VP - Operations - Professional Services

Professional Services Practice: The 300+ people strong Professional Services (PS) practice at services clients across three sub-segments - 1) Management and strategy consulting firms 2) Accounting and Advisory firms and 3) Law firms. The team provides a variety of knowledge intensive solutions to clients spread across the globe. The operations VP for the PS group will be responsible for managing global operations and delivery for the three sub-segments within PS and will play a key role in increasing the market penetration in the Professional Services Business Unit.

In addition to having direct oversight and accountability of all operations, the role will work closely with the V sales team to accelerate the sales and deployment of V’s PS solutions. Specifically, the key elements of the role include the following:

Roles and Responsibilities:

A) Client leadership:

a. Provide insightful and innovative knowledge process solutions to Professional Services organizations.

b. Help overcome intellectual bottlenecks in research and analysis projects.

c. Actively lead onsite client workshops with senior management to diagnose issues that lead to co-design of better solutions

B) Thought leadership

a. Be a brand ambassador - Build our market presence in the solution area by writing articles, speaking at relevant conferences and forums etc.

b. Understand the common themes of pain-points across firms, and help devise new EVS solutions and products around the knowledge processes in the PS vertical.

c. Understand existing competing value propositions and products in the market, and develop products superior in customer value to our clients, combining research, analytics and technology.

C) Execution leadership:

a. Be responsible for the quality of delivery from the team, and proactively identify weak spots, take corrective measures, and provide feedback and coaching as necessary.

b. Ensure that the team is highly productive and is run at desired utilization levels, maintaining the overall cost/revenue ratio within budget. Alert and make corrective actions without delay in case utilization drops (including faster traction in the market, redeployment of professionals etc.

D) People leadership:

a. Lead and build the practice to a large global team of several hundred professionals in the next few years taking ownership of ~ 20% growth per annum.

b. Solve escalations related to people matters in a fair and transparent manner, upholding V values of meritocracy, integrity and obligation to dissent.

E) Collaboration leadership:

a. Collaborate and build teams with global operations centers to ensure that the practice is truly global in nature, including sufficient onsite presence in the client markets.

b. Work closely and collaboratively with our sales professionals (based in client markets) to build strong momentum on engagements in these verticals. Should travel to global client locations frequently to support the sales processes.

c. Engage pro-actively with other teams (e.g. industry verticals, horizontals such as data analytics etc.) at V to sharpen the potential synergy in our solutions effectively.

Skill-set required:

1. Strong leadership skills are a must. The person should be a self-starter and proactively grow this practice at V.

2. Good understanding of the professional services landscape.

3. Strong technical and analytical skills.

4. Excellent written and verbal communication.

5. Strong interpersonal and people skills are a must in this role. The person will be required to convince senior personnel in different departments, and make board-level presentations. Also, the person should have the ability to manage large teams of professionals, handling people issues in a sensitive and fair manner.

6. Should have demonstrated independent thinking and leadership abilities in several instances in his career.

Education and experience:

Ideal education background shall be a person with a dual degree; with a graduation in commerce or engineering; followed by masters in business education.

Should have 14+ years of relevant experience (industry verticals, preferably consulting), of which at least 6-8 years should have been spent in a consulting organization with a good exposure to the knowledge function directly or indirectly.

Contact - vinay@empowerits.com