Account Technology Strategist
Job Description
The Account Technology Strategist (ATS) is the leader responsible for designing the strategy and architecture to drive digitalization and innovation agenda for our enterprise customers and acts as the Innovation and DT Thought Leader. With deep business understanding, broad technology skills and industry knowledge, the ATS starts with Innovation/ DT agenda of our customers, connects business/industry priorities to technology strategy and develops value propositions which align with our customer's priorities and business strategies, leveraging the rich portfolio of Microsoft and its partner ecosystem.
Customer and Industry Insights
- Synthes and combines various business insights from his or her team, global best practices, proof points from experience with several countries and regions, and deep industry expertise (e.g., level 200) related to customers and their competitors to conduct forecasting and develop recommendations for managing accounts and subsidiary planning. Ensures that all levels of the organization challenge customers to consider alternatives and adapt strategies, plans, business models, and solutions to insights.
- Orchestrates global teams across the organization to gather information, collaborate on performance markers, and identify potential risks in customer accounts. Brings in business and industry insights to address the broader business challenges for the customer. Executes work against the overall business and technical strategy. Participates in business groups to determine needed resources.
- Applies deep expertise and thought leadership to identify the right industry prioritized scenarios (IPSs) and industry partners within the customer's vertical industry. Articulates and understands specific industry-related market trends, as well as customer threats, opportunities, and barriers to growth as they relate to the customer's broader industry. Leads with industry knowledge to support customers in solving issues. Helps to drive and create a board-ready message (e.g., sustainability) and controls for customers compliance alignment.
Trusted Advisor
- Acts as the virtual Chief Technical Officer (CTO)/Chief Digital Officer (CDO) or go-to person in established, long-term relationships with technical decision makers (TDMs) and/or business decision makers (BDMs) at the CIO level, and via direct relationship advises on solutions and position Microsoft capabilities to best meet the customer's needs. Drives market share (e.g., cloud, on premise).
- Provides Account thought leadership inclusive of information technology (IT), industry, and business strategy knowledge, and shares best practices internally while providing coaching to subsidiary resources. Leverages account thought leadership in partnership with account executives to set strategy, own accountability for outcomes, and lead extended teams. Provides technical guidance to internal teams to position technology while using customer landscape knowledge. Creates connections and feedback loops with Product and Engineering teams.
- Leverages a strong knowledge of Microsoft's product landscape, solutions, and strategy to address customer's needs. Proactively coordinates with internal and external network of industry experts (e.g., industry-solutions executives, industry-specific partners) to build strong knowledge of the industry and the competitive landscape. Drives and leverages leaders from the partner ecosystem to bridge process gaps. Leverages deep understanding of their customer to share knowledge with extended team and promote customer business perspectives. Partners with others (e.g., enterprise-channel managers) to provide sponsorship and increase impact.
- Acts as the voice of the customer, industry, and internal advocate by providing insights, feedback, and challenges from the customer to internal teams (e.g., product groups, engineers) across all levels of the organization. Drives action to ensure that internal teams understand and respond to insights. Articulates the business opportunity for Microsoft based on product gaps.
Technology Strategy Formulation
- Leads analysis of overall customer needs, outcomes, and blockers. Determines key stakeholders for driving execution on the largest and/or most complex accounts. Partners with global executives to lead overall strategy development (e.g., block identification, partner strategy) to identify and address gaps and drive end solutions. Leads the adoption of technologies by plotting the long-term vision of the customer's business strategy and driving action to bring to fruition.
- Leads and ensures execution of technology strategy and digital transformation by anticipating and/or leading the resolution of technical blockers that arise during strategy planning and implementation and driving technology adoption.
- Creates mid- and long-term (e.g., 12 or more months) technical and business roadmaps for highly prominent, challenging, and/or strategic accounts based on a deep understanding of business and technology priorities and industry landscape. Updates envisioning and articulates business and program changes in the roadmaps around new and groundbreaking capabilities. Ensures industry focus and alignment with Microsoft strategies.
