Customer Solutions Architect BENE

Location: BEL - Zaventem | Job-ID: 221086 | Contract type: | Business Unit: Sales & Pre-Sales & Alliances

Life on the team

Managed Services Sales is a specialist sales function accountable for securing and growing services revenue and the contract base. Customer Solutions Architects work across industry sectors and the services portfolio, bringing the voice of the customer into campaign strategy and ensuring proposed outcomes are aligned to customer goals, market direction and organisational strengths. 

What you will do

Shape strategic opportunities

• Engage early, before solution decisions are fixed, to maximise the team’s ability to influence customer strategy, broaden the opportunity and differentiate the proposition
• Work with the opportunity owner to define campaign strategy, strengthen qualification and set the overall direction of new business, renewal, complex growth and service-extension opportunities
• Own the strategic solution narrative and integrated service direction, working with the opportunity owner and specialist leads to shape a differentiated, commercially viable and deliverable proposition
• Understand the customer’s business priorities, operating context, desired outcomes and constraints, then translate them into a coherent service-led solution direction
• Help customers connect their current operating environment to a credible future service model, identifying the transformation, transition and organisational implications of the proposed direction 
• Join the dots across customer needs, market trends and internal capabilities to identify opportunities, challenges, dependencies and areas of value creation

Guide, advise and influence

• Act as a senior customer-facing advisor and articulate Managed Services strategy, vision and value propositions to executive and C-suite stakeholders
• Guide customers and internal teams through complex choices using clear, straightforward and outcome-focused communication
• Influence opportunities towards strengths that are valuable to the customer, commercially viable and operationally deliverable
• Provide thought leadership on service evolution, innovation, technology trends and changing market expectations

Integrate capabilities

• Bring together Technology Sourcing, Professional Services and Managed Services capabilities into an integrated campaign and solution strategy
• Work across Workplace, Applications and Data, Cloud and Data Centre, Networking and Security, drawing on specialists for detailed expertise
• Act as the senior technical and service context lead, connecting the right architects, service designers, commercial teams and delivery specialists at the right time
• Maintain a broad view of the end-to-end customer environment and ensure that each workstream remains aligned to the agreed outcomes

Strengthen solution confidence and governance

• Challenge assumptions and ensure solution direction is complete, consistent and aligned to customer requirements, standards and governance
• Provide senior solution governance across the campaign, ensuring that domain, service, commercial and delivery workstreams remain aligned to the agreed customer outcomes and integrated solution direction 
• Identify and communicate material commitments, risks, dependencies and commercial exposures early enough for action
• Escalate material divergence from the agreed solution direction, customer commitments, standards or commercial guardrails through the appropriate campaign governance 
• Work with technical, service, commercial and delivery leaders to ensure the proposition can be delivered efficiently within contractual expectations
• Enable effective knowledge transfer from campaign shaping into bid, transition and Managed Services teams
• Capture and share relevant campaign insight, reusable collateral, market intelligence and lessons learned

Grow customer and account value

• Build trusted relationships with customer decisionmakers and influencers, account teams, service managers and internal capability leaders
• Attend customer opportunity and strategy sessions and help identify service evolution, innovation and pipeline opportunities
• Use awareness of emerging technology and industry developments to explain practical customer benefit, rather than promoting technology for its own sake
• Work with customer, commercial and specialist teams to articulate the expected business, service and financial value of the proposition, supported by clear assumptions and credible measures of success 
• Contribute to stronger win rates, healthy margin, sustainable contract growth and long-term customer value

What you will bring

You are likely to be successful if you combine broad technology credibility with deep appreciation of service, customer outcomes and commercial reality. You are comfortable with ambiguity, credible with executives and able to move between business context, service strategy and technology implications. You know when to challenge, when to simplify and when to bring in specialist expertise. 

Essential experience

• Significant IT industry experience, typically 10 years or more, with strong exposure to technical solutions and Managed Services
• Demonstrable experience shaping complex, multi-stakeholder sales opportunities, preferably within a managed service provider, systems integrator or service-led consultancy
• A mixed technology background. Strong Workplace knowledge is particularly relevant, supported by credible awareness in other domains, such as Networking, Cloud and Data Centre, Security, and Applications and Data
• Experience combining technology, service and commercial considerations into a clear customer proposition
• Experience of pre-sales, bid processes, deal structures, negotiation and progression towards closure
• Experience working with senior and C-suite customers and internal stakeholders as a trusted advisor or strategic solution lead
• Understanding of customer, supplier and partner contract structures, including delivery dependencies, risk, commercial viability and the implications of multi-party service models

Knowledge and capabilities

• Broad understanding of the IT services market, Managed Services models, technical trends and competitive landscape
• Understanding of end-to-end infrastructure managed services, including shared-service and multi-tower environments
• Ability to qualify, frame and communicate complex business and service solutions at strategic and executive level
• Excellent presentation, facilitation, written communication and storytelling skills for executive, customer and large-audience settings
• Strong relationship-building and influencing skills, supported by structured thinking and concise evidence
• Commercial awareness and working knowledge of cost, pricing, resource, maintenance, logistics and project-planning considerations
• Ability to make sound decisions with incomplete information, manage ambiguity, prioritise effectively and perform under pressure
• Good organizational skills: you are flexible to work from both the Belgium and Netherlands office
• Bilingual proficiency: fluent in Dutch (NL) and English (EN); proficiency in French (FR) is a plus

Desirable experience

• Experience across more than one industry sector or customer operating model
• Experience shaping and integrating complex multi-technology or multi-tower service solutions
• Knowledge of Computacenters services portfolio, market strategy and professional services propositions

About us

Computacenter is a leading independent provider of IT infrastructure services, with about 21,000 employees worldwide. We work at the heart of digitisation, advising organisations on IT strategy, implementing the most appropriate technology and managing our customers’ infrastructures.

We offer a friendly, open working environment without too much fuss about hierarchy. We are looking for professionals with diverse competencies, personalities and strengths who want to live our shared value of teamwork and performance.

Interested in joining a company with a strong sense of community?

We’re growing. We’re hiring. We encourage. We empower. We support.
#winningtogether #peoplematter