Director, Strategic Planning, Adoption & Renewals (Remote)

Join us as we pursue our disruptive new vision to make machine data accessible, usable and valuable to everyone. We are a company filled with people who are passionate about our product and seek to deliver the best experience for our customers. At Splunk, we’re committed to our work, customers, having fun and most importantly to each other’s success. Learn more about Splunk careers and how you can become a part of our journey!

Splunk is the world’s first Data-to-Everything Platform. Now organizations no longer need to worry about where their data is coming from, and they are free to focus on the business outcomes that data can deliver.

Role

Are you an upbeat GTM/Business Operations leader, with deep SaaS and Customer Success experience? Are you ready to play a mission-critical role in the scale-up of a rapidly growing enterprise software business, with customer value, experience, retention and growth at the core? If so, Splunk is looking for an experienced, outcomes-driven candidate with extraordinary skills across operations, planning, performance management, communication, and program management skills to operationalize, optimize and scale our adoption and retention strategy, processes and cross-functional interlocks.The  Director, Strategic Planning, Adoption & Renewals  will be accountable for the development and operationalization of Splunk’s overall Adoption and Retention investment strategy and driving a measurable impact on key outcomes like adoption, customer outcomes, retention, annual revenue, expansion, cost to serve, time to value etc. The role will see you working cross functionally, across a broad array of teams, driving alignment with the broader GTM strategy, and ultimately accountable for all aspects of perpetual planning for the CSM/R (Customer Success Management and Renewals) organization. This will include (but not be limited to); driving an ever evolving customer segmentation and coverage strategy, translating that strategy into capacity, hiring and territory models that operationalize our investments, supporting and elevating the field talent strategy, driving desired outcomes through compensation plan design and quota/MBO deployment, and taking the lead on our broader planning and performance evaluation strategies to assess the outcomes of our operations and drive increasing productivity.

You will interface frequently and drive collaboration with adjacent Renewal Sales, Customer Success, Revenue Operations, Finance, Sales, HR, and GTM teams.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end strategic planning process for the CSM/R (Customer Success and Renewal) organization

Work cross functionally across Finance, HR, Revenue Operations, Global Business Operations, and other teams to ensure alignment and promote the needs and impacts of the CSM/R team

Influence executive leadership within the business areas to create and maintain alignment around the Adoption and Retention business objectives, priorities, cross functional dependencies, measurable benefits, success criteria, scope, and constraints impacting delivery

Be a thought leader. Incorporate Adoption and Retention leading practices and current and future market, product/technology and customer dynamics into our strategy and priorities. Use external and internal insights and data to inform the strategic roadmap.

Strive for Operational Excellence; laying the foundations for scale and removing inefficiencies through an optimal balance of people, process and technologies

Deliver on all pillars of Strategic Planning for the CSM/R business, outlined within the details below:

Own the end-to-end customer segmentation and CSM/R coverage strategy and plans

Take ultimate accountability for our customer segmentation model

Work closely with Renewal Operations, Data and Insights, Digital Transformation, Revenue Operations and CS Leadership to drive an ever-enriched customer segmentation model that brings together disparate insights (commercial/financial, propensity to grow, current health, level of complexity, among others) to form a multi-dimensional assessment of our customer landscape today

Model growth levers to project growth in our customer base across all segments, aligned to Sales and Finance perspectives and forecasts

Own the coverage and gearing ratios that inform our investment and resourcing strategies across the CSM/R field teams, covering Customer Success Managers (CSMs), Customer Success Advocates (CSAs), Specialists, and Renewal Sales Reps (RSRs).

Develop the capabilities for scenario modeling to allow us to frequently assess the impacts of strategy refinements

Operationalize and instrument our customer coverage and engagement strategy

Support the communication, launch and roll-out of our coverage strategy, with supporting data, crisp communication on rationale and justifications, connection to financial impacts, etc.

Work closely with adjacent ops, data and systems teams to build bi-directional data flows, that allow us to deploy our segmentation strategy (i.e., push back to Salesforce and other systems), driving awareness and easy segment identification in our field GTM teams

Deploy instrumentation for our CSM/R theatre leaders to add their perspectives to their respective ‘books of business’, allowing them upgrade/downgrade coverage across their customer accounts, and assess their theatre coverage

Design and deploy tools that help field leaders at all levels, balance territory assignments (both for CSx roles, and Renewals roles), promoting balanced workloads and predictable outcomes. Create analysis that assess the integrity of our strategy as it is deployed, and report on deviations/risks

Interface closely with Finance and CSM/R leadership and drive the cadence of internal planning; frequently assessing our progress and outcomes, and re-balancing resource/investment decisions throughout the year

Contribute to the performance management and (re)evaluation of our CSM/R strategies

Work closely with adjacent Ops teams to ensure we can analyze our performance accurately, in alignment with our segmentation and coverage strategies. The closed-loop performance management process should be used to further refine our approaches as we grow and scale.