- Leads the translation of the customer's business objectives and scenarios in conjunction with industry priority scenarios (IPS), Microsoft sales plays, and solution areas to develop effective Technology Architecture. Ensures that developed architecture influences cloud journey to position all Microsoft clouds and drive consumption, usage, and a higher share of customer potential and propensity (CPP).
Technology Sales: Demand Generation and Orchestration
- Develops and drives opportunities based on industry best practices, presents opportunities to the customer, and creates demand. Develops a plan, within a broader strategy, to identify and qualify a set number of opportunities for product sales, solutions sales, or consumption. Leverages partners and multiple channels (e.g., social media) to create demand.
- Lead industry and digital transformation acceleration (IDTA) with the extended account team, customer and partner to deliver the outcomes for the customer through joint envisioning, as a vehicle for industry prioritized scenarios (IPSs), sales plays, and solution areas. Increases the number of successful engagements over time, managing engagement pipeline with extended team to maintain velocity, and unblocking issues. Coaches peers (often as a mentor across a region or country) on how to create and maintain an opportunity initiation and how to map Microsoft priorities to opportunities. Defines the blueprint for opportunity initiation, and sets and shares standards and best practices for others to follow.
Differentiated Value Proposition
- Leads digital transformation for assigned accounts to drive business outcomes and create business value for customers by providing guidance and challenging customer thinking with innovative ideas that showcase the need for change and new strategic direction, and proactively involves corporate and cross-industry resources to drive customer transformation. Ensures line-of-business wins are captured (e.g., customer write-ups) as reference for scale.
- Partners with a line-of-business leader or senior executive within a large-scale or high-impact customer organization to articulate how complex or high-risk Microsoft technology/services will meet future business needs better than the competition and will enable the achievement of long-term growth and success. Provides an outside-in view around existing and emerging compete or other solutions that are also a requirement for the customer.
Mapping and Account Planning
- Helps customer technical specialists build the message to sell Microsoft offerings to other parts of their business or end users. Creates stakeholder maps for accounts, determines, and orchestrates a coverage plan, and builds out an execution framework.
- Builds the bridge between customer business requirements and technology. Maps technical customer requirements and business scenarios to Microsoft technology platforms. Recognizes how technology platforms are evolving and orchestrates resources to deliver platforms that will ensure successful technology adoptions.
- Orchestrates internal teams, local partners, global system integrators (GSIs), and consulting firms to ensure sufficient technical resources for demand generation, when appropriate.
- Establishes best practices and standards around account planning for budgeting, quota attainment, consumption goals, and customer consumption gaps to inform quarterly and fiscal objectives. Coordinates highly complex extended account teams (e.g., spanning complex technologies, geographies, functions) and drives forecasting and tracking of the business. Owns the technical portion of the account plans and leads the account plan delivery for large, critical, and/or strategic accounts.
Education and Thought Leadership
- Leads customer technology engagement by engaging and influencing technical resources of customer, partner and Microsoft towards customer's digital transformation (DT). Delivers regular (e.g., quarterly, monthly) industry/technology briefings to customer technology senior decision-makers technical teams.
- Uses existing and new readiness resources and demonstrates expertise in creating enablement plans for large and high-stakes customers, and all-up Microsoft business. Drives innovations to help customers meet capacity and capability goals, maximize reach, and impact and drive long-term engagement and thought leadership on the Microsoft platform, and influences large customers to see and adopt the strategic value. Drives customer skilling initiatives and execution.
required/minimum qualifications
- bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, engineering, or related field and 6+ years technical consulting, technical consultative selling, business consulting, practice building, or related technical/sales experience
- or equivalent experience.
6+ years experience in digital transformation, or using technology to drive customer business outcomes.
Job Details
Employment Types:
Full time
Industry:
IT / Computers – Software
Function:
Product Management / Product Development / UX , Sales – Engineering / Technical / IT , Sales / Business Development
Roles:
UX Content Strategist