Meet the Speakers

Tim Cummins The International Association For Contract & Commercial Management is a non-profit foundation with more than 14,000 members worldwide. In his role as CEO, Tim works with leading corporations, public and academic bodies, supporting executive awareness and understanding of the role that contracting competence increasingly play in 21st century business performance and public policy. Prior to IACCM, Tim's business career included executive roles at IBM and a period on the Chairman's staff, leading studies on the impacts of globalization and the reengineering of IBM's global contracting processes. His earlier career involved the banking, automotive and aerospace industries, initially in Corporate Finance and later in commercial and business development. He led negotiations up to $1.5bn in value and his work has taken him to over 40 countries. Tim has been extensively published by international media and he has acted in an advisory capacity to government bodies in countries that include the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan.

Sanjeev Dali is the Director of Global Shared Service Organization of Colgate-Palmolive Company.

Sanjeev joined Colgate in 1990 and progressed through subsidiary, regional and global IT organizations in India, Malaysia and in the U.S. Between 1996 and 2005 he held positions as Program Manager of SAP Implementations for Asia-Pacific Division and Latin America Division and held position of Director – Global Development for eBusiness & Portal.

In 2005 Sanjeev returned to India to head the Global Shared Service IT Organization. Sanjeev is instrumental in setting up the Captive Center to run Global IT support operation based out of Mumbai. Global Shared Service Organization is responsible for worldwide support of Global SAP & Lotus Notes Applications, Implementation and rolling out SAP applications and also augment Application Development.

Prior to Colgate-Palmolive, Sanjeev had successful stints with BASF, Mahindra and Mahidra and Hindustan Lever Ltd in Mumbai.

Sanjeev is a Post Graduate of Jamanlal Bajaj Institute and Graduate from Bombay University. Completed Executive Program from the Tuck school of Business at Dartmouth.

Przemek Zietara is currently working for Lafarge, a world leader in building materials, (cement, aggregate and concrete, and gypsum) operating in 79 countries with 2200 plants and 84000 employees for 19 billion revenue as Project Director Shared Service Initiatives in Europe.

Przemek has 12 years experience in International Companies covering a range of functions in controlling, finance and project management.

Przemek has spent the last 6 years in the SSC area and IT projects contributing to SSC strategy, business cases and implementation roadmap preparation. He has also led ERP implementation projects and Shared Service creation projects, supported by IT tools. He has supported efficiency improvements and contributes to driving standardisation and version management for Lafarge.

Gary Edwards is the Head of Contract Management for Novartis Shared Services and plays an integral role in the team standardising outsourcing process and establishing long term value from vendor relationships. Gary joined Novartis in 2005 in the internal audit department and prior to that he was in senior position across KPMG and Bearing Point.

Nigel Edwards is Vice President and European Head of Business Process Outsourcing for Cognizant. In this capacity Nigel manages Cognizant’s growing BPO business across all industry sectors in Europe. He and his team are responsible for all BPO client relationships, sales, solutions, and operations. Nigel has 20+ years experience in the outsourcing industry and has been involved in BPO since its inception in the mid 1990s and he has worked with numerous blue-chip clients in North America, Europe and Australia in sectors as diverse as Banking, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Retail and Telco. Nigel has a track record of building successful BPO businesses, starting with PricewaterhouseCoopers in the mid-1990s where he was a founder member of the BPO team that assumed BPO market leadership. With the regulator-enforced sale of its BPO business to IBM, Nigel joined Accenture where he focused on BPO new business in Europe. Operating at Partner level in both organisations, Nigel has been a part of and led the drive from onshore to near shore and offshore operations. Now with Cognizant, Nigel is at the forefront of the drive towards convergent IT/BPO solutions which result in an optimal cost base and a transformed service delivery model that delivers tangible business outcomes for his clients.

Vagn Hansen retired from Shell on 1. April 2010. He worked for 31 years in the Royal Dutch Shell Group, with the last 20 years in international and senior positions. Vagn’s experience includes senior Finance leadership roles in Shell, including managing large global teams and leading people through organisational, process and systems changes. Motivating and aligning culturally diverse teams. Assessing and developing leadership talent. He has extensive experience in Business Finance, judging capital projects, M&A activities, project financing and risk management. He has participated in and led a number of cost control and reduction projects. This includes his last role as VP Finance in Shell’s Finance Operations, migrating activities corresponding to approximately 5000 – 5500 staff to 5 Shared Service centres over 4 years, with 100+ interconnected projects at any point in time and saving more than 250 million USD per year.

