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The Role:

• Supervise financial shaping and structuring for large, complex Outsourcing and Consulting arrangements
• Manage the Corporate Transaction Analysis (CTA) to support the pricing approach to the client value proposition, while ensuring the company’s economic interests are protected
• Control the flow of CTS activities and reviews on multiple proposals

Responsibilities include:

Ø Create financial framework and structure for the deal

Ø Assume a lead role in representing the CTA at client team meetings and executive briefings.

Ø Review and structure client proposal estimates and costing schedules

Ø Review and QA the CTA prepared by the CTS specialists.

Ø Executive review of all new opportunities.

Ø Independently and accurately assess prospective business to demonstrate impact of business on the economics of the Operating and Capability Groups.

Ø Confirm and control modifications to the CTA through-out the Business Development Process, and ensure compliance with deal parameters.

Ø Develop deep CTS skills in the CTS specialists assigned to support specific new opportunities.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the parallel development of Client Business Case, the Company Business Case (including CTA) and work closely with Client’s Finance Team to reinforce the client value proposition and make sure we understand the way the client will evaluate the business proposition.  Includes applying best practice in version control and management of audit trails
• Prepare costing analysis to ensure consistency with deal shape
• Research and analyze relevant cost drivers and fixed and variable cost profiles in an IT service environment
• Perform analytical reviews of client budget analysis and identify missing information
• Prepare schedules of open issues and proposed action plan to address shortfalls in readiness for the company’s deal approval (e.g. Client Capital Committee, New Business Meeting)
• Work with deal teams to use the costing information above in conjunction with knowledge of the deal shape to prepare analysis of appropriate pricing algorithms
• Assist deal teams with 360-degree analysis of above to understand risks and opportunities for client, for the  company and other stakeholders; analyze financial impact of potential outcomes
• Ensure primary research is conducted by the appropriate GAAP expert (US, IAS and local) to get clear understanding of risks and opportunities of deal shape when overlaid by each stake holder’s regulatory environment
• Coordinate with legal and tax support to assure Client and the company tax efficiency and legality
• Clearly present the above financial context using CTS tools to influence outcomes of deal shaping and client negotiations in a positive way with the avoidance of conflict and antagonism
• Prepare draft Client Capital Requests, using financial deal shaping skills and CTS tools
• Escalate deals with poor financial metrics and work with teams for those deals to improve the quality of the financial attributes before moving forward
• Analyze financial impact of target solution in terms of debt, equity and working capital
• Identify alternatives and prioritize in terms of what is best for the company.
• Due diligence – execute appropriate investigations into target deal finances, accounting, legal considerations and human resources in instances of a TUPE transfer or coordinate with Due Diligence Directors
• Business plan – prepare financial schedules and analysis in support of business plans or other written documents that can be used in raising finance from 3rd parties/approval from company Capital Committee/Corporate Development Investment Committee
• Demonstrate commitment to thought leadership and continuous learning by regularly contributing to CTS knowledge capital
• Conduct primary research into topics recommended by the leadership team and disseminated through the CTS Knowledge Network, on the job coaching formal and informal meetings
• Involve substantial number of communication nodes on each deal, involving the Market Unit Finance team, the Market Unit Management Team, the Client team, the Client Partner group, CFM, TAX, L&C, the Client Finance team, the Client, the Market Maker, the CQMA Partner, CTS leadership
• Participate in the creation of budgets for profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash flow.  Accuracy of these estimates, as depicted in CTA is critical to the long term profitability of the firm
• Manage financial data into useful information that can be used by the company executives to articulate the financial attributes of new deal opportunities that drive incremental value for the company and its Clients.
• Understand the use of financial tools and related analytical concepts to drive appropriate investment, operating, and financing decision.
• Assist in the preparation of ad hoc financial presentations of business cases (internal and external), CTS Memoranda, Accounting Treatment memorandums and Client Capital Requests.
• Create financial framework and structure for deals.
• Assume a lead role in representing the CTA at team meetings and executive briefings.
• Review and structure estimating and costing schedules, CTA prepared by the CTS specialists and analysts.
• Executive review of all new opportunities including: Review client budgets, Review profitability of proposed operational environment, Approve direct costing schedules, Identify other financial opportunities, Generate creative solutions for the client engagement team, Direct development of pricing methodologies, Partner with the client financial executives during proposal/due diligence, Ensure revenue recognition is US GAAP compliant
• Independently and accurately assess prospective business to demonstrate impact of business on the economics of the Operating and Capability Groups.
• Confirm and control modifications to the CTA throughout the Business Development Process, and ensure compliance with deal parameters.

