively has over 25 Michelin Stars, ranging from start-ups to multi-chains and high-profile establishments.

The Need

As our client drew up ambitious plans for future growth, they were keen to rapidly grow their offshore delivery center in India, which was the flagship of their global delivery capability.

They were seeking to strengthen their leadership team by bringing on board an accomplished operating and client success leader as Managing Director for India, reporting to the global CEO who was based in the US. S/he would not only streamline day-to-day operations and customer delivery from the India center, and oversee its rapid expansion, but would also be a key enabler of revenue and profitability growth. The Chief Operating Officers who oversaw delivery to various geographies would report into the role.

As a key member of the top executive team, the individual would provide overall leadership of the India center, enhance and strengthen operational effectiveness and efficiency, develop capabilities, and institute processes that led to customer delight and delivery excellence.

Our Search Process

The global CEO was keen to get an individual who had scaled up global delivery centers by two to three times, and had led a workforce of at least 5,000 in the past, including “high-end” workers like accountants, analysts, pricing experts, etc. While prior experience in finance and accounting outsourcing was not mandatory, it was desirable.

The NGS Global team had multiple discussions with the CEO and CFO of the company to flesh out key success factors, the current state of the business, as well as their vision of what type of candidate would be successful in the role.

We thoroughly researched the entire outsourcing/offshoring services sector, focusing on the top 25 global service providers (headquartered either in or outside India), and went deep into these organizations to identify multiple potential candidates who came with relevant experience. We were seeking a candidate who had a comprehensive understanding of how to grow delivery capabilities, including hiring, training, transition management, process improvement, as well as automation and digitalization initiatives. When we interviewed candidates, we checked for growth mindset, their client facing and process capabilities, and speed of execution.

One of the constraints we had was that the client’s delivery center was located in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, which was not a key location for most outsourcing service providers, so finding talent locally was a challenge. We searched for candidates all over India, and looked for clear signs that the candidate was able – and willing – to relocate to Ahmedabad.

Our NGS Global Value-Add

• Ability to understand the key requirements of the client and execute a thorough and structured research methodology which led to the discovery of candidates who were otherwise not obviously visible.

• Partner-led search execution, which was critical in order to excite the passive candidates, especially as the role required a relocation to Ahmedabad.

• Minimal off-limits in the outsourcing industry, which meant that we could provide our client access to the widest range of talent that was available and, in turn, hire the best person for the job.

Contact Soumitra Agarwal (Project Lead)

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