Rob Cullen, Director of Business Operations
I joined Carne in September 2021 as Director of Business Operations. I had been following Carne for a number of years so when the opportunity arose to join the company, it didn’t need much thought.
I started my career as a Financial Consultant for Cornmarket Financial Services in Dublin. Cornmarket focussed on providing financial services for the public sector, which entailed working around a client’s availability and often visiting clients in remote parts of Ireland on late evenings (pre-Google maps!). While this was a great introduction into the world of pensions, AVC’s and investments, I realised that this wasn’t the right path for me at that point of my career. I left Cornmarket joined a small company called Capventis as a CRM consultant, and this really shaped the following 20 years of my career.
At that time, Capventis was a CRM strategy and systems implementation consultancy and worked mainly with a system called Siebel (which is now part of Oracle). As the company was small, it presented the opportunity to work closely with the C-Suite of companies such as Kerry Group, AIG and ESB Networks who at the time were all in the process of defining what CRM meant for them and this allowed me to hone my stakeholder engagement skills. After 4 years I took some time out to travel the world and spent time living in Australia before returning to Ireland and joining Accenture in 2005.
When I joined Accenture, companies were still doing big CRM implementations (which would only last for another 2 or 3 years), so I had the opportunity to work on large scale global projects. It also quickly introduced me to the world of outsourcing and offshoring / nearshoring. Throughout my career with Accenture, I worked mainly with clients in the Communications, Media and Technology sectors. From 2005 through to 2014 I worked on the consulting side of the business helping clients solve problems on both the business and I.T. side. This role took me all over the world and gave me the opportunity to work with great people and clients such as Dell, Vodafone, BT, eir and Microsoft. Over the last 7 years with Accenture, I moved over to Operations to work with clients such as Google, LinkedIn and TikTok. As Account Lead for these clients, I mobilised various services (ranging from Network Operations to Customer Support), helped to define their Target Operating Model and transform their business operations.
While it was a vastly different industry, these are all skills and learning that I’m looking forward to bringing to Carne. Throughout my career I’ve been very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with great people. In Carne the passion, commitment and focus on shared success for Carne and our clients has been very evident, which is fantastic. Given Carne’s growth to date and its vision for the future, it’s exciting to have joined a company with such focus on our clients and stakeholders, our people and the community.