Commercial Architect - Assistant Director

At EY, you’ll have the chance to build a career as unique as you are, with the global scale, support, inclusive culture and technology to become the best version of you. And we’re counting on your unique voice and perspective to help EY become even better, too. Join us and build an exceptional experience for yourself, and a better working world for all. 

Discipline    Pricing & Contract Management, Deal Management CoE
Role Type    Commercial Architect
Role Rank     Assistant Director

The opportunity

The Strategic Pricing & Insights (SPI) group leads our firm's commercial transformation, optimizing our price-to-value ratio for opportunities, architecting differentiated commercial structures, and integrating market and competitor intelligence into our messaging to enhance win odds and expand margins. We are part of the Pursuits & Commercial Excellence team.

As a Commercial Architect within the Pricing & Contract Management team aligned to the Strategic Pricing and Insights Group based out of GDS, you’ll support all aspects of firm’s commercial transformation through tailored pursuit support, activation of self-enabled tools and development of thought leadership to accelerate a value-focused pricing and commercial culture. You will work closely with Onshore Senior Managers / Assistant Directors engaging in cross service line rate- and project-based pursuits spanning transformational consulting, managed service, co-source, joint venture and alliance business models, driving consistent pricing and commercial strategies aligned with the expected value of our services resulting in accelerated revenue growth and margin expansion. Leveraging a robust set of sales, price, solution, and commercial benchmarks and analytics, you’ll work towards building a trust-based influence with account, pursuit, solution and service line leaders, facilitating agreement on the strategy and execution of the monetization and commercialization of the in-scope services, solutions and/or products. In the deal shaping phase, you’ll support in testing the solution design for alignment with expected value, client’s willingness to pay, internal return on investment expectations and potential competitor tactics. Beyond tailored pursuit support, you will be expected to embrace a growth mindset, actively seeking to improve your pricing and commercial acumen through learning and development, positioning and commercial education and thought leadership for consumption by the firm, resulting in a measurable and positive impact to our commercial performance.

Your key responsibilities

• As a Commercial Architect, you’ll be responsible for providing support from “qualification to close” across all pricing, financial and commercial aspects of the largest, highest risk, most complex, strategic pursuits including the monetization approach and associated commercial terms and conditions across the full spectrum of potential business models and commercial arrangements.
• You will be expected to build trust-based relationships with peers and onshore counterparts and be instrumental in influencing decision making across internal stakeholders, contributing to positive sum outcomes that unlock client value and enhance EY revenue and margin.
• You will support activities that help draw together client and competitor intelligence (across the domains of sales, price, solution, and commercials), the value estimates (inherent and relative) of the proposed solution and innovative commercial structures to support the development of a clear, compelling proposal that aligns with the client’s willingness to pay.
• You will assist in bringing forward researched perspectives about competitor solution, pricing, and commercial positioning to be utilized as part of the win strategy to support a pricing strategy based on perceived differentiation, working across pursuit leaders, senior commercial architects, and stakeholders to achieve target.
• You will collaborate with solution architects and domain experts to align solution design to client response requirements, estimate the forecasted cost-to-serve of products, solutions, services, and transactions, integrate costing guidance and standards, and document assumptions in a concise format for deal shaping analysis, optimization, and iteration in support of key pursuit milestones.
• You will be expected to articulate the pursuit’s forecasted economics based on accounting standards and internal policies/guidelines; the competitive, commercial, and financial risks of the proposed win/pricing strategy; the integrated risk mitigation strategies; and the likely financial success and alignment of the pursuit with long term strategic plans, ensuring a compelling ROI for EY and our clients.
• As part of data quality improvement process, you will be expected to support activities to curate market and competitive intelligence across primary, secondary, and third-party research channels into an integrated ecosystem of sales, price, solution, and commercial benchmarks positioning supported and self-enabled pursuits to price with conviction, confident in our differentiated value, resulting in increased win odds and profitable growth.
• You’ll also contribute to performance improvement, knowledge capital and thought leadership projects such as SaaS-, Web- and MS-Excel-based tools, recurring newsletters, immersive sites, articles, presentations, and trainings to accelerate our commercial transformation to a value-based pricing culture.

Skills and attributes for success

• Ability to execute performance standards with a high degree of independence and autonomy.
• Thriving in a matrixed organization is essential, balancing the needs of the client against business initiatives and goals.
• Possessing natural coaching skills, you’ll inspire others with your insights to drive differentiated value propositions in the market.
• Ability to be a trusted advisor who collaborates with internal teams as well as external stake holders where appropriate to work toward outcomes that deliver compelling and sustainable results for EY and our clients.
• You’ll be the value advocate, who moves beyond pricing execution, building trust-based influence through storytelling and experience-led perspectives to enhance our perceived differentiation.
• Aspire to build a good understanding of macro and micro economic environment and trends that affect current and potential EY client industries and businesses – and how these impact opportunities.
• You should possess good understanding of commercial models and have the ability to assist in design, model, shape and structure transformational consulting, managed services, co-source, joint venture and alliance business models utilizing input-, output- and outcome-based commercial models.
• Ability to simplify the complex, establish credibility quickly and build trust-based influence with stakeholders while navigating the availability of limited/ambiguous information.

To qualify for the role, you must have

• 5-8+  years of experience in professional services environment preferrable in functions like pricing and commercials, strategy consulting, solution strategy and commercial management.
• Master’s degree in relevant field(s) like finance, accounting, statistics, or equivalent practical experience.
• Expert proficiency in financial modelling, accounting, budgeting, and associated metrics.

Ideally, you’ll also have

• Strong pursuit management, relationship management, executive presence and influencing skills.
• Strong communication, facilitation, relationship-building, presentation, and negotiation skills.
• High proficiency at collaborating, managing conflicting interests and dealing with ambiguity.
• Be highly flexible, adaptable, and creative.
• Strong leadership skills and supervisory responsibility.
• Ability to travel.

Technologies and Tools

Advance knowledge and hands on experience in

• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Word

What we look for

• Our successful Commercial Architects deliver exceptional client service by building insights ahead of the market to create innovative and compelling commercial structures that position teams to win more, win better.
• One who inspires and challenges teams to differentiate EY through innovative strategies, experiences, and deliverables at scale – developing our commercial DNA with far reaching impact and invests in developing world-class talent, methods, tools, and capabilities to deliver better results, create exceptional experiences, and develop transformative leaders and teams.
• One who executes with discipline and rigor, improving the consistency and use of leading practices in our approach to winning.

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