Strategic Advisor (m/f/x) Apptio in Frankfurt, Germany

Introduction

At IBM, our Project Managers excel by leading and coordinating a project team’s overall performance, scope, cost, and deliverables. Our clients rely on timely and efficient status reports, and as Project Manager, you will drive the charge with project direction, metric definition, and performance management. If you are ready to help our clients and project teams succeed, we would love to meet you!

Your Role and Responsibilities

This position is an integral role at Apptio impacting the long-term success of the customer relationship. By developing and maintaining a high level of customer engagement, the Strategy Advisor will partner with Account Management & Customer Success to ensure every customer realizes full value from their investment with Apptio.

With deep multi-domain expertise and an understanding of customer challenges and Technology Business Management (TBM) best practices, Strategy Advisors leverage their strategic leadership and operational capabilities to help customers develop their TBM objectives while driving operational excellence and program governance. Strategy Advisors are accountable for driving customer adoption and success across a portfolio of customers by engaging broadly across the organizations, from C-Level executives through operational staff, focusing in particular on those in the TBM Office.

Strategy Advisors are customer-directed specialists solely focused on creating wildly successful customers through large scale programs involving change management, innovation and developing processes and capabilities that make TBM internally sustainable. Strategy Advisors will help to accelerate and mature practices related to TBM which encompasses Business and IT Strategy, IT Operational Management, and IT Financial Performance Management.

You bring:

Leadership & Influence

• Strong self-starter with the ability to build a network within Apptio and your assigned portfolio of customers

• Demonstrate ability to communicate, present and influence credibly and effectively at all levels of a customer’s technology organization

• Motivate, inspire, and coordinate a multidisciplinary internal Apptio team to solve customer challenges without direct management responsibility

• Employ strong teamwork, facilitation, and soft skills such as listening and empathy

Strategic Consulting

• Credible and effective C-level advisor/coach, especially with regards to the TBM discipline

• Experience with Organizational Change Management (OCM), Transformation Programs, and IT Governance

• Consultative approach, including the ability to translate customer needs into TBM outcomes

• Well versed within the fields of Organizational Efficiency and Operational Excellence

Innovation & thinking outside the box

• Capable of translating business initiatives and challenges into actionable roadmap and solutions

• Creatively solve problems with limited input and resources in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment

• Inquisitive mind and passion for learning about customers, industries and new approaches to doing things

• Always learning about IT industry drivers, trends and technologies

What we want you to do:

Advisory

• Evangelize Technology Business Management (TBM) and its three subdomains:

• Technology Financial Management (TFM)

• Cloud Financial Management (FinOps)

• Strategic Portfolio Management (Lean, Agile & DevOps)

• Engage regularly with customers via workshops, operational and business reviews to evaluate needs and strategic direction and align with a clear roadmap

• Find, mentor and develop process owners into TBM Champions

• Develop and maintain long-term relationships with stakeholders in the account portfolio, where appropriate, by networking between customers, partners, and Apptio

Customer Advocacy

• Drive user adoption across the customer organizations by understanding their specific challenges and helping them to operationalize and realize benefit from their deployed TBM solution

• Understand and document customer process workflows that apply to TBM and implement strategies that integrate Apptio to those processes

• Identify risks to the customer achieving their stated business goals and develop, then execute, appropriate mitigation plans

• Mentor customers’ ability to become ‘insight hunters’ by helping them uncover nuggets of information that will drive measurable value

• Serve as liaison between our customers and various Apptio teams to ensure that needs / requirements critical to customer success are understood and effectively communicated, including gathering customer product feedback to shape product roadmap development

Thought Leadership

• Develop internal and external facing collateral to:

• Support customer adoption efforts

• Expand the knowledgebase & best practices leveraged by Apptio Teams

• Contribute internally to the Customer Success organization by sharing domain knowledge and advancing best practices and advisory skills, including but not limited to:

• Lead and contribute to internal projects and initiatives

• Serve as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for specific domain or process area

• Contribute thought leadership and best practice on how to ‘Run IT Like a Business’

Stakeholder & Program Management

• Support the completion of project deliverables by assisting with sponsor / executive coordination within the customer, process invocation / alignment and value conversations

• Establish and maintain relationships with ecosystem of implementation partners, including, but not limited to:

• Provision of oversight and governance for partner-led projects

• Liaison between partner organization and Apptio, including acting as escalation point

• Drive key adoption metrics in line with company targets across your portfolio

• Working with Account Management & Customer Success Managers to drive customer renewals in line with company targets

Required Technical and Professional Expertise

• Fluent in English and German

• Demonstrable experience in a customer facing relationship role managing multiple clients in portfolio

• Proven ability to build and maintain strong relationships with a diverse set of internal and external constituencies, including C-Level Leaders and Senior Level Executives

• Strong understanding of business processes and their integration into enterprise applications

• Ability to quickly grasp and distinctly explain technological and business concepts

• Willingness to ‘roll up one’s sleeves’ and assist wherever needed

• Team player who will innovate to continue improving the way Apptio serves its customers

• Ability to travel to visit customers

• Working knowledge of some of the following areas:

o IT Financial Management

o IT Infrastructure Management

o IT Service Management

o Strategic Portfolio Management

o IT Governance, Strategy and Planning

Preferred Technical and Professional Expertise

• Experience in Big-4 consulting, or within the IT Finance and/or Technology industry

• B.A. or B.S., ideally in a Technology, Finance or Business-related discipline, or equivalent work experience

About Business UnitIBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence-from machine learning to generative AI-to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM’s AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM’s hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments-a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

Your Life @ IBM

About IBM

Location StatementIBM wants you to bring your whole self to work and for you this might mean the ability to work flexibly. If you are interested in a flexible working pattern, please talk to our recruitment team to find out if this is possible in the current working environment.

Being You @ IBMIBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.