Vice President, Services - Remote

The VP Services is responsible for delivering high quality professional services engagements across all products, generating best-in-class services margins for a software company, while assisting the company to achieve its overall subscription bookings, revenue and customer gross/net retention targets.

This leader will build, develop, and retain a world class, global team of professional services managers, functional analysts, technical analysts and other relevant technology roles.

Cendyn Services currently comprises both in-house services professionals and 3rd party contractors to sell and deliver Cendyn services engagements. The resources are based in the US, UK, Germany, Asia Pacific region and our facilities in India in Hyderabad and Gurugram.

There are three key areas where this role will unlock and maximize enterprise value across Cendyn:

1. Contribution Margin and Services Bookings. Drive the Professional Services business to best practice and industry standard contribution margin of 25%+. Be seen as a value- added resource by the Sales Team to drive customer value.
2. Customer success. Optimize customer value, and time required to achieve business outcomes both by partnering with Sales to ensure consistent messaging and client value articulation through realization as well as coordinating customer feedback with Product Management, driving enhanced functionality into the Product.
3. Retention – high quality delivery. Ensure projects are delivered with quality on-time and on-budget. Minimize concessions and rework. Continue enhancing delivery methodologies.

OUTCOMES

Professional Services Leadership. Recruit, develop and lead a world class professional services team that delivers successful customer outcomes:

• Organize a growing team across multiple geographic locations
• Develop, retain and promote the highest performers while coaching or exiting low performers
• Participate in acquisition due diligence to evaluate teams and plan integration strategies
• Structure a high-performing Services Sales organization to drive customer value, within geography – US and UK, bolstered by a growing team of functional and technical consultants in India

Services Sales. Partner closely with the Sales organization to drive Services Sales Bookings

• Engage with the sales organization to drive customer engagement during the sales cycle
• Work very closely with the Sales organization as a close partner to help promote Cendyn’s extensive portfolio of solutions.
• Develop strategy for leveraging 3rd party contractors and/or consulting firms to maximize customer value
• Sell on-target profitable services engagements
• Drive overall Cendyn customer value, growing subscription recurring revenue

Services Delivery. Lead the global delivery team with rigorous discipline and measurement to deliver with quality, scope and financial levers to achieve successful services engagements

• Achieve successful on-time, on-scope and on-budget delivery of customer commitments
• Lead teams in setting and achieving key Services metrics – Revenue, Expenses, Profitability, utilization, on-time delivery, customer QBR’s, and other relevant Services metrics

Customer-Facing Interaction. Drive senior level customer, partner or analyst interactions to discuss services strategy and collaborate on potential delivery or integration initiatives.

• Collaborate with Sales, Product Management and Engineering to describe differentiated value proposition for Cendyn portfolio of products
• Support and enable market-facing interactions to represent Cendyn services strategy

Talent model. Embrace, execute and evangelize our high-potential talent model, building a track record of driving business scale and increasing enterprise value

• Leverage multiple resourcing strategies for generating outcomes: regional in-house teams; and on-demand talent (3rd parties)

Competencies

• Professional Services Leadership
  • Proven track record in delivering professional services vision, strategy, planning, staffing and management
  • Experience developing a strategic roadmap to scale professional services focusing on developing Service offerings and modernizing the current services portfolio.
  • Work to define professional services offerings, manage future strategy and direction for the professional services practice aligned with the product roadmap to ensure our customers get the most value from the Cendyn portfolio of products
  • Executive thought leadership - internally and externally - for Professional Services strategy, approach and activities.
  • Business and operational expertise to drive the financial and operational elements of the Professional Services team - from services sales to business investments to revenue and customer consumption.
  • Continuously evaluates the organization for improvement and increased effectiveness.
  • Provide visible and effective leadership within the company as well as with customers, partners, and the external community. Developing, scaling and leading the organization as it grows.
  • Retain customers and identify opportunities to expand the value realization of our customers
  • Work with leadership to identify and implement metrics to track success, ensuring phases across pre-sales, sales, delivery and post-delivery are successful and drive revenue through hitting goals
  • Scaling of the Professional Services teams through employee experience, recruitment, training, and development.
  • Expertise at designing and executing B2B Enterprise Software architecture, product strategies and roadmaps that deliver consistent Retention, Bookings growth, and
  • Competitive win rates
  • Experience with managing a broad and diverse product portfolio with multiple use cases, buyer personas and ecosystem dynamics
  • Track record of beating competition as evidenced by retention, win rates, market share, and analyst rankings
  • Track record of success at Enterprise Software Companies with greater than $75M of Recurring revenue (or annual bookings of $15M or more)
  • Expertise at enabling the creation of impactful and relevant presentations and narratives for multiple audiences – market, customers, teams
  • Track record of strong executive leadership and partnership across the executive team to drive results
    
• Professional Services Functional Leadership
  • Expertise at recruiting and developing a world class, global Professional Services team – leveraging talent model best practices (e.g., recruiting on potential, driving meritocracy and harnessing a global, diverse pool of resources)
  • Successful at organizing, developing and leading teams to achieve targets
    
• Commercial savvy
  • Skilled at collaborating across the organization to ensure competitiveness and accelerate sales cycles
  • Track record in enabling increasing rates of bookings and cross sell (e.g., driving products/customer rate)
  • Experience working directly with customers to drive commercial results
  • Able to quickly grasp the nuances of a given market ecosystem and understand competitive value propositions and drive rapid iterations with messaging and programs
  • Proven bias towards defending differentiation and value
  • Viewed as a credible, market-facing executive
    
• Analytical
  • Expertise at tracking, analyzing, and interpreting relevant market and customer data including usage metrics
    
• Leadership
  • Executive that motivates and enables teams to deliver on priorities driving a high level of ownership and accountability
  • Executive who balances clear direction, hands-on work with the team, and coaching and development
  • Viewed as credible and trustworthy, both internally and externally
    
• Disciplined Execution
  • Sweats the details on planning – works backward from an objective to set and accomplish appropriate milestones
  • Leads a rigorous process for stack ranking and approving the appropriate set of priorities (versus “putting everything on the list”)
  • Holds teams accountable for delivering on expectations
  • Always driving self and teams to improve processes
    
• Decisive
  • Quickly and diligently gathers data and feedback, but does not get wrapped around the axle (or viewed as wishy-washy)
  • Makes the calls, aligns the teams, and drives forward, pivoting as needed
  • Willing to declare a mistake, take responsibility, and stop previously-approved initiatives versus pushing forward for sake of continuity or pleasing teams
    
• Results Oriented
  • Track record of delivering the result, not just the activity
  • Assign clear tasks and objectives and establish KPI’s to monitor results and measure success
  • Accomplishes 100% of objectives – doesn’t get tired and abandon at the 85% mark
  • Private equity mindset and approach – prioritizes the creation of tangible enterprise value vs. getting stuck on qualitative pieces related to building a “great software company”
    
• Communications Style – crisp and articulate
  • Ability to share cogent and concise information and presentations with leadership and investors
  • Comfortable presenting internally and externally to share results, communicate direction and inspire achievements
  • Transparent, data-driven (no spin), and value-oriented approach to communicating