Chief Operating Officer, CXM Americas

Job Description:

The CXM/Merkle COO will provide operational strategy and delivery needed to execute business strategy that drives and supports profitable growth in the Americas, while overseeing the daily operations of the company and all activities relating to business transformation and operational excellence.

Business Transformation:

• Development of a vision for the "operating system" that will power the business to enable employees at every level to effectively deliver their mission with as little friction as possible. This operating system will allow us to match client needs and revenue levels with the right team members and staffing levels. It will enable the right behaviors and collaboration across the organization, and it will enable us to move quickly to capture market opportunity.
• Implementation of the one dentsu operating model and effective migration of both Merkle and unintegrated brands to the BIS and technical platforms. This will include operationalizing and standardizing ways of working and product offerings across client teams while ensuring implementing and measuring primary metrics that define performance serve as the basis of performance assessment. As the overall business strategy and brand strategy are refined, evolving this model will require on-going evolutions in the day-to-day operations of the business. Additionally, the brand strategy will result in significant brand consolidation and simplification of the corporate legal entity structure in each market, requiring collaboration with the business functions to support the legal entity rationalization program.

Business Lifecycle:

• Supporting the Merkle/CXM Americas President in the annual planning and day-to-day management of the business lifecycle activity across strategy & planning, marketing, sales, account management, and service delivery. Participation in the monthly business review of the market performance against budget and quarterly forecasts determining root cause, tracking actions items and following up between reporting periods ensuring that root causes are being mitigated and recovery plans are in place. Ensure operating objectives and standards of performance are understood and owned by management and employees.

Financial Roadmap:

• Ensuring that there are clear business strategies and execution plans in place to achieve the Financial Roadmap with primary accountability for achieving GM%, SL Margin % and Revenue Growth. Ensuring the business is achieving Gross Margin % and SL Margin by effectively managing cost-to-serve in alignment with revenue forecast, when increasing or decreasing. Facilitating the annual planning process with each sub-practice lead, in accordance with the Merkle Americas CFO and the annual plan for cost-to-serve, and then delivering on the cost-to-serve budget. The cost-to-serve is the planned resource costs in accordance with revenue per resource which will vary by Service and Sub-Service for that market. The cost-to-serve will be planned to improve quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year and the primary drivers are client utilization, pyramid (span-of-control), compensation management and the placement of work in cost-effective location based on the overall Line of Business delivery strategy.

As a member of the Americas CXM/Merkle Executive Leadership Team, this position will report to the Merkle/CXM Americas President. This role will collaborate, and proactively work with the Americas Merkle/CXM Leadership team and their direct reports to implement and drive excellence in every area of business operations. This role will support the Dentsu Americas Chief Operating Officer in ensuring the effective execution of our business strategy, and that we have the required plans, metrics and targets in place to achieve our expected results.

Critical Role Priorities:

• Develop and refine, lead and deploy the operating model and organization blueprint
• Drive ongoing improvement of margins and ensure tracking to budget – managing margin challenges and ongoing work to improve
• Accountable for realization of all tactical and strategic gross margin management related initiatives at Merkle/CXM Americas practice area level working closely with dentsu counterparts and stakeholders including Operations, Finance, HR, IT and Solutions as well as the local executive leadership
• Ensure all investments into Product are channeled for approval according to policy through the Global Product Investment Council
• Implement the operating model, including the use of Salesforce for both new logo and existing client opportunities, and govern the new business process in the market
• Implement, drive adoption and use of global systems (Concur, D365, Salesforce, Workday)
• Implement the corporate time reporting process (Workfront) and enforce ti