Jason Kennedy was appointed as the Group Chief Executive Officer of The Grafton Employment Group in May 2009.

As Group Chief Executive Officer, Jason Kennedy is responsible for the overall performance of the company as well as the development and implementation of long and short-term company objectives, policies and operating procedures. He plays a critical role in the strategic planning process and ensures that The Grafton Employment Group continues to deal effectively with emerging and changing business trends. Jason also provides leadership and direction for The Grafton Employment Group in creating and fostering an environment for growth and success.

Jason Kennedy moved to Grafton Employment Group from Manpower Ireland, where he held the position of Managing Director for eight years.

His success in that role saw him assume responsibility for Manpower Professional in the UK and he was also a member of Manpower's US based Global Leadership Team, with specific responsibility for leading their change management programme for strategic global initiatives.

Prior to joining Manpower Ireland, Jason held the position of Deputy Managing Director of recruitment firm Marlborough PLC, where he played a key role in the flotation of the company on both the Dublin and London stock markets.

Jason Kennedy holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, a Masters Degree in Organisational Psychology and a Higher Diploma in Finance.

Vic Khan is the Global Head of Shared Service Centres for AMS. He has over 15 year experience in the outsourcing space with a particular focus of establishing Shared Service Centres from an On-shoring, Near shoring and off shoring perspective. Vic has global role managing Shared Service Centres on behalf of Alexander Mann Solutions AMS) in Bracknell, UK, Krakow Poland and Manila Philippines. Vic established AMS's Near shore Centre in Krakow in 2006 with a particular focus on hiring young talented graduates into its operations from the local labour market, the Centre will grow to approximately 300 headcount in 2010. Vic has an MBA, MSC in Human Resources and is qualified black belt in Lean Six Sigma.

Tobias Kuehr is the Former Head of HR Shared Services Deutsche Telekom. He started his career at Deutsche Telekom in 2002. Since than, Tobias has held various international positions within the company, e.g. within the innovation management department of T-Systems International in San Mateo, USA and as a senior consultant of Deutsche Telekom’s internal consulting unit in Bonn, Germany.

Before joining Deutsche Telekom’s HR SSC, he was jointly responsible for the business development process of Vivento (Deutsche Telekom’s internal employment agency) focusing the founding of new companies in different business fields (e.g. call centre-, technical-, and sales services). Within the HR SSC, Tobias takes responsibility for business development and –optimization. Amongst others he introduced the internal productivity and efficiency program, which aims to significantly increase efficiency and reduce complexity within HR SSC processes.

Tobias studied business economics at the University of Hertfordshire, UK and holds a MBA degree from the University of Bradford, UK.

Guy Mercier is the Managing Director of the 3S Solvay Shared Services. Prior to joining Solvay Portugal in May 2005, Guy Mercier spent 7 years in the USA. As vice president of finance and administration for Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Inc., he was responsible for the organisation and financial strategy supporting Solvay pharmaceutical business decisions for the US market (i.e. 1700 employees for $ 720 MM Sales). He also oversees the company’s information technology division. Mercier was an officer of the corporation and a member of its management committee and leadership council. In Houston, Texas, he also served as vice president of finance for Solvay Polymers, Inc. for 3 years. In this role, he actively participated in the negotiation for the global polyolefins joint venture deal with BP Amoco. Earlier, Mercier was managing director of Solvay CICC S.A., an international treasury and factoring financial coordination centre for the Solvay Group based in Brussels, Belgium. He was also representing Solvay in the MCE organization as permanent speaker for International Treasury Management conferences. Before joining the Solvay Group, Guy Mercier operated his own financial management consulting company. He began his financial management career conducting cost control studies and developing financial business planning models for the Algerian state-oil company Sonatrach.

Currently Vice President of EMEA Accounting in CA with the responsibility of the SSCs.

30 years of experience in International Organizations covering a wide range of position in Finance and Country Management.

In the last 10 years I have managed large European SSCs for WW IT Organizations.

Valerie is a native from The Netherlands. She studied business economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and also concluded a marketing MBA at the Michigan State University in Lansing, USA.

After her graduation she entered a banking traineeship at Rabobank. After her traineeship she worked 3 years in Germany in their leasing business building out their sales platform. In 1998 she joined General Electric’s (GE) Corporate Audit Staff and worked for 4 years across the globe on several cross-divisional audit assignments. In 2002 she moved back to Europe and took on the role of Pricing Leader for GE’s Consumer Finance business. In this function, she was also a member of the senior management team of GE Money Bank, running the retail bank in Switzerland. During her last 2 years at GE Money Bank, she also took over the position of Quality Leader running the project management office for the bank.

