The opportunity

The Senior Commercial Architect - Associate Director plays a leadership role in all aspects of our firms commercial transformation through tailored pursuit support, activation and adoption of self-enabled tools and development of thought leadership to accelerate a value-focused pricing and commercial culture. CAs engage 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, CAs quickly build trust-based influence with account, pursuit, solution and service line leaders, gaining 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, CAs test the solution design for alignment with expected value, the client’s willingness to pay, internal return on investment expectations and potential competitor tactics. CAs co-create the negotiations strategy, advise on tactics and response options and when warranted execute negotiations with a fair, balanced, and appropriate exchange of value orientation. Beyond tailored pursuit support, CAs embrace a growth-mindset, creating immersive career experiences and professional growth opportunities for members of their teams and originate and develop pricing, positioning and commercial education and thought leadership for consumption by the firm, resulting in a measurable, positive impact to our commercial performance.

Your key responsibilities

• Provide leadership, oversight and accountability 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
• Build trust-based relationships and influence decision making across internal and client stakeholders contributing to positive sum outcomes that unlock client value and enhance EY revenue and margin
• Shape opportunities by drawing 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 create a clear, compelling proposal that aligns with the client’s willingness to pay
• Influence successful win strategy by providing researched perspectives about competitor solution, pricing and commercial positioning to derive a pricing strategy based on perceived differentiation, working across pursuit leaders and stakeholders to achieve target
• 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
• Leverage advanced analytics, dashboards, web- and MS-Excel-based tools bringing together external observations, proposed pursuit solution design, modelled pursuit economics and historical internal peer group performance to rapidly develop, test and refine a pursuit’s pricing strategy, positioning and offer design
• 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
• Identify, communicate and manage competitive and commercial risks through proactive collaboration with Deal Leader/Manager, Lead Negotiator, Solution Architect, Legal, Risk Management, QRM and Independence
• Design and execute compelling commercial propositions that support our win strategy, are aligned with the client value drivers, minimizes our risk exposure and delivers the targeted return
• Author client facing documents including value estimation, value articulation and pricing proposal narrative; pricing and commercial assumptions; MS-Excel-based price/solution templates; and all pricing, financial and associated commercial terms and conditions including applicable sections of the Statement of Work (SOW) to position a holistic, risk-mitigated, compelling proposition
• Participate and advise on negotiations with client and their trusted advisors in close collaboration with the Lead Negotiator to achieve positive sum outcomes
• Document and transition financial and commercial knowledge of pursuit to account and delivery teams in support of contract management execution aligned with approved/sold financials minimizing value leakage during delivery
• 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
• 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
• Act as an SMR to leadership, proactively assisting the FOPs to explore and understand opportunities to grow commercial returns from new and existing solutions and services and developing progressive pricing strategies for new products and services

Skills and attributes for success

• Lead with curiosity and embrace a scientific-led, hypothesis-driven approach to understanding and synthesizing disparate and/or ambiguous data/intelligence/observations in establishing the recommended pricing and commercial strategy
• Ensure activation and adoption of best-practice methods, tools and assets while flexing engagement approach to meet the needs of a given pursuit or project team
• Embrace solving challenging problems in an innovative, unique manner that unlocks new ways of working to advance pursuit, project, team and firm pricing and commercial capabilities
• Showcase empathy while collaborating across a range of social styles to build trust-based influence and achieve target outcomes
• Provide exceptional client service (internal/external) across multiple pursuits/projects by consistently demonstrating the ability to prioritize critical activities to meet business needs under limited, often demanding, timelines
• Understanding of macro and micro economic environment and trends that affect current and potential EY client industries and businesses – and how these impact opportunities
• Proven track record designing, modelling, shaping and structuring transformational consulting, managed services, co-source, joint venture and alliance business models utilizing input-, output- and outcome-based commercial models
• Experience with a broad spectrum of pricing strategies applicable to professional services including cost-, client value-, client willingness-to-pay- and competition-driven and an assessment of pricing power in context of an individual pursuit incorporating competitive forces
• Knowledge of economic value estimation modelling including inherent and relative value assessment
• Understanding of the client decision making process and how value journeys and value tables can provide insight into a client’s willingness to pay and influence the outcome
• Familiar with key behavioural economic insights such as prospect theory, loss aversion, anchoring and adjustment and choice architecture (options)
• Adept at synthesizing large quantities of data and observations from internal and external (primary, secondary and third party) sources into actionable intelligence for a broad range of stakeholders
• Able to simplify the complex, establish credibility quickly and build trust-based influence with senior stakeholders while navigating the availability of limited/ambiguous information
• Collaborate effectively across a matrix organization showcasing pursuit and relationship management skills to deliver a high quality work product while navigating conflicting interests
• Possess natural coaching skills, comfortable facilitating pursuit team discussions, speaking in large group settings, handling difficult conversations, influencing without authority and writing persuasively
• Ability to execute performance standards with a high degree of independence and autonomy
• Mentor peers and colleagues on all aspects of sales, pricing, solution and commercial strategy design, development and execution
• Provide immersive career experiences for pursuit and project team members building on their technical foundation to improve and excel in the functional domains of storytelling, presentation and influence in both oral and written communications
• Support firm performance management process with open, honest and constructive performance and developmental feedback
• Serve as a technical subject-matter-resource (SMR), providing constructive peer review feedback for select pursuits identifying, documenting and mitigating noted risks across financial modelling, analysis and documentation
• Bringing a growth mindset, Senior Commercial Architect - Associate Directors increasingly execute a consistent set of behaviours as we aspire to be a(n):
  • Trusted strategic advisor – who drives internal and external clients toward outcomes that deliver compelling and sustainable results for EY and our clients
  • Gold standard champion – who executes with discipline and rigor, improving the consistency and use of leading practices in our approach to winning
  • Value advocate – who moves beyond pricing execution, building trust based influence through storytelling and experience-led perspectives to enhance our perceived differentiation
  • Innovation driver – who inspires and challenges teams to differentiate EY through innovative strategies, experiences and deliverables at scale – developing our commercial DNA with far reaching impact
  • Inspirational change agent – who invests in developing world-class talent, methods, tools, and capabilities to deliver better results, create exceptional experiences, and develop transformative leaders and teams
• Limited to moderate travel may be required

To qualify for the role, you must have

• Experience of having led Managed Services pricing for clients across multiple years and number of deals, including fluency in different types of pricing arrangements and analysing contracts to identify risks and propose appropriate risk mitigation measures.
• Chartered Accountant/MBA Finance/CFA with 10+ years’ experience in Pricing, RFP/deal reviews, contract reviews and development of client business cases.
• Experience working with and challenging the “status quo” of initiatives related to the monetization and commercialization of products, services, solutions and transactions
• Experience in interpretation of voice-of-the customer data to design pricing and commercialization strategy
• Experience in value-based pricing, value-based selling with consideration to client willingness to pay and an appreciation of competitive forces.
• Advanced messaging capabilities, particularly related to the conveyance of complex business issues and/or industry trends in a clear, concise and impactful style

Ideally, you’ll also have

• Experience managing pricing processes that involve cross-functional partners
• Experience developing financial models using multiple data sources.

Technologies and Tools

Advance knowledge and hands on experience in

• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Word

What we look for

• Strategic thinker and planner with the ability to solve complex problems/situations with result-oriented approach
• Ability to deliver high quality work on complex problems/situations under pressure
• Ability to communicate with clarity and directness