Customer Success Manager - Cisco

AHEAD builds platforms for digital business. By weaving together advances in cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and software delivery, we help enterprises deliver on the promise of digital transformation.

At AHEAD, we prioritize creating a culture of belonging, where all perspectives and voices are represented, valued, respected, and heard. We create spaces to empower everyone to speak up, make change, and drive the culture at AHEAD. 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and do not discriminate based on an individual's race, national origin, color, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law, whether actual or perceived. 

We embrace all candidates that will contribute to the diversification and enrichment of ideas and perspectives at AHEAD. 

The Cisco Whole Portfolio Agreement Customer Success Manager (Cisco WPA CSM) supports large strategic customer relationships with a strong focus on the consumption of Cisco solutions during the lifecycle. The WPA Customer Success Manager is responsible for providing a core set of knowledge to help deliver immediate value to the customer via direct communication and reporting around the Cisco portfolio on a recurring basis. The WPA CSM will serve as a trusted advisor of Cisco products and work directly with Ahead’s supporting account teams to facilitate engagement and integration of Cisco solutions, identify business outcomes, manage licensing entitlements, mitigate adoption barriers, and interpret customer usage data, while cultivating a strong, supportive relationship with the customer. 

Roles & Responsibilities

• Manage and support a dedicated group of large strategic customers, serving as the trusted advisor of their Cisco Whole Portfolio Agreement 
• Ensure early alignment with strategic customers and account teams to build a strong foundation and set of core values 
• Work with assigned client champions through an organized, recurring communication cadence 
• Ensure a concise understanding of the customer’s Cisco environment, the Whole Portfolio Agreement, licensing entitlements, hardware services, while pairing business objectives that drive satisfaction in the customer experience 
• Lead project management, inclusive of customer’s licensing onboarding needs, team collaboration, and communication across all involved parties
• Collaborate with internal Ahead teams and the customer to ensure deployment of Cisco solutions, accelerate license adoption, and simplify license management 
• Support provisioning of Cisco licenses based upon client’s direct needs. This will include products with metered licensing and unlimited license counts 
• Drive adoption and consumption of Cisco solutions throughout the defined stages of the Cisco lifecycle while successfully optimizing the value received 
• Handle event remediations and customer escalations 
• Design custom spreadsheets that report Smart Account licensing utilization, associated contract pricing, data reports based on regions, etc.
• Measure and report on the business impact of Cisco solutions via organized Customer Success Plans and Whole Portfolio Agreement Reviews 
• Manage the licensing structure of the client’s Smart Account and Virtual Accounts
• Proactively identify and communicate new opportunities within the customer’s Cisco portfolio for future adoption of Cisco solutions 
• Identify renewal requirements for the WPA and drive the renewals process in conjunction with the Ahead Sales Team 
• Navigate the use of Cisco’s dedicated CX Tools: including but not limited to: Partner Experience Platform, CCW-R, Cisco Software Central, Smart Accounts, My Cisco Entitlements, Lifecycle Advantage, and Customer Service Hub.
• Ensure understanding of Cisco hardware services support and the digital support platform: Success Tracks, Smartnet and CX Cloud.

Qualifications

• Direct experience managing Cisco Whole Portfolio Agreements
• 2-4 years of Cisco Customer Success Management experience 
• Cisco Customer Success Manager certified preferred 
• Cisco Customer Experience Blackbelt is a plus 

Skills

• Strong capability in managing change and effectively engaging team members 
• Highly capable of providing direction and leadership to others 
• Ability to facilitate engagements with strong communication skills 
• Excellent presentation skills 
• Ability to manage and escalate client issues 
• Ability to react and adjust priorities of tasks 
• Comfortable in communicating and interacting with C-level customer stakeholders 
• Proficiency in MS Office is required: 
• MS Word – must be able to create and modify documents 
• MS Excel – create and modify pivot tables, manipulate data, create charts and graphs 
• MS Power Point – create and modify presentations 

Why AHEAD:

Through our daily work and internal groups like Moving Women AHEAD and RISE AHEAD, we value and benefit from diversity of people, ideas, experience, and everything in between.

We fuel growth by stacking our office with top-notch technologies in a multi-million-dollar lab, by encouraging cross department training and development, sponsoring certifications and credentials for continued learning.

USA Employment Benefits include: 

- Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance 

- 401(k) 

- Paid company holidays 

- Paid time off 

- Paid parental and caregiver leave 

- Plus more! See benefits https://www.aheadbenefits.com/ for additional details. 

The compensation range indicated in this posting reflects the On-Target Earnings (“OTE”) for this role, which includes a base salary and any applicable target bonus amount. This OTE range may vary based on the candidate’s relevant experience, qualifications, and geographic location.