In 2006 she joined Credit Suisse (CS) as the Global Quality leader (Operational Excellence) for Shared Services. In this role she has been responsible for the global roll-out & embedding of Lean Sigma (Operational Excellence) thinking across Shared Services in order to drive efficiency & process improvements. She is leading a global project portfolio of ~100 efficiency projects together with a global team of around 30 Master Black Belts and Black Belts.

Since February of 2009, she has assumed additional responsibilities as the Regional Head for CoE | OE Program Execution for Switzerland. In this role she supports and enables all CoE (offshoring) deployments initiated from Switzerland. Together with her 5 person CoE team she works closely with the business teams and the CoE locations to ensure a successful transfer of the work tasks and processes.

As of August 2009, Valerie also took over the responsibility for the Global Enterprise Project team of 3 very experienced (MBB) project managers. This team is working on cross-divisional and cross-regional projects across the bank, which mainly covers transformational/change programs.

Valerie is also an active member of the Credit Suisse Women’s Forum WF, where she serves as the co-chair of the 700+ member Women’s Forum Switzerland.

Heather Rodgers is the Head of Procurement at Centrica. Heather heads up the Procurement and Supplier Management department for £3.4bn spend in Centrica and also drives a virtual team and best practice contract management community across the company for all key contracts and major change programmes. Centrica is the leading UK utilities company recognised as British/Scottish Gas, and also has a global presence in US/Canada and Europe. Heather‘s experience includes upstream and downstream third party spend and has also covered offshore, telecoms and the automobile arenas as well as IT, Coordination of commercial ventures for Energy, Home Services and Business to Business teams, Acquisitions and divestments also forms part of her experience.

Heather is a board member of NOA, a Fellow of the International Association of Contract and Commercial Management and a member of the Institute of Personnel Management and has a degree in history from Birmingham University.

Michael Smyth is the Head of Dell’s EMEA Global Financial Services Organisation. An Accountant and MBA graduate from University of Limerick in Ireland, Michael is also the General Manager of European Business Center Bratislava with over 17 years of Financial and Shared Services experience with Dell, Michael was involved in the initial set up of Dell’s Accounting Services Centre in Limerick in 1998, when 50 heads ran centralized accounting and payables. Today Michael heads up a 600+ organization located in India, North Africa, Eastern Europe and Baltics, with responsibility for all aspects of financial transactional processing for Dell EMEA An Irish national, Michael has also held executive roles with Dell in Internal Audit, Accounting and more recently was Finance Director for Dell’s $300m South African subsidiary.

Mandeep Chhatwal joined Nestlé India in 1989 straight out of business school, after completing his MBA in Finance. He also has a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

After spending three years in various roles in the Moga factory (one of the largest and most complex Nestlé factories in the world), he moved to the Head Office in Delhi to work first in Management Accounting and then in Financial Accounting. In 1995 he was appointed Sales and Distribution Controller for Eastern India subsequently moving in 1998 as Controller of two factories in Western India. In 1999 he returned to the Moga factory as Factory Controller where he played a key role in driving down the costs and setting up control systems for milk payroll (Nestlé Moga buys milk from 90,000 farmers).

In 2005 he was expatriated to Nestlé Lanka where he was the Head of F&C for five years. During his tenure the four group companies were merged, manufacturing operations streamlined by the closure of one factory and GLOBE implemented smoothly.

Mandeep comes to Switzerland with his wife Bhavneet. Their son will move to India to pursue his Engineering degree. Mandeep enjoys hiking, playing cricket and listening to classical music.

Paul Smits is currently responsible for the Shared Services Organization of KPN in The Netherlands, consisting of Accounting, Collections, Reporting and Reporting. KPN is the incumbent telecom operator in The Netherlands, with revenues over 13 billion euro. The Shared Services Organization handles all activities related to the general ledger, payments of customers, management reports and supply chain of KPN in The Netherlands. He currently reports to Baptiest Coopmans, member of the Board of Management of KPN.

His previous position was Finance Director for KPN Business Market in The Netherlands, serving all business customers in The Netherlands, with revenues of 2.5 billion euro.

Before that, Paul was responsible for strategy and innovation in the Business Market of KPN. In that position he developed the strategic vision for the Business Market, investigated out-of-the-box growth opportunities and strategic acquisition opportunities. He set up a number of new high growth units within KPN, a.o. KPN Narrowcasting and Healthcare Services.