Context

The Technology Lab of our client in Bangalore is focused on driving innovations. in the following areas:

- Technology & process innovation for geographically distributed teams
- Collaboration technologies and processes
- Software development and testing
- Automated quality management for software development
- Data quality management and data services
- Testing theory and practice for software and systems
- Large scale workforce management
- Distributed software systems
- Service oriented architectures

The Researcher Role at Bangalore, India,

Creative, energetic people to define, lead, and collaborate on early stage research and mid-stage prototype development projects in the areas outlined above. The research is focused on the following streams:

· Requirements Gathering and engineering.

· Software/Systems design and coding.

· Testing

· Measurements and metrics in the software development lifecycle.

Research and Development (R&D) provides strategic asset development and program support of Foundation and Core offerings and other Capabilities/Specialties based on business priority. R&D facilitates the interoperability and integration of our asset base across multiple dimensions, including Service Group, Industry, and Growth platform, ultimately maximizing leverage of reusable and proprietary assets. R&D experts are key to spotlighting and accelerating critical asset dissemination as well as to identifying practice enablement needs.

Job Summary:

The Research & Development (R&D) Content Manager acts as a global content expert in the development and enablement of key offerings and assets and is responsible and accountable for the availability and quality of knowledge assets in repositories. The scope of this job typically includes: leading and/or participating in projects to plan, develop, manage, disseminate and maintain key offerings and assets; understanding knowledge gaps and identifying best content that can be used to ensure the availability and take-up of knowledge assets required to effectively sell and deliver offerings and assets; and, serving as a content expert to help develop training and enable professionals to build needed skills and knowledge.

In addition, the R&D Content Manager guides the development of tools, such as diagnostics, methods, toolkits, data repositories, job aids, and topic pages, to ensure that practice professionals can access the best examples of strategically important knowledge and offerings/assets quickly and easily. The R&D Content Manager also develops requirements and identifies tasks for one or more content integrators, related to content acquisition and maintenance activities. The R&D Content Manager performs these responsibilities for a specific content area or areas in which he/she has deep expertise.

This role is for an R&D Content Manager for Enterprise Analytics (Global Markets). Enterprise Analytics builds on our experience with transformational Enterprise Performance Management programs for clients with a view to creating “next practice” capability with re-usable asset based solutions offered as a Managed Service.

Key Responsibilities:

• Work with Offering Group Leadership, R&D Content Lead and Subject Matter Experts to set strategy, priorities and goals for assigned content area (s) / key offering(s) in alignment with business objectives and the High Performance Business agenda. The strategy will leverage knowledge and learning enablers (e.g., methodologies, point of views, white papers, case studies, sales and delivery tools, emerging technologies, training courses) and will also include the approach for development of other required interventions (e.g., research studies) that help build the required capacity of knowledge.
• Develop and/or manage the creation and commercialization of new knowledge capital and tools, including methodologies, point of views, white papers, case studies, articles for publication, functional content for education/learning initiatives, and collaboration tools; includes managing experts and organizations supporting development (e.g., GTIN – our India-based Consulting team, our India-based Shared Services group. includes managing Intellectual Property requirements as well as managing each project against related initiative budget and timeline.
• Provide project guidance and consultation on best offerings/assets to shape and deliver client solutions.
• Manage and execute plan for assigned content area(s) to create, capture and package corresponding knowledge capital, strategic assets and learning enablers; includes working with content integrators to package and post materials to knowledge repositories.
• Evaluate and mine internal/external sources of knowledge for key content areas and emerging trends (e.g., discussion forums, collaboration sites, journals, market research, analyst reports, conference proceedings).
• Plan, manage and synthesize external research (working with the research team - secondary researchers) to keep abreast of relevant developments and emerging areas in the market place. Integrate internal research initiatives into assets and offerings.
• Identify and manage relationships with internal and external experts relevant to assigned content area(s). Establish and manage expert network and collaboration tools for assigned content area(s) to monitor innovations, thought leadership and new content on a global basis.
• Support setup and launch of Communities of Practice and provide advice for ongoing Community of Practice activities to enable collaboration and encourage innovation.
• Serve as a content expert to help develop, customize and source content for learning and capability development programs.
• Evaluate and review content of courses and other learning assets for training curriculum relevant to assigned content area(s).
• Provide education and build awareness for practitioners on content area offerings, assets and tools.