Support the promotion of CSM/R high value activities and outcomes through effective incentives

Work closely with CSM/R leadership and cross functional operations teams, to define, package, and implement the variable compensation strategies for our CSM/R field teams

Align cross functionally to ensure the driving metrics align with our ultimate outcomes, interlock appropriately with the outcomes of other GTM teams, and build confidence and integrity in the key metrics that drive comp plan attainment

Manage all SPIFF, special contest programs, and awards for the CSM/R organization, ensuring data driven approaches to

Work closely with other GTM compensation teams, Finance, and HR to ensure alignment in our incentive’s strategies

Support CSM/R field talent and enablement programs

Support CSM/R leadership, HR, and Enablement teams with the reporting and instrumentation necessary to further and elevate our field talent. This may include supporting skills assessments, enablement tracking (connections to our Learning Management System) and more.

Work closely with Finance and HR to ensure we have a single-source of truth for current headcount, recently filled positions, and open requisitions, to ensure we keep an accurate and real-time pulse on our org’s human resources and bench (by role, theatre, job level, span of control, etc.)

Support and drive automation in this area to remove manual inefficiencies and latency in our reporting

Support programs that drive increased productivity and scale

Work closely with the leaders of our field teams, ensuring their voices are heard, and that we understand and collect feedback on the challenges and friction points faced by our field teams, as they relate to customer coverage and engagement

Work with cross functional leaders to evaluate and further strategies that will unlock further opportunities for productivity gains and/or drive better outcomes for our customers and recurring revenue. Example strategies may include;

Standing up new low-cost/off-shore capabilities to cover high volume/low value renewal transactions,

Defining new strategies for the way we cover our most strategic, complex and high-value customers

Evolving approaches to supporting a scaling mid-band of customer accounts, e.g. through pooled instead of directly assigned coverage

Requirements

Ability to understand business objectives and align strategic initiatives accordingly: have a clear understanding of the company and organization’s business objectives and ability to align and resource initiatives to contribute to the achievement of customer and business goals. Long term strategic outlook and ability to break it down into achievable and measurable roadmaps: You can visualize the desired end result and then work backwards to plan, strategize and execute.

Interpersonal, networking and influencing skills: Ability to interact with internal and external stakeholders and customers at every level. Influence alignment and prioritization of initiatives critical to delivering the strategy. You embrace change and have a proven ability to motivate and influence across functions. Accurately summarize and present complex principles to an executive audience.

Problem-solving and analytical skills: interpreting and leveraging data insights for constantly enhancing customer experience. Committed to analyzing and anticipating situations, defining problems and objectives, recognizing alternatives and formulating solutions in a complex environment.

7+ years of progressive experience in a SaaS company leading operations teams in GTM, Revenue, Success or Biz Ops.

5+ years supporting GTM functions such as Sales, Customer Success and/or Marketing, ideally with exposure to interlocks with Finance and HR

5+ years in planning and business modeling methodologies, bringing together operational drivers and financial impacts

Hands-on experience in data management best practices, ETL and other integration principles

Deep exposure and hands-on experience in financial modeling, defining and implementing business rules and connected logic

Exposure to the design and administration of GTM variable compensation plans

Experience supporting a quota carrying sales/renewals team and driving sales/cs productivity.

A strong passion for delivering value to customers.

Experience working cross functionally, leading thru influence

Experience implementing commercial analytics and driving operational excellence.

Deep understanding of SaaS and Enterprise Sales business model with understanding of customer lifecycle measures and SaaS revenue streams.

Working knowledge of cloud ERP/HCM platforms (i.e., Salesforce.com, Workday) and additionally Customer Success management platforms (i.e., Gainsight).

Hands-on exposure to Anaplan and similar planning/BI tools (I.e., Tableau)

We value diversity at our company. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or any other applicable legally protected characteristics in the location in which the candidate is applying.

For job positions in San Francisco, CA, and other locations where required, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Thank you for your interest in Splunk!