Previously, Paul held a number of commercial and general management positions in KPN and acted on behalf of KPN in boards of a variety of joint ventures, partnerships and foundations.

In the spare time that is left when he is not working or spending time with his family, Paul loves to run.

Dr. Daniel Spindler, Director of Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics Services, is since May 1st, 2009 responsible for the Siemens Finance & Accounting Shared Service Center in Brussels. Daniel Spindler joined Siemens in 1994. His areas of responsibility covered various Controlling functions for Industry in Regensburg as well as for Global Procurement and Logistics in Munich. Two stays abroad in China and Canada enabled intercultural experience. In 2004 Daniel Spindler was granted the doctorate by the University of Regensburg for his research in the field of Fair Value Accounting under IFRS. From 2005 to 2007 he was responsible for the implementation of IFRS at the Siemens Energy Group Power Transmission and Distribution in Erlangen as well as for the Automotive Group SiemensVDO in Frankfurt. Additionally he was involved in the preparation of the IPO for SiemensVDO.Prior to his appointment at Siemens Healthcare, he was working over two years for Audi in Ingolstadt, where he took over responsibilities within the external Group Reporting. Furthermore he was in charge of the group wide implementation of a SAP BCS consolidation system

Didier Staquet is the Vice President, Head of Strategy and Performance Finance Operations Europe at DHL. He has over 11 years experience with DHL and their Finance and Shared Services Functions and his expertise lay in Process improvement, transitions and systems deployments. Didier began his career at DHL as the Finance Program Manager for the European Shared Service Centre responsible for transitions, process stabilization, ERP deployment and process integration. Didier’s has held many positions within DHL across 6 different European including CFO of DHL Global Business Services in France. Didier holds a degree in bio-chemical engineering, a degree in industrial engineering and an executive master in Finance.

Kerem Vulas is the Chief Administrative Officer for Volvo Group and is a dedicated Joint Company creator with a Shared Services Centre in countries. Born in Istanbul and having his roots from Coopers & Lybrand, VULAS was appointed by Volvo Group Turkey as the Executive Board Member & CFO when he was only 26. After achieving success in design, execution and management of the Shared Service Centre in Istanbul for the local Volvo Group operations which includes Accounting & Finance, Tax & Legal, Import & Export, Purchasing, IS/IT, HR, SHEQ and Facility Management, VULAS was then invited to the UK by Volvo Group Headquarters to initiate a restructuring project of legal & business administration consolidation of 48 legal entities down to 5, one being the host for the UK wide shared Services Services Centre. VULAS, after having introduced and drove the process of a new governance structure by changing the corporate name of the host company to ‘Volvo Group UK Ltd’, reshuffling the Legal Board of the same and finally founded the UK Local Management Committee where all heads of these 15 divisions sit to initiate development and harmonisation work and give direction/make decision on Group UK (non-BA/BU specific) issues/objectives, completed this project within 2,5 years delivering a measurable net UK saving of more than £2 million per annum. Based in the UK, VULAS, whilst being engaged in rolling out the UK experience throughout the Group, is today Volvo Group UK's Chief Administrative Officer, trying to make sure that all 15 different UK operations of the Group work towards the same direction when it comes to non-business specific matters.

Since february 2010 Maria is a member of the Corporate Governance Board

Maria joined TMF in 1995 as the Managing Director of TMF Nederland, and in July 2003 she was appointed CEO of the TMF Group Holding. 1989‐1995 Managing Director and Group General Counsel of LET Europe N.V. (a subsidiary of London & Edinburgh Trust plc), and simultaneously the Managing director of German City Estates (renamed: European City Estates) 1986‐1989 Corporate lawyer with Price Waterhouse Vooren 1981‐1986 Consultant for U.N.D.P./I.L.O./ Department for Development Cooperation Netherlands Antilles

As Managing Director of TMF Nederland BV (1995), Maria van der Sluijs‐Plantz was responsible for the day‐to‐day management of the company (120 employees), client management co‐ordination, HR, quality control, legal technical matters, portfolio management of triple‐A clients. In addition, Maria van der Sluijs‐Plantz holds several other board appointments with client companies of TMF Nederland BV.

Since June 1, 2003 she is the CEO of the TMF Group with overall management and policy responsibility. She is a member of the operational board and holding board. The focus of the operational board has been to achieve a global presence in line with the Group’s mission to be recognized in the market as a truly independent global management and administrative outsourcing solution. The Group has experienced an impressive growth in recent years (from 2005: 32 offices in 24 countries and over 1,000 employees, to 87 offices in 66 countries and over 3,000 employees in April 2010).