About

Since joining Avanade as its general counsel in 2010, David Oskandy has built a global team of 55 highly effective legal and compliance professionals operating across 24 countries. Particularly proud of the “liquid workforce” that he has created, Oskandy has also been at the forefront of other ground breaking initiatives such as Avanade’s “Technology for Social Good”. In his own words, Oskandy explains that in 2018: ‘We transformed ourselves into a hyper-performance team by creating a liquid workforce that set us up to provide highly-agile skill sets which are mission critical in the digital era, where technological disruption is pervasive and the regulatory landscape increasingly complex’. Explaining how this was created, he adds: ‘We started by designing a matrix encompassing subject matter, industry, functional and geographical expertise reaching across all stakeholders that drives close touch with leadership priorities while forcing cross-discipline solutions through simplified interfaces, dedicated resources, cross-function system integration and stakeholder relationship management’. This matrix was then supplemented with future-oriented collaborative task forces, fusing cross-matrix and company experts and influencers to address discrete topics quickly and deeply. Oskandy states this produced ‘innovative thought leadership to equip the company for new fields such as digital ethics’. The liquid platform optimises all available resources, including what he states is an ‘associate network of contractors, offshore resources, legal service providers and interns, to provide flexible and cost-effective support across geographic, organisational and temporal borders’. A cutting-edge training model was developed to generate new skills and streamline processes in a way that empowers “anytime, anywhere” working and instant front-line decision-making, in collaboration with internal stakeholders and parents Microsoft and Accenture. Oskandy states that this liquid workforce enabled the company to move ‘50% of our lawyers to a global role and 40% to a leadership role, handle a 26% increase in the volume of master services agreements, develop dozens of new offerings, construct strategic partnerships, manage compliance with the GDPR and other new laws/regulations, benefit from and contribute to the open source trend, and develop Avanade’s framework on digital ethics, all without increasing headcount or funding’. In addition to this, the aforementioned “Technology for Social Good” initiative was launched in 2018 in order to strategically deliver Microsoft technologies on a global scale to bring about systemic change to the social sector. Oskandy explains: ‘This new hybrid business/social venture sits within our corporate citizenship efforts that I oversee. We will partner with Microsoft as their global system integrator partner for non-profit organisations, and together we will provide tailored solutions to non-profits and accelerate the digital transformation of the social sector. This initiative culminates an evolution of our thinking around how we continue to combine the employee and client experience, doing good business and doing social good as a responsible corporate citizen. It paves the way to trusted partner to non-profit organisations, driving greater employee satisfaction and a sense of pride through unique opportunities for our employees to do societal good using their professional expertise.’