During hunt for CEO, Keane's focus is strategy

The corner office is empty at the Charlestown headquarters of Keane Inc., overlooking Boston Harbor and the USS Constitution. And while executives take pains to stress they're doing business as usual, the technology services firm is clearly in uncharted waters.

``We had an unfortunate set of events that happened, but we continue to move forward," said Russell J. Campanello , senior vice president for human resources and one of the trio of executives serving on a transition leadership team known as the office of the president.

The unfortunate events culminated in the May 10 resignation of Brian T. Keane , president and chief executive of the company his father launched 40 years ago. Keane stepped down after one current and one former female employee internally lodged sexual harassment complaints. Keane denied the accusations but admitted to unspecified ``poor judgment" in his personal conduct, according to board members.

Now, even as the transition team moves forward with the strategy launched by Brian Keane to reposition and grow the company, a committee of the company's board of directors opens a national search for a new chief executive -- a job it expects to fill in three to six months.

And the absence of a CEO is not the only uncomfortable situation at the company. One of Keane's accusers, Georgina Fisk , who continues to work as vice president for marketing, has retained legal counsel.

For the senior executives, the focus is on Keane's strategy. Relying more heavily on offices it acquired in India in 2002, it is moving from its branch model to the global delivery model used by its larger competitors to service clients farming out administrative tasks. At the same time, it's seeking to help customers in sectors like insurance and finance automate business processes as well as manage data.

The goal is to become one of the 10 largest technology outsourcing firms, which would effectively double the size of the company, said Richard S. Garnick , president for North America and global business lines and another member of the transition team.

``One of the reasons I came to Keane was to help build, in Boston, a great company," said Garnick, a former senior executive at Indian outsourcing giant Wipro. ``The opportunity is for a Boston-based company to leverage that global landscape but to create a world-class competitive company, and to grow." Garnick conceded that most of the growth in employees is likely to come overseas.

In the short run, the Keane transition leaders have had to spend considerable time reassuring clients, employees, and investors that the company remains on track. At a short and awkward May 18 shareholders meeting, executives and board members made no direct reference to Brian Keane's departure. Garnick insisted the company has not lost a single client. John J. Leahy , the chief financial officer who is acting chief executive, said he, Garnick, Campanello, and others have contacted Keane's top 100 clients in person or by telephone.

``Between the three of us," Leahy said, ``I think we did a pretty good job at reassuring clients that their day-to-day needs would be met and that, at an executive level, any of us are fully available."

The executives also stressed continuity in communications with the company's nearly 10,000 workers. They reiterated the company will have ``zero tolerance" toward personal misconduct and directed employees to report infractions via a hot line to an independent third party deputized by the leadership team. While he declined to discuss specific incidents, Campanello said the company has received only a small number of personal misconduct complaints in the past decade.

Analysts say Brian Keane's departure isn't likely to cause an exodus of customers. But it will be crucial to keep both employees and customers happy during the hunt for a new chief executive they cautioned.

``It's hard to imagine that this is the kind of thing clients would walk away over," said Christine Ferrusi Ross , research director for information technology services at Forrester Research in Cambridge. ``The question for Keane is to make sure their people don't get skittish and leave, and disrupt client engagements. And if Brian was actively involved in piloting new ideas with clients, this could be disruptive."

Even before its chief executive's departure, Keane's annualized employee turnover rate was higher than the industry average of 15 to 20 percent during the past five quarters, said Jason Kupferberg , information technology services analyst at the UBS investment bank in New York. Kupferberg said rivals might try to take advantage of the Keane transition by ``cherry-picking" employees.

The larger problem for Keane is that it faces stiff competition from large global firms like IBM and Accenture that are expanding rapidly in India and Indian-based companies like Wipro, Infosys, and TCS that are gaining ground in the United States.

The board's search committee is close to hiring an outside executive search firm to begin looking for CEO candidates. Campanello, who is working with the committee, said he isn't interested in the job. Leahy and Garnick wouldn't comment. Some analysts said Garnick, with his Wipro experience, is viewed as a strong candidate to succeed Keane.

``There'll be internal candidates," Campanello said. ``And there'll be a national search to look at external candidates, as well."

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.