UpperEdge is a leading IT sourcing and commercial advisory firm that specializes in helping our clients successfully source and deliver transformational programs while maximizing the value they receive from their key information technology relationships. We do this by empowering clients with sourcing and negotiation best practices, market and vendor intelligence, targeted insights, and project execution strategies to successfully enable their most strategic transformation initiatives.
As a leading IT sourcing and negotiation advisory firm, we engage at the highest executive levels within Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies to support the sourcing and negotiation of the relationships required to enable enterprise-wide business transformations. Our full suite of strategic advisory services spans the full transformation lifecycle from project conception and business case development to sourcing and negotiation support to project transformation execution optimization. Our advisors maintain a wealth of experience and utilize a robust set of proprietary analyzers and tools linked to a deep database of market intelligence to provide recommendations and insights to our clients.
Founded in 2010, UpperEdge has been growing at approximately twenty five percent per year and has been profitable every year since its founding. We take great pride in the entrepreneurial culture of our company which is grounded in mutual respect, professionalism, work life balance, team morale, welfare, and giving back to the community through volunteer and philanthropic endeavors.
Our client base includes a significant number of Fortune 500 companies that are the dominant leaders in their respective industries. 100 percent of UpperEdge’s customers are referenceable, and for the past 13 years our client satisfaction scores have averaged 4.5 out of 5.
Awards and Accolades:
- 5000’s Fastest Growing Companies in 2020
- Boston’s Best and Brightest Companies to Work For four years a row
Job Description
UpperEdge is currently looking for a professional, high energy individual to join its growing team of experts in an IT Sourcing and Negotiation Practice Manager role. The ideal candidate will play a central role leading sourcing initiatives and contract negotiations required to support Business and IT Transformations for Fortune 500 executives. This individual must have the ability to lead a team of Delivery members, manage multiple tasks efficiently, exercise superior judgment, and maintain the drive to work productively in a fast-paced, team-oriented environment while maintaining a positive demeanor.
Duties and Responsibilities
- Leads or Assists in leading and managing client engagements for Fortune 500 companies
- Responsible for the development and delivery of IT Sourcing, Negotiation and Supplier Management advisory services in the Practice Area
- Provide clients with strategic advice to improve their technology supplier relationships and achieve best in class commercial constructs
- Identifies and addresses critical business, financial, and commercial issues within IT vendor proposals, agreements, Statements of Work and related contractual documentation
- Works with the client to establish the engagement meeting cadences as well as the key delivery milestones for UE services
- Assesses and documents the variables and levers which may or may not exist and how those will affect the negotiation strategy and potential outcomes
- Develops strategies, in collaboration with clients, to create effective, efficient, timely and outcome-driven bi-directional communications, either written or orally, between the client and vendors
- Understands and maintains fluency and up to date knowledge of IT Service Provider’s go to market strategies, business, financial and contractual practices and applies that knowledge on a deal-by-deal basis for each engagement.
- Manage and lead a group of Delivery Team members comprised of Analysts and Advisors by providing continuous direction, guidance, and training
- Works independently, with limited direction, to manage across multiple client engagements
- Develops strategies and objectives and the associated planning to execute and deliver multiple client engagements
- Identifies issues and opportunities to ensure continuity and predictability in delivering services across multiple client engagements
- Prioritizes activities that are occurring in a simultaneous manner and communicates priorities to team so there is a clear understanding of the work to be done and seek assistance to address and resolve conflicting priorities if required
- Oversee the development and maintenance of the Practice infrastructure including the vendor intelligence databases and supporting client delivery templates
- Ensure overall client satisfaction by continuously validating the quality and delivery of UpperEdge’s services
- Develop and enhance our service and product offerings
- Partner with the Marketing Team to produce relevant IT vendor and market intelligence content including blogs, podcasts, whitepapers, and webinars on a quarterly basis
Qualifications
- 6+ years of relevant experience comprised of IT Sourcing, Contracting, and Vendor Management Experience
- Diverse industry background comprised of buy side, sell side and advisory experience
- Proven experience working with and supporting c-level executives including CIOs, CTOs and CFOs
- Technical understanding of various license models (perpetual, term, flex, etc.) and how they may be applied and/or blended to meet a diverse set of requirements.
- Demonstrated understanding of the current state of the supply market including increasing niche providers and consolidation driven by market stalwarts such as Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft.
- Demonstrated understand of critical T’s & C’s related to software to ensure the balance of risk, value, cost.
- experience soliciting (e.g. RFP) and negotiating systems implementation services for software generally or SAP software specifically
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Strong analytical skills to include data comparison and financial analysis/modeling
