White Paper: Czech Republic 2.0 In The Evolving BPO Paradigm

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An ICON White Paper
May 2021

Prepared by Mr. Peter Ryan, Principle, Ryan Strategic Advisory.
Ryan Strategic Advisory is a specialised agency providing BPO advisory services with a focus on customer experience excellence, work-at-home delivery, BCP, and offshoring.

On the 27th of April 2021, ICON hosted a round table discussion exploring the Czech Republic’s profile as a BPO location. Over time the last ten years, the perception of the CEE market has shifted from considerably. Previously, the country was recognised as one capable of low-touch, high volume transactional interactions – but what does it have to offer buyers of call centre services today?

In this spirit, ICON assembled a virtual round-table of leading executives and CX advisors to debate the direction of the European nearshore and the role of the Czech Republic in service delivery.

Round Table Attendees

Peter Ryan – Host

As the Principal at Ryan Strategic Advisory, Peter provides commercially relevant counsel to stakeholders across the front-office BPO ecosystem, including contact centre outsourcers, CRM technology players, offshore development agencies and industry associations.

Mark Matthews – ICON

Mark is a founding member of the ICON leadership team and was recently ICON’s COO. He has now transitioned into the Chief Business Development Officer role.

Christopher Jones – Sales Director UK & EU – Vonage

Chris is an experienced Sales Director with a demonstrated history of working in the telecommunications industry. Vonage provides enterprise-level communication solutions and programmable communications APIs, all built on the world’s most flexible cloud communications platform. Chris develops new sales channels for Vonage from a standing start and is responsible for all aspects of negotiation, planning, e-commerce, and go-to-market strategy.

Sven Londal – Head of Service Centre – Limitless Technology

Sven has over 18 years’ experience in the delivery of complex, multichannel sales and service delivery programs across varied verticals including Automotive, FMCG, telecommunication, retail, and media.Limitless is pioneering the GigCX space. They empower companies to scale their customer support quickly, reduce cost, and improve customer experience by turning customers who believe in their products into trusted brand ambassadors and rewarding them for providing excellent customer service on-demand.

Martin Pitor – Care Network Manager – Avast

Martin has extensive operational BPO experience in the CEE region and is currently responsible for Avast’s customer care contact centre network. He is also tasked with workforce management and analytics within Avast’s Consumer Division. Avast is a FTSE 100 company, and its anti-virus solutions safeguard more than 435 million people worldwide, protecting their digital data, identity, and privacy.

Lian Rowlands – Director of Partnerships – Conversations By Ami

Lian is a a passionate CX business leader, her career is focused on managing and developing large scale key accounts to delivering amazing customer experience transformations in the travel and telecommunication sectors across all channels and geographies. Conversations by Ami chats is a cutting-edge AI chatbot solution that integrates with any website or app. Ami maximises opportunities for conversations with customers and makes it easy for them to interact and do business. Ami’s key benefits are CX improvement, increased sales, and cost reduction.

Ian Sanders – Commercial Director – Roboticket

Ian is an experienced sports ticketing and digital technology expert who has worked with large and complex clients such as Manchester United and the Rugby Football Union. Pivoting from his role as Ticketmaster’s Senior Commercial Director, Ian is now overseeing the rapid growth of Roboticket as it harnesses technology to build and execute solutions that are designed to vastly improve ticketing operations and event management as businesses transition through their digital transformation.

Joe Appleton – Managing Director – ABSL CZ

Joe is an experienced Managing Director with a demonstrated history of working in the outsourcing/offshoring industry. He spearheads the ABSL (Association of Business Service Leaders) in the Czech Republic, giving 100 brands in the business services industry a common voice to help shape their sector and destiny. ABSL Members include companies that conduct business in the area of Shared Services Centre (SSC), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO), Research and Development (R&D).

Marianne Rutz – Rutz Consulting

With over 20 years in the industry, Marianne is one of Europe’s most experienced experts in transforming contact centres from a cost centre to a profit centre. She has worked across diverse industry sectors from banking to fintech to information technology and travel with major global brands and businesses, including Santander, Hertz, Lexmark, Ralph Lauren, Thomas Cook, Signify, Expedia, Paypal, Photobox. Marianne also has extensive contact centre operational experience with Sitel, Webhelp, Capita and Teleperformance.