John Lyons

Head of Shared Services at DLA Piper

Cracow, Małopolskie, Poland

About

A qualified finance professional with more than 25 years’ experience in the set-up, growth and management of nearshore and offshore Captive Shared Service and BPO delivery centres. A pioneer in the development of the SSC industry in Poland. During my career I have grown centres to more than 1500 resources in a competitive hiring market. Set up a greenfield SSC hiring more than 1100 resources in three years to transition finance processes from 25 European countries to SSC. Transitioned non-financial business processes and client facing processes to SSC. Supported the evolution of the shared services delivery model from transaction processing to more complex analytical and value-added service delivery. Enabled delivery model evolution by migrating more than 1000 roles from Poland to Captive and Third-party offshore delivery centres while upskilling and redeploying impacted resources to new activities. Delivered productivity savings using tools such as RPA, VBA, Lean, Power BI and AI. An engaging leader focused on colleague motivation, development, career progression, engagement and retention in a highly competitive skills market. KEY CAPABILITIES Organisation Building: Setting up and managing the growth of nearshore and offshore SSC and BPO centers including scope definition, organisation design, recruitment, process transition and operational management. Service Delivery: Delivering internal shared service (Finance, HR, Procurement, Technology) and client facing processes for captive and outsourced clients from nearshore and offshore locations. People Leadership: An engaging leader with the ability to motivate, develop, progress and retain colleagues in highly competitive labour markets. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE - Aon Centre Leader, Krakow, Budapest, Bangalore Responsible for the management of 2400 people in Aon Business Services supporting Finance, HR, Procurement, Technology, Sales & Marketing, Analytics and Client facing processes supporting Aon’s Commercial Risk, Health & Wealth businesses.  Growing the centres with the transition of additional transactional and value-added scope from EMEA and North America.  Managing annual operating costs budgets.  Enabling Aon Target Operating model development by the migration of transactional roles from onshore SSC to offshore captive centers and BPO partners, maximizing the redeployment of impacted colleagues to new roles.  Developing process improvement capability using RPA, VBA, Lean, Power BI, Workforce Management, Scope absorption and AI tools. Regularly delivering annual savings of 4-8% pa

Experience

  • Head of Shared Services at DLA Piper
    Aug 2025 - Present · 11 mos

    Head of Shared Services DLA Piper

  • Centre Leader at Aon
    Sep 2017 - Aug 2025 · 8 yrs

  • Director Financial Shared Services at Heineken
    Nov 2011 - Jun 2017 · 5 yrs 8 mos

  • IBM Global Process Services (Krakow)
    • Director EMEA delivery
      Jul 2009 - Oct 2011 · 2 yrs 4 mos

    • Delivery centre director
      Oct 2002 - Jul 2009 · 6 yrs 10 mos