Senior Presales Consultant - Johannesburg, South Africa - IFS

Description

At IFS, as a Senior Presales Consultant, you will collaborate with account teams, prospects and existing customers to qualify and scope requirements, with a view to helping them understand how IFS ERP, EAM and Service Management Solutions will deliver positive outcomes for their organization.

South Africa resident preferred.

You will need to be comfortable having close dialogue with external stakeholders, including C-level, technical management, and architectural teams to position IFS as the partner of choice for the adoption and enablement of IFS solutions in our core industry verticals. Often, you will act as the lead interface between our customer and local & offshore delivery teams.

Our customers are typically mid to large enterprises covering six key verticals; Aerospace & Defense, Energy/Utilities & Resources, Manufacturing, Engineering/Construction & Infrastructure, Services and Telecommunication. As such, this role is required to have knowledge in some of these industries to act as a trusted advisor and key technology ambassador for our customers in positioning our key solutions.

As this is a customer facing role focused on providing complex solutions, you need to be comfortable working in a multi-faceted role that will include requirements gathering, solution configuration, delivering both executive & detailed solution presentations, acting as a solution evangelist at conferences, trade shows and the like. You will be comfortable talking to subjects such as "The Art of The Possible" when faced with new customer challenges.

Ideally you have extensive experience in presales, consulting or solution design with other ERP or Asset Management solutions. Alternatively, experience with aligned solutions in either of the six key industries mentioned above will be highly regarded.

Experienced engaging in long and complex sales cycles both directly with end customer and via partners or resellers

Key Responsibilities

• In this role, you will be a strong voice for our customers, bringing technical, industry and business acumen to the forefront to meet our customer's needs
• Establish a deep understanding of our customers' business and technical needs
• Create a "trusted technical advisor" relationship with our customer's technologists and internal technical teammates
• Develop solution architecture framework to support solution selling on an enterprise level. Help to provide vision, define system and application architecture, problem anticipation and problem-solving ability across the landscape
• Lead change across large platforms / functional areas using technology solutions
• Provide software / hardware technical architecture expertise to ensure proper solution design
• Interface with all Presales Solutions Architects globally (and build a community) to train, mentor, guide through new solution architecture framework.
• Provide coverage for key customer-facing events, particularly C-level discussions.
• Build link to provocative selling model to ensure architecture views are properly integrated.
• Shape, drive and be held accountable for delivering significant strategic initiatives across broad scope/platform(s) in liaison with key stakeholders.

• Background in presales consulting, with 5 years+ of experience with software presales
• A strong understanding of ERP and/or EAM.
• Interpersonal skills, including creativity and curiosity with ability to effectively communicate and influence solution direction to both technical and non-technical audiences alike across all organizational levels.
• Ability to deliver compelling product demonstrations.
• Bachelor's Degree in business, science, engineering, technology or related discipline or equivalent work experience.
• Demonstrated problem solving and creative skills, ability to exercise sound judgment and make decisions based on market and customer trends – go beyond the status quo.
• Resilient, proactive, and inquisitive by nature
• Must be willing to travel (approximately 50% or more)
• Fluency in English essential