Strategic Solutions Consultant - job 1 of 3

We are looking for dynamic, pre-sales talent with Software Development Life Cycle domain expertise to work with Applause’s Global High-Tech Strategic Sales team. This is a critical customer facing role that interprets and translates customer requirements (both explicit and perceived) into a compelling solution to enable our customers to release high quality digital products to market through partnership with Applause.

In this role, you will review customers' digital product software development lifecycle and conduct consultative discovery and analysis of the end-to-end processes. This includes working with various customer teams involved in the SDLC such as design, UX, product, engineering, QA, accessibility, payment operations, and data science.

It is critical to be effective in analyzing a customer’s current state to identify gaps and issues in the SDLC process to understand and diagnose problem areas that should be improved to deliver a high-quality digital product to market.

This role requires a highly credible, professional, and consultative expert able to support sales in a customer advisory capacity to effectively communicate with both business and technical stakeholders to share best practice, use cases and customer success stories related to testing, customer user feedback and AI data collection solutions.

The Solution Consultant should be able to proactively prescribe solutions with a strong fit to the customer’s requirements and pain points along with a detailed understanding of how to achieve business outcomes such as business objectives, measurable KPI’s and SDLC requirements for the customer’s desired future state.

It is also essential for the Solution Consultant to proactively create quantifiable business cases to support the recommended solutions. The Solution Consultant can effectively communicate with both technical and non-technical stakeholders across a diverse set of work groups in the SDLC.

Additional responsibilities include:

• Client-facing in the sales process, working with the strategic sales team to develop a winnable solution that underpins the customer value proposition and business case

• Own end-to-end responsibility for the solutioning of large, complex, deals. This includes:

• Provide senior level consulting to identify customer challenges and objectives including current state of SDLC, pain points, and inefficiencies

• Articulate and frame a client’s customer and business problems, and the mutual value of recommendations, initiatives, solutions and phases of a strategic roadmap

• Defining and gaining buy in for customer’s desired future state along with measurable outcomes

• Collaborating with internal Subject Matter Experts, to develop a winnable solution from Applause’s digital quality testing, customer user feedback and data collection solutions

• Developing high level implementation and delivery roadmaps as part of the overall solution

• Understanding business models such as managed solutions, time and material, body leasing, etc.

• Creating and advocating (in both verbal and written form) best practice and domain knowledge for product improvement solutions

• Developing compelling business cases for the proposed solutions and working with sales to successfully review with customer stakeholders to achieve buy in

• Developing and executing proof-of-concept approaches to validate proposed solutions

• Reviewing and validating data findings and solution value for Business Reviews with customer stakeholders

• Leading both customer and internal solutions-oriented sessions to capture and present value (business case, ROI, TCO)

QUALIFICATIONS

What you will need:

• 10 years + pre-sales consultancy experience providing solutions to support sales in delivering digital testing and product improvement solutions

• Experience working with high tech enterprise customers in diverse and highly complex environments

• Strong software development end to end process background

• Extensive knowledge of product design, product engineering, QA and UX

• Experience developing customized presentations and business cases to prove a solution's business value to C level customers

• Strong solution consulting to support solution sales methodology

• Exceptional storytelling, white-boarding, process mapping, presentation, and demonstration skills

• Strong leadership, credibility and influencing skills with customers

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills (detail-oriented)

• Ideally have worked for an ISV or Professional Services organization

Company Description

Applause leverages its worldwide community of on-demand digital testing professionals to create curated and vetted testing teams who provide our clients with a full suite of testing and feedback solutions. Our white glove approach seamlessly integrates with any SDLC process, enabling leading brands across all industries to increase development velocity and deliver high-quality digital experiences to their customers.

Applause is a place where everyone belongs and where we believe everyone deserves the exceptional. Since our founding, we have continued to celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment. We have a global workforce that, like our crowd, embraces diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and abilities. Our employees bring their true self to Applause. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, veteran status, genetic information, disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. If you are qualified to perform the essential functions of this job, but believe you require a reasonable accommodation to do so, please click here to complete an accommodation request. Please note Applause will only review requests for applications that have been submitted. We will review your qualifications and follow up with you regarding your request if your qualifications meet our current needs.

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