VP of Innovation Readiness & Excellence

Anaplan • New York City, NY

6d

About The Position

At Anaplan, we are a team of innovators focused on optimizing business decision-making through our leading AI-infused scenario planning and analysis platform so our customers can outpace their competition and the market. What unites Anaplanners across teams and geographies is our collective commitment to our customers’ success and to our Winning Culture. Our customers rank among the who’s who in the Fortune 50. Coca-Cola, LinkedIn, Adobe, LVMH and Bayer are just a few of the 2,400+ global companies who rely on our best-in-class platform. Our Winning Culture is the engine that drives our teams of innovators. We champion diversity of thought and ideas, we behave like leaders regardless of title, we are committed to achieving ambitious goals, and we love celebrating our wins – big and small. Supported by operating principles of being strategy-led, values -based and disciplined in execution, you’ll be inspired, connected, developed and rewarded here. Everything that makes you unique is welcome; join us and let’s build what’s next - together! We are seeking an experienced, customer-obsessed leader to own the creation and evolution of the end-to-end implementation methodology for our software portfolio (core platform + domain-specific applications) and to own the implementation outcomes for Beta implementations. This leader will build, continuously refine, and govern a repeatable, scalable, and predictable implementation approach that becomes a genuine competitive advantage and key driver of customer adoption, retention, and expansion. This is an exciting opportunity for a visionary leader to make a significant impact by setting the foundation for implementing and scaling repeatable implementations of all products.

Requirements

• 12+ years in enterprise software with at least 6 years in a senior leadership role owning delivery methodology, professional services transformation, or technical customer success at scale.
• Proven track record of building and scaling implementation methodologies for complex platform + application software solutions
• Deep experience running beta/early-adopter programs and turning field learnings into product and process improvements.
• Strong product intuition; able to collaborate effectively with Product and Engineering leaders and influence roadmaps without direct authority.
• Exceptional ability to distill complex technical concepts into repeatable frameworks and training content.
• Data-driven mindset with rigorous approach to metrics and experimentation.
• Customer-Centric: everything starts and ends with customer outcomes.
• Builder mentality: comfortable creating from a blank page and iterating fast.
• Bias for simplicity and pragmatism; able to balance “perfect” methodology with speed of delivery.
• High intellectual horsepower combined with exceptional communication and storytelling skills.

Nice To Haves

• Experience enabling large partner ecosystems (GSI/SIs) is a strong plus.
• Former Head of Global Professional Services, Head of Solutions Architecture, or VP of Customer Success at a high-growth B2B SaaS company (e.g., Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Databricks, etc.).
• Management or Systems Integration consulting background (Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, McKinsey) with post-consulting operating experience is highly valued.

Responsibilities

• Methodology Ownership & Evolution Design, document, and maintain the company’s official implementation methodology & best practices for all products (playbooks, phase-gate model, artifacts, tools, templates, success metrics).
• Develop and execute to an 80/20 principle where the overarching methodology supports all products, with specific best practices and assets for each product.
• Continuously improve the methodology by incorporating field feedback, implementation analysis, industry best practices, and customer feedback.
• Establish clear methodology governance (versioning, certification, change control).
• Cross-Functional Partnership with Product Act as the primary bridge between Product/Engineering and the Services eco-system for all new and existing products.
• Partner with Product by translating real-world implementation complexity in Beta and EA deployments into actionable product needs and “implementability” criteria.
• Co-develop reference architectures, design patterns, and configuration standards that reduce time-to-value.
• Beta & Early Adopter (EA) Program Leadership Own the technical and programmatic success of all beta deployments.
• Personally engage in high-risk or strategic beta customers when needed.
• Systematically capture quantitative and qualitative learnings and feed them back into methodology and product refinements.
• Validation, Testing & Iteration of the Methodology Design and execute “Methodology Pilots” with real customers during Beta and EA implementations to prove or disprove assumptions.
• Define and track leading indicators of implementation success (e.g., stage-gate milestones, configuration completeness at go-live, adoption velocity, time-to-value).
• Run structured retrospectives after every Beta and EA deployment to drive rapid iteration.
• Scaling & Enablement Partner closely with the Product Training & Education and GTM Enablement teams to translate the methodology into world-class training content (certifications, workshops, digital academies, guided paths inside the product).
• Support partner enablement so that system integrators and ecosystem partners adopt the same methodology.
• Create self-service tools, accelerators, and automation that embed the methodology directly into the product where possible.
• Metrics, Governance & Thought Leadership Own Beta implementation-related KPIs: Time-to-Value, Implementation Success Rate, Customer Satisfaction results, etc.
• Establish and lead an internal Center of Excellence (CoE) for implementation innovation readiness.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees