Edward Keyl
Global BPO Thought Leader and Co-Founder / COO of ArDan
ABOUT ME
I am intellectually curious and well versed in the global business process and knowledge process outsourcing space. I have built, managed, and transformed large shared service centers across the globe for a global bank and co-founded ArDan, a sourcing solutions firm strategically positioned to help firms optimize labor arbitrage opportunities.
But the benefits do not stop at labor arbitrage and this is where my experience can be very beneficial to you. I have led large scale IT simplification and process re-engineering projects to make the shared service centers more cost and operationally efficient.
Feel free to reach out if you would like to discuss BPO opportunities.
Shared Service Experience
Shanghai, China Shared Service Centre Experience 1014 – 2018 Ed was the location, functional manager and vendor relationship manager during his time in China. When he arrived, the location used a local vendor and had roughly 75 FTE. By the time he left 4 years later, the vendor was insourced, 2 shared service locations were built (Shanghai and Wuxi) and the presence grew to 500+ FTE. Ed made significant contributions both functionally and locationally. From a function perspective, he led significant transformation projects and created and implemented the global sourcing strategy (think global footprint) for his global function. He led transformation projects which involved advanced technologies of the time (Python, RPA, advanced macros), and spent a significant amount of time hiring and training the growing location. In total, Eds actions created cost efficiencies of USD 5mil. One of Ed’s biggest contributions was his global sourcing strategy analysis and implementation. Ed conducted cost analysis of vendor vs in-house employees across the various global locations. He process mapped every global functional process to understand relationships, dependencies, and front to back flow to create an optimized global footprint. He then executed this transition project within budget and time. Ed was asked to sit on the Project Committee as the bank looked to build a new shared service center location in Wuxi, 1 hour fast train ride west of Shanghai. Ed hired and trained the first Wuxi hires, building long last relationships with some of these staff. As the result of his time in China, Ed grew professionally and personally. He learned how to adapt to different cultures and environments, he got his first experience on leading large projects and leading large teams, and lastly but probably most importantly, he learned patience and humility. With China being his first international relocation, many things did not go as planned with some activities that were taken for granted home in the US were much more challenging in China. Developing patience, humility, and a greater sense of humor helped Ed and his family thrive in China.
Hyderabad, India Shared Service Centre Experience 2018 - 2019 After China, Ed relocated to Hyderabad to do a similar role as in China except with a greater emphasis on vendor management. His firm employed two BPO vendors to manage hundreds of the more complex and time sensitive processes and Ed was asked to review the output and identify opportunities for improvement in performance and risk reduction. In addition to spending the first few months understanding this vendor environment, Ed took the time to review the standard operating procedures and the service level agreements to ensure they were aligned to his firms expectations. He quickly discovered that the service level agreements needed to be amended to include both quality and timeliness expectations and also include a proper incentivization and penalty clauses. Ed rewrote and negotiated the new SLA’s and as a result, the number of unresolved control breaks reduced 80% and vendor performance improved. Next, Ed looked at the vendor contracts to understand the commercials of the partnership. Although the vendors agreed to reduce billable FTE YoY via IT simplification, they often did not provide any tech improvements in favor of simply reducing billable and increasing non-billable FTE, or decreasing their margins. Ed knew from experience that this strategy would eventually become a point of contention between the 2 parties so Ed worked with each vendor to identify IT simplification or process re-enginering opportunities across the global process service catalogue, not just within the vendors remit. This ‘thinking outside the box’ solution identified several undiscovered opportunities for automation and gave his firm access to the vendors significant technology teams and solutions. As a result, billable FTE decreased and front to back flows improved. Ed’s time in India was cut short as senior management asked him to relocate to Krakow Poland to remediate a newly discovered issue.
Krakow, Poland Shared Service Centre Experience 2019 - 2021 Ed was the BPO location and functional manager in Krakow Poland. Although the site was mature when he arrived, his function was not as it lacked leadership, organization and cultural alignment. With 5 different teams totalling 200+ FTE, Ed immediately created a management team to help him lead the team forward. This also provided additional scope and learning opportunities for management team members. After a couple of months of continuous conversations, learning about the people, teams, Polish culture, onshore stakeholders, existing risks and Polish labour laws, Ed and his management teams identified several areas where the team needed focus. First, the team lacked learning and development opportunities. Through his conversations with each member of his 200+ team, Ed identified the 20% most engaged individuals and recruited them to assist him in building a Krakow Learning and Development Program. By the end of Ed’s 30 months in Krakow, the L&D team created 150 unique events created by the Poland staff for the Poland staff… all done without any additional funding. In addition, because Ed had experience at the China and India Shared Service Centre’s, Ed connected the dots between the locations, pushing for an exchange program between the locations to cross-pollinate the locations with local thought, successes, and achievements. Next, the location was lacking the urgency to drive transformation, with the main drivers being sourcing, process re-engineering, and IT simplification. Fortunately, Ed arrived in Poland with extensive experience in each of these drivers and started to hold the location accountable for its own contributions. Again, through his constant interactions with the teams, Ed identified several people who were tech savvy and enlisted them to help drive his transformation goals. Next, given his experience in China and India, Ed was able to help identify and execute sourcing opportunities for several functions to better align time zone coverage and align front to back procedural flows. Ed also volunteered to be EMEA Race and Ethnicity Lead for his function. In this role, Ed continued to nurture an inclusive environment across the region by organizing an EMEA wide R&E education week and using his global mindset to help design the new shared service location being built during his time in Poland. Through his work with the local teams and his presence on senior management committees, Ed was able to increase the overall awareness of his function across the world and helped build a sustainable and corporate culturally aligned function at the Krakow Shared Service Centre.
Investment Bank Operations Functional Experience
Middle Office Ed has extensive Middle Office experience having worked at each level in the function. It was primarily Middle Office functions Ed ran while in China and India in addition to his roles in the US. Ed is well versed in T0 pnl, T1 reconciliations and controls, kpi / dashboard creation, stakeholder management, people development and process mapping and optimization.
KYC / AML After Poland, Ed relocated to Singapore to become the APAC head of KYC / AML. Responsibilities included client / product onboarding and the periodic refresh of investment bank clients. Ed had just arrived into the role when his firm faced regulator inquires about the periodic refresh process. Ed was forced to adapt to the challenge quickly, creating remedion plans which included hiring 70+ FTE, reorganizing his existing organization, standardize stakeholder reporting, and built trust with his regions stakeholders which included his firms Group Executive Board.
Executed Trading Agreements In addition to his KYC role in Singapore, Ed was the global lead for Trading Agremens team, an India based team that was responsible to manually codify pertinent data from executed trading agreements into company applications so the data could be used by credit, risk and trading teams. Ed quickly understood the role automation could play in this space and proposed several solutions to use either OCR tools or new AI technology to scrape the relevant data from the trading agreements and input it into the necessary applicaitons. His proposals included an opportunity for a USD 2mil save.
Prime Brokerage Ed was the North American lead of the Fixed Income Prime Brokerage team before he began his internations journey. Aside from being the senior client escalation point, he made significant contributions to the risk and controls of the team. Ed identified a control gap in the FX Prime Brokerage booking process which caused substantial FX pnl. Over the course of several months, Ed learned the booking technologies and booking process and implemented a new process that brought pnl due to booking erros from USD 10mil / year to zero.
Risk and Controls Part of Ed's remit during his days in the Middle Office included a thorough understand of control methodologies and risk reduction.
Regional Management and People Development
