Practice Head (CONVERGED COMMUNICATIONS and CIS)- Mumbai

          A leading IT services Company

• Candidate should be BE or Higher (An MBA an added advantage)
• Minimum of 12 years Experience working with Converged Communications (CC) and Customer Interactive Solutions (CIS) including voice, IPT, collaboration and video.
• Regarded as an expert in the industry and will bring strong personal and professional references with them.
• Experience in shaping and winning large bids for multi-national or domestic businesses.
• Proven experience of successfully selling CC and CIS solutions from a Professional Services perspective.
• Management experience in a services oriented organization.
• Experience in managing and motivating pre-sales staff.
• Able to map technology to business requirement and benefit. 
• Objective / Purpose of duty: -
• To manage all pre-sales activity of the Practice including the development and implementation of strategy within the specific practice area with the objective of  building capability, competency and the intellectual capital of Datacraft India’s Professional Services organization.
• The Practice Manager owns business opportunities aligned to the practice and takes responsibility for driving sales within the practice area together with the relevant account and solution sales teams.
• Main responsibilities:
• Strategy: To develop and drive the strategy for the practice area working closely with the relevant Solution Teams ensuring that this supports the company’s business goals, and that there is clear visibility of skills gaps, resource requirements and levels of accreditation that required in the business. The Practice Manager works directly with the relevant Solutions BDM to help develop the line of business strategy and work on go-to-market strategy and related marketing initiatives.
• Thought Leadership: The Practice Manager must be a spokesperson for Data craft regarding all technical areas in the practice and offering in the relevant solution area. The Practice Manager may also be required to contribute to global initiatives relating to the Solution line-of-business.
• Direct Delivery Skills and Competencies: Direct the ongoing development of capabilities, competencies and intellectual capital associated with the practice within the Professional Services division.
• Pre-sales: To manage and direct all pre-sales activities directly associated with the practice. The Practice Manager must be involved in qualifying an opportunity and ensuring that the right resources are assigned and contribute directly to the development of RFP and other proposals. The practice manager must be involved in bid reviews and will be responsible for signing off technical quality and integrity of responses and Datacraft’s ability to deliver the proposed solutions.
• Demand Generation: The Practice Manager will be responsible for demand generation activities such as workshops, boot-camps, road-shows, internal awareness, eDM, etc.
• Vendors: To ensure that partner relationships initiated by the solutions group or elsewhere in the organization are done so in a structured fashion with an integrated technical strategy and that a specific vendor/partner engagement model with adequate ties into the pre-sales and delivery requirements of Professional Services. Practice Manager and other members of the practice may be required to own a specific partner/vendor relationship.
• Quality: The Practice manager manages a team of Solutions Architects, Consultants and System Integration resources, to develop and design solutions for customers, interface with the Professional Services to resource assignments and ensure the quality of the solution delivers matches the customer expectation. The Practice Manager must conduct or be involved in project and services reviews working with the Project Management Office.
• Point of Escalation.
• To be the primary design and issue escalation point for the practice advising on consistent and sustainable approaches for technical designs, and championing the resolution of technical issues with appropriate technical resource.
• Supporting responsibilities:
• Analyze competition & create positioning strategies
• Partner engagement
• Internal trainings/updates to Sales team
• Technical Capabilities and Qualifications -
• Mandatory-
• Experience in deployment of CC and CIS solutions and related technologies
• Excellent familiarity with Cisco IP Telephony, Tandberg and Verint product suite.
• Ability to explain complex technologies in simple terms
• Ability to articulate an informed view of technology futures for the CC and CIS markets
• Previous hands-on experience on voice technologies, networking/ Microsoft necessary.
• Should have a consulting experience in Voice/Unified communications, collaboration, Contact Centre, Visual comms and mobility
• Desirable-
• Familiarity with competitor products suite.
• Cisco and Tandberg certifications.
• Other certifications in related vendor solutions & technologies
• Sales and deployment experience of workforce optimization solutions
• Sales and deployment experience of self service solutions