Senior Presales Consultant

Company Description

IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 6000+ employees on all continents. Our leading AI technology is the backbone of our award-winning enterprise software solutions, enabling our customers to be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service™. Our commitment to internal AI adoption has allowed us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring our colleagues can unlock their creativity and productivity, and our solutions are always cutting-edge.

At IFS, we’re flexible, we’re innovative, and we’re focused not only on how we can engage with our customers but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We help solve some of society’s greatest challenges, fostering a better future through our agility, collaboration, and trust.

We celebrate diversity and understand our responsibility to reflect the diverse world we work in. We are committed to promoting an inclusive workforce that fully represents the many different cultures, backgrounds, and viewpoints of our customers, our partners, and our communities. As a truly international company serving people from around the globe, we realize that our success is tantamount to the respect we have for those different points of view.

By joining our team, you will have the opportunity to be part of a global, diverse environment; you will be joining a winning team with a commitment to sustainability; and a company where we get things done so that you can make a positive impact on the world.

We’re looking for innovative and original thinkers to work in an environment where you can #MakeYourMoment so that we can help others make theirs. With the power of our AI-driven solutions, we empower our team to change the status quo and make a real difference.

If you want to change the status quo, we’ll help you make your moment. Join Team Purple. Join IFS.

Job 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/Constriction & Infrastructure, Service and Telecoms. As such this role will have industry knowledge in some of those 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 such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Maximo or Infor etc. Alternatively, experience with aligned solutions in either in one of the six key industries mentioned above will be highly regarded.

Experienced engaging in long and complex sales cycles with deals in excess of $500,000.

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 Pre-Sales 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.

Qualifications

• Background in presales consulting, with 5 years+ of experience with software presales
• A strong understanding of ERP and/or Enterprise Asset Management.
• Experience in the mining industry is prefered
• 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