Vice President Of Professional Services

About Sapphire Systems:

Sapphire is the largest digital operating transformation provider to the mid-market and mid-enterprise clients. Our mission is to turn operating friction into digital business momentum. Through the passion and expertise of our people, we unlock the cloud-delivered operating platforms, digital user experiences, data analytics, and intelligent automation that transforms our client’s operational performance. We are globally significant partners for SAP, ServiceNow, Automation Anywhere, Infor, Hexagon and AWS, and we have transformed the digital operating capacity, capability, intelligence and resilience of over 1,250 clients in the UK and US through our portfolio of consulting, design, delivery, lifecycle service, and cloud services.

Reports to:

Chief Delivery Officer (CDO)

Job Summary:

The VP of Professional Services will be responsible for delivering outstanding outcomes to our US customers, ensuring Sapphire’s Professional Services delivery organisation is aligned and operating in a way that ensures Sapphire continues to be able to accelerate our growth in this fast growing and fast paced market. With outstanding leadership, motivational, and industry knowledge coupled with the responsibility for P&L within the region, we are looking for an outstanding candidate who can lead growth, capability, quality and customer outcomes.

With direct responsibility for our Sapphire’s US & Mexico consulting teams, you will be engaged with all of our local projects, our key customers, and our key vendor partners [SAP, ServiceNow, Hexagon, Automation Anywhere] to ensure our regional team is able to operate with excellence at all times.

Reporting to our CDO, the VP Professional Services will initially lead a team of approximately 35 professionals in the US and be able to lead our growth plan to significantly increase their team in the next 12 months, while being able to continually asses client and market demand to ensure we have the right mix of skills and seniority to be highly successful organisation.

You will be a highly capable leader, able to manage, motivate, and measure your teams success, liaising with senior leaders around Sapphire to ensure we continue to maintain our high levels of staff retention, development and satisfaction.

Working in a business that is passionate about operating excellence we want you to be able to continually optimise our ways of working to increase efficiency and effectiveness that ensures we maintain our top line and bottom line performance alongside continued achievement of customer satisfaction.

Currently our US clients are predominately SAP, with a mix of SAPB1, BYD & S4, and SAC however we plan to expand our ServiceNow capabilities into the US over coming months. The US/Mexico team is 35 strong with a plan to scale the next 12-48 months. Reporting to our CDO, this role is accountability for the revenue & profitability of the Professional Services team in the US.

Duties/Responsibilities:

• Demonstrate leadership and build a motivated organization that clearly understands and is strongly engaged with the role each member plays in building value.
• Ensure financial targets are led and achieved across the function
• Develop and maintain proactive relationships with key clients and ensure their insights are used to help craft future product and service strategy
• Strong interlock with Sales & Account Management teams and the wider client operations teams, to ensure effective operating rhythm and processes between the teams to optimize the client experience.
• Define and implement a talent development strategy that enables the team to develop and continuously improve the way in which we deliver services.
• Drive continuous improvements in the services we provide to clients
• Lead client escalations to ensure that lessons are learned and actions taken to avoid repeat occurrences.
• Drive revenue retention and increase likelihood to recommend, by taking strong accountability for maintaining service relationships with our clients, particularly during competitive displacements and supporting new business opportunities.

• Lead the US Services Team to deliver top quality services including:

- A focus on maintaining 75-80 % billable utilization whilst maintaining quality

- Monitor effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery

- Monitor people, contractor and third party spend to improve margins

• Come up with strategies to ensure continuous improvement across the Services Team:

- Analyze performance and identify key opportunities to improve with a focus on utilization

- Work with project managers to identify current and future needs and come up with and implement strategies to meet those needs

- Constantly reviewing costs to operate and assessing areas of improvement

• Work closely with various managers to develop best practice ways of working, including the use of automation
• Manage the long-term strategic product road map, involves sales, marketing, implementations, clients, prospects, partners, etc.

Required skills/abilities:

• Experience redefining the culture of large, virtual teams to drive a measurable improvement in service.
• Ability to travel regularly.
• Proven experience building and leading teams in a fast-paced, growing Professional Services company.
• Proven multi-tasking, time-management, project management, problem-solving and team-building skills within complex environments.
• Experience delivering customer service as defined by high quality customer insight, with clear examples of agile and successful operational response to such data.
• 10+ years of progressively increasing managerial responsibility within a solution/services delivery environment.
• Proven presentation, interpersonal communication, and organizational skills and proven ability to communicate our value proposition.
• Excellent communication and client-facing skills and proven ability to work with our clients senior management levels.
• Ability to develop and champion collaborative working relationships across various business units, corporate leaders, service peers and critically, clients.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills – ability to communicate/present at all levels including C-level executives
• Knowledge of SAP / ERP market – ERP implementation experience desirable