Rob Purks CIO & Management Consultant

Overview

Rob Purks is a global Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology & Information Officer with more than 30 years of experience leading large-scale transformation across telecommunications and complex enterprise technology environments. He has served in senior CIO/CTIO and transformation leadership roles for wireless, wireline, and converged service providers, global systems integrators, and enterprise technology leaders. His career spans end-to-end modernization of OSS/BSS stacks, 3G and wireless network expansion, multi-country consolidation, and enterprise-wide operating model redesign in markets where reliability, regulatory confidence, and execution rigor are non-negotiable.

Rob has successfully led transformation portfolios in excess of $500M, integrating technology strategy with commercial priorities across North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. He is known for stabilizing mission-critical platforms while modernizing them to support growth, M&A integration, and new product launches. His leadership has consistently delivered measurable improvements in service reliability, time-to-market, cost-to-serve, and regulatory and compliance posture for large, complex organizations.

In his CIO and CTIO roles at Global Telemedia International, Nextel Chile, and Iusacell (now AT&T Mexico), Rob was accountable for enterprise IT strategy, OSS/BSS leadership, and end-to-end network and systems modernization, leading high-performance technology organizations in intensely competitive telecom markets.

Market Expansion

Rob’s leadership is grounded in decades of experience at the intersection of network, IT, and operations. Early in his career, he helped architect and execute major wireless build-outs and 3G expansion programs, integrating radio, transport, and core network deployments with OSS/BSS, CRM, and customer care platforms. He has led multi-market transformations that rationalized fragmented technology estates into unified, modern architectures, enabling providers to scale subscriber growth, improve ARPU, and meet spectrum, lawful intercept, and regulatory requirements with confidence.

As a senior enterprise technology leader, Rob has driven modernization initiatives that cut across infrastructure, applications, data, and security. He has overseen cloud migration roadmaps, API-led integration strategies, and the introduction of data and analytics platforms that support network operations, customer segmentation, risk management, and commercial decision-making. Rob is frequently tasked with taking ownership of complex, stalled, or high-risk programs and bringing them back under disciplined, predictable execution.

Consulting & Practice Leadership

Rob’s consulting and practice leadership experience includes serving as a Partner at Accenture and holding senior transformation roles at IBM and Ericsson. At Accenture, he led large-scale telecom and enterprise transformation programs, combining strategy, architecture, and delivery oversight for Tier 1 operators and global enterprises. At IBM, he helped shape and execute enterprise modernization agendas across regulated industries, aligning hybrid cloud, application modernization, and operating model redesign to clear business outcomes. At Ericsson, he worked at the convergence of network and IT, guiding OSS/BSS, managed services, and digital transformation programs that enabled operators to modernize while protecting service continuity and customer experience.

Across these roles, Rob has been a trusted advisor to boards, CEOs, CFOs, and COOs on topics including network and IT strategy, capital allocation, transformation governance, and the responsible adoption of AI and automation in mission-critical environments. He is recognized for combining deep technical fluency with pragmatic business judgment, enabling executive teams to make confident decisions in high-stakes, multi-year transformation journeys.

Core Expertise

Rob maintains a focused portfolio of advisory, board, and executive leadership engagements where large-scale telecom, OSS/BSS, ERP, retail, supply chain and enterprise modernization experience are central to value creation.