Head of Client Operations

Job Title: Head of Delivery and Client Operations - APAC

Location:  Mumbai, India (Remote)

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE ROLE: 

The rapid expansion of Oliver and its subsidiaries has led to several new demands on its delivery capabilities.  These include:

1. Effectively managing the significantly increased average size and complexity of engagements.
2. Completing the evolution from a predominantly retained model to engagements with more complicated commercial arrangements including ad hoc project work, high volume asset development, follow the sun production and even pay for performance.
3. Accelerating the diffusion of offshore and automation into our client solutions as the competition and appetite for increased efficiency accelerates in the marketing services industry and as our engagements begin to resemble those of traditional digital agencies.
4. Efficiently enabling the continued expansion into new countries with unique laws, regulations and customs.
5. Reducing the silos that inevitably emerge as a result of Oliver’s highly successful model of building bespoke solutions for each client or studio, increasing the shared support services from the center and aligning the ways of working between the account to enable mobility of our staff between accounts, mobility of work between studios and countries for improved load balancing and minimizing wasteful reinvention.

Over the past two years, we have managed to keep up with demand while significantly improving our Project Margin, Gross Profit (GP) and Account Health Scores.  However, the underlying challenges persist, headwinds are increasing and demand is accelerating.  To hold onto the gains we’ve made and achieve future improvement needed towards our strategic targets for these KPIs, some new thinking, a focused effort and a step-function evolution of the region’s underlying Delivery and embedded client operations capabilities is required.  This itself requires the creation of a new senior leadership role to chart a course through these challenges and drive this effort forward. 

WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING: (Role Responsibilities): 

At the highest level, the Head of Delivery and Client Operations is responsible for the timely and accurate estimation and costing of the effort, technology and materials involved in meeting client requirements and then overseeing the delivery of that work according to the contractual timelines, budgets and quality specifications for all Oliver projects globally.  This requires both a focus on diligent day-to-day delivery management as well as a focus on longer term strategic operational efficiency of our accounts.  As such, the Head of Delivery and Client Operations will be measured on the broad set of key KPIs listed below.

To achieve this, the Head of Delivery and Client Operations will be expected to build, maintain and evolve a world class Delivery Discipline for Oliver across the region. 

Specific Accountabilities and Goals include:

1. Introduce leading-edge methods, structures and best practices such as use of Traceability Matrices to formally track contractual obligations, client acceptance, variations, etc., client briefing improvements and PMs aware of and managing margin hiring experienced PMs with digital agency experience.
2. Ownership of the Account Review, Account Health Assessment and Client Sat Survey processes.
3. Improve Risk Management, Commercial Management and Stakeholder Management across entire Discipline.
4. Expand Delivery Mentoring Program.
5. Increase Delivery agility to accommodate new situations.
6. Support the “ReImplementation” of certain accounts.
7. Bring much needed “digital agency think” to our increasing portfolio of complex and tech-dependent builds.
8. Minimizing erosion between Sold At and Delivered At Project and Account Margin.
9. Changing the Oliver culture to routinely use Change Orders / Variations when scope or schedule changes are requested by clients
10. Maintenance and continuous improvement of the New Market Introduction process.
11. Maintenance and continuous improvement of the weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual project and account cost forecasting (Bank and Stretch)
12. Partner with the Capacity Management team towards load balancing the accounts, ensuring a variable workforce and meeting our Billable Utilization targets by ensuring all Delivery Discipline members are sufficiently billable and by increasing oversight of time sheet data for other Disciplines.
13. Partner with the Commercial Finance team towards designing solutions and determining pricing to counter “Rate Card Gravity" and continuously bolster Sold At Project and Account Margins.
14. Help diffuse new technology into the organization and client solutions.
15. Help keep our Margin Dilutive Freelancer spend to a minimum.
16. Measures of Success (Values may change over time):

• Aggregate Project Margin (PM) above 55%
• Aggregate Gross Profit (GP) above 50%
• Aggregate Account Health Score above 92%
• Aggregate Net Promoter Score (NPS) above 45 and Client Sat Score (CSAT) above 90
• 95% Client Retention

WHAT YOU WILL NEED TO BE GREAT IN THIS ROLE (Required Exp, Soft & hard skills):

Required Experience, Knowledge and Skills

• A minimum of 15 years in a delivery capacity.
• 10+ years in marketing services.
• 10+ years interfacing directly with clients.
• 10+ years working in a regional capacity across markets, cultures and time-zones.
• 5+ years managing through structural and/or significant process changes.
• A demonstrated history of being both process driven and result focused.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement skills with the ability to proactively organise and influence stakeholders and build strong and effective working relationships.
• Highly proficient in client commercial management.
• Curious and interested in technology and thinks first about how technology can be at the heart of client solutions.
• Business development experience a plus.

Personal Attributes

• Self-motivated, driven, proactive, helpful, and enthusiastic team player.
• Ability to think differently and come up with come up with solutions to unique problems.
• Collaborative team player, open minded and willing to learn and evolve.
• Engaging communicator and ability to build relationships with all levels within and outside the business.
• The ability to organise and prioritise workloads to maximise productivity.
• Experience and desire to publish or speak publicly would be advantageous.