Marco Previero - Co-Founder and Finance Director - R3Location

Name: Marco Previero

Position: Co-Founder and Finance Director

Company: R3Location

Professional Background

R3Location, Co-Founder and Finance Director (United Kingdom): 2011 – Present

EY, Tax Director (United Kingdom): 2010 – 2011

Pricoa Relocation (BGRS), Vice President, Strategy and Client Relationships (United Kingdom): 2005 – 2010

KPMG, Senior Manager (United Kingdom): 1999 – 2005

Career Insider

Q: What events lead you to found R3Location?

A: Two major trends dominated the mobility industry in London in the 5-year period leading up to the creation of R3, back in 2011.

1. A focus on reducing the overall cost of relocation for global companies as a result of the global financial crisis in 2008 and the major recession that followed. 

2. The crisis was the catalyst of a trend that had started prior to 2008: the commoditisation, reduction and standardisation of relocation benefits, and therefore the changing nature of the support large corporates provided populations of assignees moving from one country to another.

The effort to turn relocation support into simpler and cheaper services led to the consolidation of relocation management and global mobility companies and providers of peripheral relocation services, such as household goods companies, diversifying into more general move management. This was not altogether harmful – but it did damage quality of local destination service support for the more senior executives moving into more complex, sophisticated, mature locations such as London. 

My co-founder, Anna Barker, and I spotted this gap. We consulted extensively at the time with human resource directors and in-house global mobility leaders. The messages were positive and encouraging. Large corporations in London were becoming frustrated by the lack of local expertise of larger mobility providers and the one-size fits all/jack of all trades approach that the relocation world was beginning to adopt. They were craving on-the-ground expertise to ensure senior expatriates received good quality, hand-held, tailored support locally. In July 2011, we decided to address the general dissatisfaction in the local market and founded R3Location Limited: a destination service provider with headquarters in Central London, providing high-touch comprehensive support across the life-cycle of the assignment.

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Q: What aspect of your work at R3Location do you find most exciting?

A: Creating R3Location from scratch, with my business partner Anna Barker, and watching its staff, its reputation and its client base grow steadily and organically over the last 6 years has certainly provided a great deal of satisfaction. 

The validation of our model and the entrepreneurial drive that always enables us to adopt a “blue sky/do the right thing” approach on how we deliver services, how we support clients and how we look after their assignees coming into London comes a close second. 

The continuous endorsement of clients that have been with us since inception and those that have joined the journey along the way. We are grateful for their support and their encouragement that our model and desire not to be the biggest, but to be the best through a senior ‘hands on’ team that has an unrivalled blend of experience, innovation and skills can bear fruit in the long term. 

And the appreciative feedback from assignees and their families never ceases to delight us. We meet many of them face to face, we get to know them well, and they provide a daily reminder of why we do what do: to help and support other human beings through the stress and anxiety of moving home and settling into a new country.

Q: What advice would you give to someone looking to build a career in global mobility?

A:

• Be open to learn from everyone around you, from the more junior members of staff, to assignees, clients and providers alike.
• Be diverse in your outlook when seeking new experiences and try to gain exposure from a varied range of roles and companies (both in-house and service providers). Try different roles, in different departments, leverage on the size and network your organisation provides, go on assignment yourself if you can. Learn to learn new things and teach others around you.
• Be pro-active in managing your career both inside and outside your organisation. Your career is yours to manage (not your company’s, not your manager’s) so invest in yourself and your future by building networks both within and outside of your company (go to industry events, engage with providers, attend conferences even if in your own time – remember: you are investing in you).
• Stay humble, stay honest, be yourself and aim to deliver the best that you can in the role that you have.

Industry Insider

Q: What aspect of global mobility is likely to keep you up at night?

A: Have we done all that we could to delight the client for each and every move we manage? Can we look at ourselves and evaluate with honesty that we have tried our best at each and every stage? Customer service and the desire to provide the very best, keeps me up at night.

Q: What do you think is the primary thing hindering the global mobility industry's progress? 

A: The industry is too fragmented and not specialised enough. There are too many companies, offering too many different services, with values proposition that are either too complex or not backed by tangible resources and capabilities (too many move generalists, not enough experts). Clients are generally confused, and assignees dissatisfied with services.

Q: What kind of tech or software would you suggest for global mobility processing?

A: I don’t have any recommendations, rather, what’s important is how you record the data and how you use it to improve the quality of service you provide to your clients.

Visionary Insider

Q: How can global mobility professionals ensure that they are handling issues of diversity and inclusion appropriately?

A: I would say be professional in everything you do. Be sensitive to cultural differences that can exist from a practical perspective when speaking to assignees for the first time. Continue to stay informed and communicate to your industry the way in which diversity and inclusion continues to evolve as part of existing policies.

Q: How can global mobility practices get better in the next 5 years?

A: Better, more consistent self-regulation – with consolidation of some of the larger companies into entities that invest in resources and capabilities more in line with values.

Either/Or…

• Short-term or long-term assignment? Horses for courses
• Airbnb or serviced apartments? Serviced apartments
• Excel or global mobility software? Excel
• Lump-sum or flex-ben? Flex-Ben
• Facebook or LinkedIn? Neither
• Outlook or Gmail? Outlook
• Taxi or Uber? Taxi
• iOS or Android? iOS
• Mac or PC? Both! Used in different ways
• Computer or tablet? Computer
• Work hard or play hard? Neither. Be honest with yourself, your colleagues and your clients, be diligent, be balanced and always aim to behave with integrity in everything you do.