Regional Practice Lead, CX (Customer Experience) + DP&S (Digital Products & Services), Avanade X Canada

Short for Avanade Experiences, we have delivered the most intelligent, engaging, industry-leading, award-winning experiences on the Microsoft ecosystem over the last 20+ years.

As human expectations and technology evolve, we see incredible opportunities for the convergence of customer experience, digital products and services and workplace experience—where imagination is the only limit!

Avanade X is our way to bring unconventional thinking, exceptional creativity, and our unparalleled engineering heritage to think big and make it real. Our vision of the future goes far beyond concepts to enable and deliver the impact our clients, their people, customers, and needs of their communities.

We support each other with great work to push boundaries and connect technology with what matters to people first. Always thinking of what is best for our clients. If you feel this is a great fit, we would love to talk.

About the role

The Canada Region Practice Lead is the guiding force for the Avanade X Customer Experience (CX) and Digital Products and Services (DP&S) business in Canada. This includes ownership of the high sales and revenue growth of the practices, developing and executing the regional practice-led strategy, and building the reputation of the practices in our region. You build a diverse, inclusive, exceptional delivery team focusing on selling and delivering customer experience and product design / execution for B2C, B2B, and B2B2C brands looking to transform their digital landscape.

You help identify the need to increase competitiveness, bring new products and solutions to the market, acquire new customers, enable growth through lead generation and e-commerce sales, and re-platform/optimize their marketing technology stack. Collaborating with regional partners including targeted account teams, client account leaders, sellers, industry leaders, offering leaders, and the Advisory team, you arrive at strategic solutions not always apparent. You bring your experience in understanding the business strategy of a brand to identify pain points and challenges in this space.

Responsibilities

• Manage towards and achieve sales, revenue, and operational targets
• Identify potential clients—new and existing withing the Avanade client landscape, lead client meetings and pitches, create win-themes and narratives that drive pitch teams, work with Solution Architects to help shape solutions and proposals
• Develop plans for hiring and upskilling delivery talent
• Have a working/business understanding of technologies and solutions from Microsoft and relevant partners (Adobe, Sitecore) that can be used to deliver client solutions
• Develop marketing, personalization, sales enablement, and transformational strategies for CX landscapes spanning web, app, portal, ecommerce, lead generation touchpoints, and owned social experiences and technology
• Build relationships with Avanade field, Microsoft, Accenture, and Partners (Adobe and Sitecore) to drive growth
• Ensure that the CX and DP&S teams work in collaboration with all other business functions within and outside of the Region, consistently delivering an exceptional, unified end-to-end customer experience across stages, channels, and touchpoints in the customer journey
• Build and manage a diverse and inclusive team of digital specialists with deep domain expertise
• Encourage growth mindset, problem-solving, strategic thinking, and customer-orientation among the team
• Advocate for changes in other departments’ ways of working and cross functionally collaborate with teams to implement a change
• With your Regional Client Services Leader, measure, and track delivery ROI (RETURN ON INVESTMENT) on identified transformation opportunities. Drive continuous process improvement culture
• Interact at executive/senior management level, proactively advocating for solutions and assisting with the customer escalation process
• Some travel required

Applied Methodologies & Development

• Engage our regional teams to spread awareness and interest in enabling DP&S methods, for example some (but not limited to) are:
  • Experience Engineering Labs - rapid experimentation and validation of ideas at all stages of product development to ensure a hyper focus on achieving the desired client intents, beyond just the features we are asked to build.
  • Feature Prioritization - models that empower our teams to align what is being built to the true needs and intents of our clients.
  • Service Design – approach that understands that our client’s business will change and what we build must model in evolution as part of the service we create
  • Intelligent Applications – ensure the products we leverage the data and interactions discovered to improve the product experience over time using advanced technologies such as AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning

Client Engagement

• Engage directly with our client services teams to provide the expertise and talent necessary to pitch our engagement to clients
• Collaborate with client leadership to understand the most pressing challenges and opportunities our clients face, use this inform teams on strategies and approaches for experience led services and their relevant application to their client
• Inform client pursuit strategies, including qualification and investments
• Support, sponsor, and oversee key client delivery engagements to drive positive outcomes and long-term relationships

Industry Focus

• Engage with our regional industry peers and facilitate through your broader team ownership of industry vertical capabilities
• Partner with our team and leverage/create accelerators, visions, and proof points for industry specific services
• Align our capabilities and vision to key Industry pitches and go to market strategies in partnership with your go to market and client services colleagues

Talent Development

• Grow the team at pace with our business objectives
• Understand the market moving technologies and engage our broader talent communities to ensure we are scaling our skill to meet the vision we are selling
• Apply the larger Avanade Experiences vision in scaling our talent and reputation outside of our four walls and engaging our regional communities in supporting this scale and growth

What you bring to the team

• Bachelor’s degree or requisite agency, or consultancy experience
• 8 to 10 years consulting or agency experience in marketing technology, digital transformation, or customer experience strategy
• 5 to 7 years of experience working in a consultative or agency strategy role with user experience design, analytics, and web technology practices
• Working knowledge of Adobe and/or Sitecore technology including CMS (Content Management System), DAM (Digital Asset Management) (Digital Asset Management), ecommerce platforms
• Business and sales knowledge of Adobe and/or Google Analytics platform
• Business and sales knowledge of Dynamics365 Marketing enablement technologies and marketing automation platforms
• Strong leadership and presence; you project an expert level of knowledge and a high degree of creativity on how to use Microsoft and other technologies to deliver business value through the right experiences at the right time
• Ability to quickly earn the respect of sellers, partners, clients
• Deep industry knowledge covering one or more of our primary industries
• Trusted relationships with potential buyers in your region
• Experience in an environment with multi-country/cultural teams
• Ability to coach, motivate, grow, course-correct, and lead a team
• Demonstrated history of working with external clients at the senior level (Director, VP) across marketing, strategy, analytics, technology, and IT (Information Technology)
• Expert level written and verbal communication skills, including ability to comfortably present to the senior level of our clients (remote and public speaking)
• Self-starter and able to collaborate across a wide span of practice lines
• Ability to thrive and lead in a highly matrixed and geographically dispersed team environment on multiple priorities