Digital Transformation Advisory Director - Manufacturing

Want to create value with digital and turn your ideas into human impact? So do we. 

There’s one in every group—the person who dreams big and has the motivation to bring their ideas to life, even as others might roll their eyes and prefer to play it safe. Are you that person? One who isn’t afraid to break the mould and who gets inspired by the power of digital to change organisations and ways of working? Because we are building teams of people like that to help our clients unlock the power they need now and own what’s next. 

At Avanade Advisory, we are breaking apart the traditional process of setting experiences, strategies and goals first, then finding technologies to achieve them. In the digital age, there’s no time for that linear process. We partner with clients to accelerate value from digital innovation by being bold, imaginative – and fast. We think big and deliver personally. We passionately challenge, inspire, and support our clients and each other. 

Want the agility and energy of a start-up, backed by the resources of Accenture, Microsoft and the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT Sloan School of Management? Here you will find a team of people who thrive on turning ideas and innovations into breakthrough results for leading organisations around the world. Ultimately, we’re not just making business better. We’re making life better for our clients, their customers, and our own employees. 

If that sounds like you, you sound good to us. Find your next opportunity at Avanade Advisory.

Our Industry Vision:

Aligned with Avanade’s Ambition 2025 strategy, Industry will be a critical focus where we bring relevance to business and technology solutions for the client. To enable this in our priority industries, we are developing an Industry network across all our capabilities.

The Industrial and Manufacturing Specialist role is essential in how we bring our industry-relevant advisory services and supporting network to life.

You will be responsible for a portfolio of clients, working alongside our Business Development teams, our Technology Solution Areas and Delivery colleagues to grow Avanade’s footprint by bringing industry relevance and insights to those clients. Thereby developing engagements across the full digital transformation landscape leading to chargeable work. This is very much a client facing hands-on role from proposition through to delivery.

About you 

As someone who has circa 10 years’ experience within Industrial and Manufacturing sector, you are considered an expert and advocate by your peers and colleagues, and alongside this you are passionate about digital. It’s role across business, and the potential it can have when married to your industry knowledge and experience to drive opportunities that others might miss. Building on your industry expertise, you use your interpersonal skills to become the trusted adviser with clients while working with other business development & sales individuals to grow our pipeline.

About the Job 

You will be the industry expert tasked with bringing your knowledge of both industry and digital to bring a continual change strategy to bear, creating an environment where we can flourish and deliver exceptional and game-changing work into the marketplace. You will be the ‘go-to’ within your industry sector and recognised as this by both our clients and our internal business helping to deliver change and build our pipeline and sales across Advisory.

You will have a wealth of knowledge within your industry sector married with consulting skills, strategy development and execution and you’ll be opening our client’s & colleagues’ eyes to the opportunities where digital and industry meet. You’re an authority within your space, assessing needs, no matter how they’re expressed, and inspiring people with the assistance of your Advisory peers to enable growth of the opportunity driving true innovation within the space.

In the role, you will: 

Business Development and Delivery:

• Build winning digital propositions for targeted clients (especially direct and whitespace) that demonstrate relevance, insights and expertise in the industry.
• Drive clients’ outcomes and develop success stories on the back of engagements

• Deliver inside strategic customers to become a customer advisor

• Lead, support and deliver Advisory engagements growing trust as well as enduring relationships with clients
• Engage with regional operations teams, capability leads to ensure the right resources are engaged in opportunities.

Network and Team Development:

• Partner with network and talent communities to maintain and identify capabilities needed for Industry led solutions.
• Support the development of talent and skills through Avanade ecosystem through but not limited to mentoring, awareness training.

Offering Strategy:

• Collaborate with the Avanade ecosystem team to develop and refine the Industry Offerings through insights as well as drawing on successful client engagements.
• Develop specific assets and go to market content within the target industry subsector <e.g. Industrial and Manufacturing>

Additional Information.

Work with clients across their business and operational functions to identify their business problems and develop the right approach and strategy around all aspects of business & industry advisory based on your specific industry knowledge, experience and expertise.

Plan and lead client/account diagnosis around the opportunity leveraging your insight and first-hand industry experience to help identify challenges and opportunities and associated offerings within it.

Collaborate and partner with other industry practitioners to identify and understand trends, patterns and themes that lead to opportunities for digital both within your specialist industry and also cross-industry.

Collaborate with other industry practitioners to identify trends and themes that contribute to the thought leadership, the design of innovative advisory services and the development of client opportunities. Further accelerating Avanade’s position and reputation in the market.

Your skills 

You've got demonstrable skills in growing client intimacy directly and in business development to become a trusted advisor to a client. You have seniority and knowledge on how to develop business within a client portfolio (expanding our existing footprint + whitespace). You have experience in sales; pre-sales or consulting within a particular market sector. You have an exceptional understanding of different strategies and models, mixed with strong business acumen and a proven track-record of building and growing innovative high-performing teams.

You have at least 10 years of experience industry with some exposure to consulting with a strong focus on digital in association to technology implementation / transformation / strategy, and at least four years in a senior role. You use your strong industry expertise and business acumen to inspire and develop ideas, solutions and outcomes.

Ideally, your experience includes: 

-  10 years’ experience in industry and understanding of the business drivers and requirements of the industry supported with a view on transformation/change within it

-  Senior relationships and projects including strategy, digital and innovation within industry across the lifecycle from innovation to industrialisation

-  Good understanding of the realities of driving digital within your industry sector and the challenges faced in gaining benefit from it including associated investment challenges to balance the ideal outcomes aligned to commercial strategies

-  Good ability to translate business requirements and work with solution architects to translate into plausible technical solutions

-  Knowledge and opinions of the benefits and challenges organisations face on their journey to become future ready from a digital perspective and ideally have delivered some thought leadership in this space

-  Good understanding of the different methodologies and delivery approaches and their relationship to delivering digital innovation through continuous change models including the role of insight in managing and evolving experience strategies as part of the wider digital journey

-  Good interpersonal skills with the ability to work with clients to establish requirements in non-technical language

-  Explaining complex solutions and concepts in a non-technical language