Overview
Nexcess is building a unified implementation organization to own the customer journey from signed deal through successful go-live across all three business units.
We have implementation and migration resources in place today, but the current model is fragmented, inconsistent, and difficult to measure. The quality and duration of an implementation can vary significantly depending on who owns the project, and our current metrics do not provide a reliable view of how long it actually takes customers to reach value.
The Senior Director of Implementations will inherit the existing implementation and migration teams with an explicit mandate to dismantle the current structure and rebuild it as a single, scalable organization serving all three business units.
This leader will own the full post-sale implementation journey, including migrations, and establish a common implementation standard with distinct delivery motions underneath it. They will determine the appropriate balance between human-led implementation and self-service based on delivery economics, customer complexity, and time-to-value.
This is both an operational and transformational leadership role. The successful candidate will build the organization, establish reliable measurement, implement the tooling and processes required to scale, and create a foundation that can ultimately support a professional services revenue stream.
Responsibilities
- Own the full post-sale journey from signed deal through successful customer go-live, including customer migrations.
- Rebuild the existing implementation and migration teams into a single organization serving all three business units.
- Establish one shared implementation methodology, operating standard, and set of quality expectations across the organization, with distinct delivery motions based on customer and product requirements.
- Assess the existing team structure and redesign organizational structure, roles, responsibilities, staffing levels, and reporting lines as needed.
- Build and execute a hiring, leveling, and career development strategy for the implementation organization.
- Establish reliable measurement and reporting for implementation performance, recognizing that current data and metrics are not sufficiently reliable to inherit.
- Define and own key performance indicators including time-to-value, migration success rate, implementation duration, and first-90-day churn.
- Establish trustworthy baseline metrics within the first 90 days and create an ongoing operating cadence around implementation performance.
- Select, implement, and manage the tooling stack required to operate the function at scale, including PSA, project management, ticketing, and related systems.
- Define the appropriate threshold between human-led implementation and self-service based on delivery economics, customer complexity, product requirements, and expected customer outcomes.
- Develop standardized processes for scoping, project kickoff, implementation, migration, escalation, and go-live.
- Design a fast, customer-friendly sign-off process for complex or high-risk deals, allowing the business to move quickly while identifying situations where implementation risk is genuinely unacceptable.
- Partner closely with Sales, Solutions Architecture, Product, Engineering, Customer Success, and Support to ensure commitments made during the sales process can be delivered successfully.
- Define automation requirements and work with Engineering to prioritize and deliver the automation needed to reduce implementation effort and improve scalability.
- Influence and drive outcomes through teams outside of direct management, particularly Engineering, Product, and other shared functions.
- Identify opportunities to reduce implementation costs, improve customer time-to-value, and increase the percentage of implementations that can be delivered through standardized or self-service motions.
- Establish a consistent executive-level view of implementation capacity, pipeline, delivery risk, customer outcomes, and organizational performance.
- Develop the business case for evolving implementations from a primarily cost-center function into a professional services revenue stream where the economics and customer value support it.
- Establish the operating model, pricing considerations, service definitions, and delivery economics necessary to evaluate and potentially build a professional services offering.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
What Success Looks Like
- A single, unified implementation organization operates consistently across all three business units.
- Implementation quality is consistent regardless of which team or individual owns the project.
- Reliable data exists for implementation duration, time-to-value, migration success, and first-90-day churn.
- Time-to-value and implementation efficiency improve without sacrificing customer outcomes.
- The organization has a clear structure, appropriate staffing levels, defined career paths, and a scalable hiring plan.
- A standardized implementation methodology and operating cadence is adopted across the organization.
- The tooling stack provides reliable visibility into project status, capacity, risk, and performance.
- Clear criteria exist for when customers receive human-led implementation versus a self-service experience.
- Complex deals have a fast, well-defined sign-off process that protects the business without unnecessarily slowing sales.
- Engineering and other shared teams are effectively engaged in building automation and capabilities defined by the implementation organization.
- Implementation costs become increasingly predictable and scalable.
- A credible business case exists for generating professional services revenue from implementation capabilities where appropriate.
- First-90-day customer outcomes improve, including a reduction in early-life churn.
Required Qualifications
- Significant leadership experience building, scaling, or rebuilding a professional services, implementation, or migration organization.
- Experience in hosting, cloud infrastructure, B2B SaaS, or a closely related technology environment.
- Demonstrated experience leading implementation or professional services delivery for mid-market and enterprise customers.
- Experience managing organizational transformation, including redesigning teams, processes, operating models, and delivery methodologies.
- Strong understanding of implementation economics, capacity planning, project delivery, and customer time-to-value.
- Experience establishing operational metrics and building reliable reporting in an environment where existing data may be incomplete or unreliable.
- Strong commercial judgment and the ability to understand the economics of implementation and professional services.
- Experience selecting or implementing PSA, project management, ticketing, or similar operational tooling.
- Strong cross-functional leadership skills, with the ability to drive outcomes through teams and leaders outside of their direct organization.
- Comfortable working closely with Sales and Solutions teams to assess implementation complexity and establish appropriate deal sign-off processes.
- Strong executive presence and communication skills, with the ability to influence senior leaders across Sales, Product, Engineering, and Services.
- Demonstrated ability to balance customer experience, delivery quality, operational efficiency, and commercial outcomes.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience transitioning an implementation or professional services organization from a cost center toward a revenue-generating model.
- Experience designing self-service versus human-led delivery models.
- Experience leading migrations in cloud, hosting, infrastructure, or SaaS environments.
- Experience implementing automation or product-led improvements to reduce manual implementation effort.
- Experience supporting multiple business units, product lines, or delivery motions within a single services organization.
- Experience with professional services automation (PSA) platforms and project management systems.
- Experience operating in a PE-backed, acquisitive, or multi-brand technology environment.
Work Environment
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an individual to successfully perform the essential duties of the job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential duties.
- While performing the essential duties of the job, the individual is regularly required to speak and hear.
- While performing the essential duties of the job, the individual is regularly required to use hands for keyboarding, gross manipulation, and fine manipulation.
- Works at a desk and computer screen for extended periods of time.
- Works in a traditional climate controlled office environment or from home.
- Works in a highly stressful environment dealing with a wide variety of challenges, deadlines and diverse employee population.
Disclaimer
This job description is only a summary of the typical functions of the position. It is not intended to be an exhaustive or comprehensive list of all job responsibilities, tasks, or duties. Additional duties and tasks may be assigned as part of the job function. Nexcess reserves the right to modify, interpret, or apply this job description in a way that best supports the organizational needs. The job description in no way creates or implies an employment contract. The employment contract remains “at will”.
Equal Employment Opportunity Policy: Nexcess is committed to offering equal employment opportunity without regard to age, color, disability, gender, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, military status, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.
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