At the annual meeting of ABSL members, a new Board of Directors of this industry organization, which brings together business, customer, and IT service centers in the Czech Republic, supports their development, shares know-how and facilitates the entry of new investors into the Czech market, was elected. The president of the association Ota Kulhánek, and the director Jonathan Appleton, remain in their current roles. Together with them, the Board of Directors will include 10 representatives of major companies operating in the sector, which today employs 130,000 people and represents an important pillar of the Czech economy.
One hundred members of the ABSL association elected four new faces to the Board of Directors. Six experts from the original group remain on this new Board of Directors.
The new members are:
 |
Iveta Chválová, Managing Director of SAP Services in Prague. In addition to her role as director, she also leads the international Global Mobility team with overall responsibility for all cross-border movements and relocations within SAP. She started working at SAP after graduating from university in 2005. As part of her work at ABSL, she wants to actively contribute to the growth of the business services sector. She believes that the potential is huge and is convinced that business services are an increasingly important part of the entire value chain of companies. |
 |
Helle Juhl McDermott, VP Shared Services and Site-Leader Prague, Curium Pharma, which provides IT, HR, finance and customer service support to other entities of this global pharmaceutical company. She is originally from Denmark and has more than 20 years in Shared Services. Helle is a certified coach and NLP practitioner and is volunteering as a mentor for the Nordic Chamber of Commerce’s “Mentoring Exchange” and “Women helping women in business” for Torch. As part of her role at ABSL, she wants to focus on sharing the experience of smaller but very fast-growing centers, as well as promoting diversity. |
 |
Nicole Pierson, Managing Director of Johnson & Johnson Global Services, a company that was one of the founding members of ABSL. Nicole has diverse work experience in Business Services as well as Finance and Business leadership across Medical Devices, Pharmaceuticals, Consumer and Enterprise Supply Chain within Johnson & Johnson. On the ABSL Board of Directors, she wants to focus mainly on networking and best practices sharing across the sector and engaging and sponsoring diversity and talent development. |
 |
Jan Nedělník, General Manager of Comdata Czech and Comdata Hungary. Jan has over 15 years of experience in the BPO industry and over 10 years at contact center Comdata. Comdata is a Diamond winner for implementing the COVID19 government help-line. The company responded immediately and flexibly to the government’s call and supported lines 112 and 1212, which collapsed under the huge number of inquiries. Withint ABSL he would like to raise the awareness of the sector in regions, to focus on CSR activities and to share the Comdata experience from this space to other ABSL members. |
From the previous period, the following members remain on the Board of Directors for the next two years:
František Havel, NGSC Prague Strategy & Operations manager in the global service center of Novartis in Prague. He has extensive experience from more than 19 years of operation in the sector of global business services. He dealt with both improving the efficiency of processes and increasing the quality of services provided in IT / telecommunications, finance and HR.
His goal on the ABSL Board of Directors is to raise awareness of the sector in the Czech Republic, promote the importance of key skills such as best-in-class business partnerships and reach out to qualified professionals and talented graduates.
Sergei Holmeskis, Managing Director at Deutsche Telekom Services Europe Czech Republic. He has been with Deutsche Telekom since 2011 in various international roles in the areas of Consulting, Roaming, HR Projects, Shared Services. Since 2016, he has been leading the Czech subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom Services Europe in Brno. Within his work for ABSL he focuses on promoting the knowledge and experience sharing among members and emphasizes the importance of innovation, digitalization, people, and industry development.
Adam Kiwalski, GBS Head Delivery Management at Siemens. Adam is an experienced professional in the sector of business services. For more than 17 years in this industry, Adam has managed a number of global transformation and digitization projects. Thanks to his experience, he also provided consulting services to numerous corporations. As part of his role in ABSL, he focuses on improving the quality of provided services, educational activities and digitization projects.
Roman Pavloušek heads the Atlas Copco financial center, which is one of the founding members of ABSL. He has many years of experience in the business services sector, as well as in auditing and consulting. Roman’s goal is to support a more active sharing of best practices among individual ABSL members as well as to support the professional development of employees in the business services sector, especially in the Brno region, where a third of all centers operating in the Czech Republic are located.
Jan Skoták works as the director of the Infosys regional center in the Czech Republic, which is also one of the founding members of the ABSL association. In his role in ABSL, he focuses on promoting the business services sector in the South Moravian region, on cooperation with state and governmental institutions and organizations, and on expanding ABSL’s activities into IT.
Jaromír Staroba is the director of the Prague Digital Hub business services center of the ABInBev brewing concern based in Prague. He has been with the company since 2006 and has held many positions in the areas of human resources, logistics and project management. Within ABSL, Jaromír is a promoter of sharing experience between individual centers. He organized several workshops for other centers in the areas of transformation into a center of added value and the use of technology in the hybrid, which he likes to show in practice at his center.
„We are really pleased that our new Board of Directors has a strong desire to take the business services sector one step further,“ says Jonathan Appleton, Director of ABSL, and adds: „After a challenging pandemic year, which has proven the extraordinary resilience of our sector, as well as the high innovation and creativity of Czech centers, a period of further dynamic growth and expansion is to come. I believe that together with our new Board of Directors we will create a strong team that will support this growth through its experience and ideas, and thus contribute to strengthening the position of the sector, which is at the forefront of innovation and transformation of world businesses and represents an important pillar of the Czech economy.”
