Senior Strategy Manager (SSG)

Job Description

Department: Customer Primacy

External Job Title: Subscribed Strategy Group (SSG), Senior Strategist

For the last 100 years, companies have operated primarily under a product-centric business model, where the goal was to make, ship, and sell more units. Today, there’s a demand to have products and services delivered on a continual, subscription basis; to upgrade and access new innovations and features constantly. This is the end of ownership and it changes everything. Our vision is “The World Subscribed” where one day every company will be a part of the Subscription Economy® (a phrase coined by our CEO, Tien Tzuo).

Zuora’s leading, cloud-based software solution automates all subscription order-to-revenue operations in real-time for any business. Companies in any industry can launch new businesses, shift products to subscription, implement new pay-as-you-go pricing and packaging models, gain new insights into subscriber behavior, and disrupt market segments to gain competitive advantage.

Our growth story is only just beginning and our Subscribed Strategy Group (SSG) is pivotal in sustaining our rapid growth across the globe. We are looking for a relationship focused, outcome-oriented leaders who can engage and lead the C-Suite at our customers and prospect through their Subscription Economy journey.

The challenge

The Subscription Strategy Group (SSG) works with many of the world's top companies to recommend transformational strategies to launch subscription services and automate their order-to-revenue operations. Our engagements employ Zuora's industry leading research, value modeling, and other techniques to deliver high-impact recommendations. Today, Zuora is at the forefront of enabling our customers' digital transformation and subscription led-business models. This has fueled the growth of the Subscription Economy.

As an SSG Strategist, you will be a trusted advisor to our largest and most strategic prospect and customers, assisting them to assess their direction, capabilities and needs and help them accelerate their growth with subscription transformations. You will be responsible for building consensus with your the most successful software, hardware, media, telecom and IOT companies and act as a catalyst for action and work closely with our existing customers to iterate and evolve their subscription strategy for next level success. You will partner closely with the Sales team to showcase the services available from SSG and then lead these customer engagements. You will work closely with the Subscribe Institute in best practice and knowledge sharing to both dispense industry leading practices and aggregate new finding from your engagements. Finally, you will be creating and evolving a set of industry leading tools that will improve the value that can be provided by each of the SSG engagements.

Join us and make shift happen!

What you’ll do & achieve:

• Facilitate client working sessions ranging from executive and board level meetings to large group presentations and requirements gathering exercises.
• Deliver Subscription Strategy Assessments to the C-Suite and leaders in our prospect and customers and build a network of those executives and leaders
• Sell the value of and gain the commitment to Subscription Strategy engagements, and lead those engagement through in depth executive interview, company surveys/assessments, industry research, facilitated client working sessions, and conference room pilots
• Manage and coach teams and individuals to deliver complex engagements.
• Develop and evolve reusable tools to make the assessment and engagement process more efficient and responds to ongoing changes in customer requirements and market conditions
• Engage cross functional support to address customer needs including Sales, Sales Engineering, Operations, Product, and Engineering, and effectively escalate critical path need
• Build and leverage a partner network to ensure any key customer needs that are out of scope of Zuora’s experience/offerings but are still required for success
• Advocate your customers’ engagements and maintain customer satisfaction by ensuring timely resolution any customer service related issues
• Contribute to industry leading perspectives on subscription best practices, business model transformation, subscription macro-economic trends, challenges, etc.
• Accurately report project status and effectiveness (weekly) and document key finding from all engagements

What you’ll need to be successful:

• Experience leading engagements in a top strategic or management consulting firm
• BA/BS in Business, Accounting, Finance, Technology or related discipline
• MBA or equivalent advanced degree preferred
• 8+ years of experience with at least 2 years of recent client-facing experience in a professional services organization. Additional years of experience may include highly relevant industry experience in Strategic Planning and Delivery, Operations, Finance, or Accounting.
• Demonstrated track record helping companies undergo major transformations, including:
• Digital Transformations
• Business Model Transformation
• Product to service Transformation
• Expertise in some or all of the following:
• End-to-end Business and Finance Transformation across people, process, technology, and data
• Developing and using complex financial models (forecasting, build versus buy, ROI assessment, price optimization, etc.)
• Development of Business Cases and Strategic Roadmaps
• Program Management, Project Implementation, and Change Management
• Operating Model and Organizational Assessment, Design, and Implementation
• Prior experience with and ability to to be provocative and compelling with C-Suite executives - high emotional intelligence to read the room
• Strong executive presence and communication skills, with ability to engage and inspire senior executives.
• Outstanding problem solving and analytical skills including talent for conducting research, analyzing data, developing hypotheses, and synthesizing recommendations
• High degree of intellectual curiosity and ability to absorb new concepts quickly.
• Comfortable working with ambiguity
• High integrity with an ability to speak convincingly to both internal and external leaders to do the right thing for long term customer success
• Passion for building long lasting customer relationships and working cross-functionally within a diverse team to deliver outstanding results
• Ability to align technology solutions to complex, multi-stakeholder business problems and utilize strategic thinking skills to solve customer problems
• Technologically adept and business acumen focused with outstanding communication both written and oral, negotiation and presentation skills
• Ability to work individually and on a collaborative team in a fast paced and continuously evolving environment
• Strong computer skills including the G-Suite, Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) and Salesforce is a plus
• Willingness to travel at least 50% of the time.
• Preferred Qualifications:
• Master of Business Administration (may substitute for business-related undergraduate degree)
• Experience executing complex transformations
• Progressive responsibility in managing client relationships and achievement against business development goals

About Zuora

Zuora provides the leading cloud-based subscription management platform that functions as a system of record for subscription businesses across all industries. Powering the Subscription Economy®, the Zuora platform was architected specifically for dynamic, recurring subscription business models and acts as an intelligent subscription management hub that automates and orchestrates the entire subscription order-to-cash process, including billing and revenue recognition.

At Zuora, every employee is the CEO of their career and leading our mission are over 1,200 passionate and innovative ZEOs who value freedom, responsibility and accountability in equal measure because they have the capacity to make shift happen. Our culture isn’t an empty branding effort – our ZEOs love working here and it shows in our rating on Glassdoor . We take it very seriously. We encourage our employees to be curious, creative, and stay focused on our shared mission of enabling our customers to be successful.

Zuora serves more than 1,000 companies around the world, including Box, Komatsu, Rogers, Schneider Electric, Xplornet and Zendesk. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Zuora also operates offices in Atlanta, Boston, Frisco, Denver, San Francisco, London, Paris, Beijing, Sydney, Chennai and Tokyo.

At Zuora, different perspectives, experiences and contributions matter. Everyone counts. Zuora is proud to be an equal opportunity employer committed to creating an inclusive environment for all.

To learn more visit www.zuora.com