The more time I spend with some of the top services account leads for providers, the more impressed I become with how some of them manage incredibly complex client relationships, which only seem to be getting even more complex in today’s climes.<\/em><\/p>\n
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Carole Murphy is Capgemini's Head of BPO Business Transformation Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The good account managers literally have to know everything<\/em> about their clients, from their quirky custom built systems, their internal politics, their process flows, their changing directives from leadership, and so on. And when you get into BPO, it’s not like consulting where you can parachute into clients, devise impressive roadmaps for them to follow and make a hasty exit before the real work begins. Nope – in BPO you need to craft the game-plan and handhold your client through the quagmire for many years to come. As someone one told me, “you’ve got to eat what you kill”…<\/p>\n
One person who lives and breathes these complex client transformations is Capgemini’s Carole Murphy, who today heads up the firm’s BPO transformation services. When we managed to drag her away from her reserved seat at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium \u00a0(a team which can certainly benefit from her transformation skills), we managed to pose some questions on where this BPO business is heading and what she’s experiencing with her clients…<\/p>\n
Phil Fersht, HfS: <\/strong>Carole, it\u2019s great to have you on our interview docket today. You\u2019ve been in the BPO industry for quite some years now and are very hands-on with several clients I know. Would you give us a little more color on your background and how you’ve found yourself so involved int he BPO industry?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
Carole Murphy, Capgemini: <\/strong>Like many of us in Capgemini BPO, I started off as an accountant. I worked for British Steel and for Kraft Foods, and in about 1996 I joined what was then Ernst & Young Consulting because I was really interested in finance and accounting and transformation. Finance transformation has been the core of my career since then. Five or six years ago I started exploring how we could use Capgemini BPO\u2019s assets to best help our clients to transform, delving deeply into how transformation really works and how we could bring more impactful transformation to our clients. As time went on, I got increasingly interested in how BPO delivers the promise of transformation. I think there\u2019s something quite exciting about the BPO industry in that you\u2019re able to help clients not only make transformation happen, but also sustain that transformation because it\u2019s part of what we do every day.<\/p>\n