· Oversee the design and creation of home pages around assigned content area(s) to facilitate access to relevant internal and external knowledge capital.

• Support the fiscal year initiative planning and budgeting process for offerings.
• Support select proposal work and other ad hoc help requests, as appropriate.

Just yesterday the small team of us present at office got together while the systems were getting serviced and I grabbed the opportunity of discussing with them, how post these times, the business scenario will change for ever. Like it is pretty much clear the rules of business process will and have transitioned to a much more pragmatic approach. The team appeared to agree that we had to leverage our expertise in managing process, its transactional sequence, the multiplicity of priorities, anticipating and preparing for trouble, and proactively approaching opportunities with not so much dependence on domain expertise or what we have done so far. I have always believed that domain expertise can be learned and the time it requires to learn the process is inversely proportional to the willingness of the individual or the team engaged in it.

I read Seth Godin regularly and he inspires confidence in troubled times and it just felt great that he happened to mention just what we discussed in his post, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/01/what-are-you-good-at.html

While we have been seeing a frightful drop in the business margins since August 2007, our business process has shown a steady increase in the top lines. We have managed to keep our neck out of the flooding waters primarily due to our earnest efforts to follow process and ensure that we are one up on the critical deliverable. The future belongs to proactive approach on business processes and being able to deliver value to clients over and above the transactional part of the deal. This approach applies significantly and critically to small enterprises and entrepreneurs, which in turn signifies the shift in outlook of team members of these enterprises to be aware of this challenge and adapt to it.

It is fun on assignments which involves creativity. One could wonder the extent of creative skills possible on recruiting assignments. When a sector is dynamic, evolving and fast growing, client companies allow recruiting agencies the liberty to look for various options in the market. New roles; new positions; facilitates career moves across skills and sectors, thereby making the whole transition interesting to change seekers and facilitators.
 
I remember distinctly, with the Insurance sector liberalised in late 2000, we were exposed to recruiting in the exciting Insurance space. This space had till then invoked an image of the elephantine PSU, Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India which is managed by the Government. The potential of business opportunities in the sector and the extent of career aspirations that were possible in this segment suddenly dawned on us when we met up with young Human Resource professionals from the newly launched  private life insurance joint venture company. 

The opportunity was exciting as we reviewed the database of experienced professionals from various other segments and uged them to explore the new option; as we got into dialogue with educational institutions to initiate freshers to evaluate new career avenues. The dearth of otherwise eager talent to manage this kind of business process, made it creative, fulfilling and meaningful to move people across sectors and skills and get them to accept good positions, career growth and better salaries.

Over the last year or so, with the sluggishness in various sectors, most companies are back to what we call as the relavancy factor. Probably for want of training time, they’d insist on evaluating resumes of candidates with just the similar experience, thereby reducing the role of recruiting firms to being mere resume pushers and end up hiring people only from the relevant sectors and with relevant skills. While such moves could result in short term gains of minimising transition cost of positions left vacant within a project, I believe it could have cascading effect over an extended period with monotony creeping in leading to attrition.

If time is not a serious constraint, client companies should push recruiting firms to offer candidates with relevant attributes and attitude, and not just relevant skills. Training specific skills may perhaps not turn out to be as expensive as attrition.

In the last six years of my consulting practice as a recruiter, I have had the privilege to interact with a few hundred people and transact their career movements. I’d in my posts share some interesting notes on these interactions. As a practice I would stick not to reveal name/organisation.

A challenge, we face as a recruiter is to believe in the stability of a candidates term in a position and map the natural growth from the position. It is very common to come across many who look for a change in job within short span of time of their joining new assignments (anything less than 6 months is usually considered very short span). Before discussing such profiles with a client, we get the candidate to explain us the reasons, and tend to believe in the reasons offered. The usual reasons include a role mis-match or the work environment not being as conducive as they would have expected.

More often in such scenario by the time they actually reach the interview rounds and discussion table, many tend to get wary of their own explanation on having had to look for a change. They probably over time introspect; during the process are not able to invoke the same conviction with which they began; and are eventually not able to get the prospective employer to see their point of view.

Weariness on self conviction at any stage of interview process actually jeopardises the candidature, irrespective of career levels. This holds as much good for being confident on technical skills as well as on personal skills.

The most cited reasons for rejection in personal interview processes are lack of energy, vibrancy and conviction. One could make the mistake of making a wrong move, even if it was un-intentional, but may not have the luxury of being able to rectify it, unless we are able to admit it; accrue honest reasons for such a move and carry on with conviction to another opportunity.