This is 2.0 – Views from IAOP Leadership Hall of Fame Inductees

“We are now at the inflection of a new model driven by digital transformation based on platforms such as cloud, AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Microsoft Azure that are hyper-automated and self-served that create a different type of value,” Bendor-Samuel says.

While labor arbitrage and building offshore centers can typically reduce costs 25 percent over doing the work in the U.S., a fully mature platform model based on cloud can deliver 60-80 percent savings in addition to the labor benefits and an improved customer experience, he says.

Beyond that, a hyper-productivity model that is deploying agile teams can result in productivity gains of 300 to 500 percent, according to Bendor-Samuel.

“These shifts that we are working through are very deep and powerful and they are transforming the industry,” he says.

An entrepreneur who is passionate about his life’s work, his firm’s focus has changed along with the evolution in the industry. After previously starting E&Y’s outsourcing advisory practice, Bendor-Samuel first founded a software company to provide tools to help customers manage their outsourcing service providers.

The market, he says, wasn’t mature enough at the time for the service and he moved into the consulting space with Everest Group to help the industry understand how to define, measure and price services.

His company pivoted once again in 2003 to launch itself as a research firm, seeing that customers needed insights and tools to purchase and manage service relationships on their own. “The underlying theme is helping the industry understand how to deliver, purchase or consume services,” he says.

Over nearly 30 years, Bendor-Samuel has led Everest Group to be constantly at the forefront of the sourcing and services industry, ensuring that the firm is constantly at the intersection of how leading firms take advantage of disruptive technologies, innovative service vehicles, and game-changing talent models.

Being recognized in this way means a lot to Bendor-Samuel. “I have a great deal of respect for the leadership of IAOP and its vision and the people in it,” he says. “It’s very humbling and gratifying that the people who really are the backbone of the industry would recognize me and our firm.”

GBS Leader

Leopoldi-Nichols entered the field in the early 1990s working for a payroll benefits and compensation company giving her a unique perspective on understanding the inner workings of an outsourcing provider before moving to the buy-side.

During her career, Leopoldi-Nichols has worked with companies that have used outsourcing providers for their forward and future visions of processes and have looked to them for innovation and excellence in transactions. She’s awarded tens of millions of dollars of contracts to providers that have returned significant savings, improving metrics, that, in some cases, would never have been able to be accomplished internally.

“Over the past 20-plus years, I’ve seen shared services and Global Business Services (GBS) organizations go from being viewed as an organization which churns out transactional processes to much more of a business solutions organization,” says Leopoldi-Nichols, who has been President of Global Business Services at UPS for about two years.

The UPS GBS organization helps support Finance, HR, IT, Sales and Marketing in the back, middle and front office through a network of 17,000 FTEs, half of which are outsourced in 80 global locations.

Leopoldi-Nichols views the company’s services providers as strategic partners. “They are forward-thinkers in the space and help us provide best-in-class services in their respective areas,” she says. “They don’t just process transactions but consult with our teams on the best opportunities, locations and solutions to deliver excellence. They continuously improve the processes they deliver which ultimately helps our end customers.”

Looking ahead, Leopoldi-Nichols sees more cohesion in GBS between artificial intelligence, machine learning and people. Continuous improvement and predictive modeling will be at the forefront of what GBS does. She sees her team at UPS using automation for basic transactions so they can focus on solving far bigger issues with help from new technologies like quantum computing.

Leopoldi-Nichols says she is excited to see more women leaders in roles like her own over the years but companies need to continue to enable women to advance as far as their desires and abilities will take them.

“It’s about finding a balance in equality and embracing differences,” she says. “The more diverse teams you can build, and the more inclusive your organization is of diverse backgrounds and viewpoints, the more success your organization can realize.” (For more, see our story on Women Empowerment, Leadership & Diversity (WELD) Chapter.)

Receiving this honor left Leopoldi-Nichols at a loss for words.

“To be the first woman GBS leader to receive this award is the greatest honor of my professional life,” she says. “To be listed alongside so many brilliant and gifted leaders, I’m filled with gratitude and excitement. But I wouldn’t be here without all of the people who helped me throughout my career, including my own teams over the years. This honor really goes out to all of them.”

Read our interview with Suzanne Leopoldi-Nichols.