Engagement Manager at Microsoft

Job Summary

• The MCC Engagement Manager (EM) is responsible for engagement delivery quality and customer satisfaction by structuring and managing deals through completion.
• The Engagement Manager role owns the problem statement from the perspective of the customer.
• This role has the responsibility of assembling the consulting delivery team and ensuring the team both structures and executes on the problem solving methodology correctly and to the agreed budget.

Job Description
The Engagement Manager (EM):

• Manages engagement risk and delivery quality.
• Establishes the processes to support the engagement, including setting up charge codes, defining the project calendar, and defining deliverable acceptance and reporting procedures. Project initiation also includes validating scope, conducting project kickoff and holding Conditions of Satisfaction (COS) discussions with stakeholders.
• Tracks the performance of the engagement, the quality of project deliverables and reports on the effectiveness of the engagement against the baseline plan.
• Builds his/her time into engagements as appropriate to allow for mitigation of engagement risk and to achieve the required level of billable utilization set by the business
• Reviews and approves consultant and partner billable hours and expenses each week, and reviews and approves client invoices before they are sent.
• Defines in advance the acceptance criteria for each project deliverable, works with the team to establish delivery dates for each deliverable, and oversees the review of client deliverables to ensure they meet all client acceptance criteria, securing sign-off on each deliverable as defined in the SOW.
• Drives project governance including activities concerning issue escalation within the client organization and internal to Microsoft, change management processes, and addressing concerns raised in quality reviews with Microsoft stakeholders, partners, client stakeholders and respective steering committees.
• As this roles requires covering customer in ESA, the person is required to be based in a country that is part of ESA.

Responsibilities

• Business Initiation: Lead execution of creating the appropriate Statement of Work, Work Order, and subcontracting agreements that will allow for the formal authorization to proceed with delivery of services.
• Coordinate contractual reviews with various internal stakeholders.
• Review and provide guidance on customer change requests as they apply to scope of delivery.
• Orchestrate and lead subject matter experts to ensure services delivery is aligned with customer needs and minimizes risk to Microsoft

Business Planning:

• Determine appropriate life-cycle approach for services delivery, as well as define appropriate Services Delivery Team profile.
• Define customer and Services Delivery team responsibilities.
• Demonstrate keen awareness on inter-dependencies of complex deliverables and their impact to the overall delivery plan.
• Secure technical and project management resources to deliver the solution.

Business Implementation:

• Assess existing customer IT profile and determine an effective course of action and solution approach to deliver within existing contractual constraints and policies.
• Recommend appropriate professional services delivery strategies to address customer needs.
• Initiate the engagement with appropriate stakeholder participation.
• Establish and document the Conditions of Satisfaction (COS).

Business Monitoring & Controlling:

• Achieve utilization through the effective management and monitoring of the engagement ensuring clear direction to the services delivery team.
• Achieve accuracy in team staffing throughout the delivery lifecycle by continually monitoring delivery plan performance.
• Drive high satisfaction from stakeholders by improving and optimizing delivery status communications.
• Drive operational proficiency by overseeing timely customer invoicing

Business Closing:

• Share delivery execution performance (variation from the plan, customer feedback) with overall services community.
• From delivery performance data, provide suggestions on improvements to offerings and delivery processes.

Experience

• 5 - 8 years of related experience
• Management by Influence, strong Team Leadership and orchestration.

Education

• Bachelor's Degree (B.S./B.A.)
• IT Implementation (e.g. CMM and CMMI), IT Service delivery and Support (e.g. ITIL Foundation), Project Management fundamentals (e.g. PMI or equivalent) and Industry-specific certifications (as and if applicable)

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Analytical Problem Solving
• Customer/Partner Relationships
• Confidence
• Cross-Boundary Collaboration
• Impact and Influence
• Interpersonal Awareness
• Microsoft Product & Technology Expertise
• Project Management
• Strategic Insight
• Value Selling