Job Description
Company Description
Version 1 proves that IT can make a real difference to our customers’ businesses. We are trusted by global brands to deliver IT services and solutions which drive customer success. Our 3500+ strong team works closely with our technology partners to provide independent advice that helps our customers navigate the rapidly changing world of IT. Our greatest strength is balance in our efforts to achieve Customer Success, Empowered People, and a Strong Organisation, underpinned by a commitment to our values. We believe this is what makes Version 1 different, and more importantly, our customers agree. You will get exposed to bringing cutting edge technology to bear in driving top-line commercial performance whilst working within a dedicated and expanding team environment, where you can shape your own future with us.
We promote a flexible work environment that empowers our teams to go the extra mile for our clients. We encourage our employees to find new and innovative ways to deliver impact and leverage new technologies.
Job Description
We are looking for an experienced Head of Operations (Commercial) to take ownership of the operating and scaling of our commercial operations function to support Version 1’s growth ambitions over the next 3-5 years. The role will report to the Commercial Operations Director.
In this role, you will work across all functions within commercial including sales, marketing, commercial operations, RevOps, deal execution, sales training & enablement and commercial finance. It will also span related functions including Finance, Office of CTO, delivery practices, legal and HR. You will be responsible for a portfolio of critical scalability initiatives (larger projects), incremental improvements (in systems, processes, structures and policies), as well as ensuring all key business-as-usual commercial operational activities are delivered. This includes, where required, supporting shaping, planning and managing delivery, and the effective transition into BAU operations of significant change initiatives to build further robustness, maturity, efficiency and effectiveness into our commercial organisation.
The intent is to enable our commercial function to continue to grow and scale at speed, through both organic and acquisitive growth, without impacting the ongoing delivery and operating rhythm of the function and personnel within it. Initiatives will vary in scale, complexity, time to deliver, criticality, extent of cross-function impact and commercial impact. Most initiatives will be rooted in AI enablement, leveraging corporate AI infrastructure with a focus on simplification, automation and efficiencies while raising the bar in terms of quality, responsiveness and proactiveness. While you will not directly manage most initiatives, you will have oversight and will need to ensure delivery - and will have the full authority of the office of the CCO in execution of this.
The role will require some out of the box thinking, bringing innovative solutioning to bear, looking at how driving change now will accelerate our growth ambitions.
Key responsibilities
- Ownership of day-to-day operations, largely executed by the Commercial Operations Manager and their team, including escalation and issue resolution. This includes sales performance management, remuneration management, territory management, systems operations, and other core sales supporting processes. Much of the execution of these activities will be with other functions, not your core team.
- Ensure specific BAU outcomes are executed, specifically senior reporting, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual processes e.g. remuneration (commissions/ bonuses), CSAT, CPD, Salary reviews, OPEX Mgt, sales performance oversight, territory mgt oversight, etc.
- Overall ownership for the delivery of targeted outcomes of commercial initiatives underpinning our Long Term Plans (LTP) and BP26/27 with a focus on driving AI adoption and value through Commercial Operations and the wider commercial activity and ways of working
- Drive agenda for scalable growth of the commercial function
- Work with senior commercial management to identify impacting pain points, solution agreement, priorities and drive improvement through overall roadmap management and delivery.
- Planning commercial scalability initiatives in alignment with other business initiatives and consideration for dependencies and integration.
- Developing and maintaining a delivery roadmap of prioritised initiatives.
- Understanding and planning for the change management aspects of ‘operationalising’ delivery into BAU operations, working both with our central change management capability and our commercial L&D function.
- Leverage the commercial organisation and others where appropriate to generate buy-in, delivery team mobilisation and effect delivery execution.
- Work cross function to ensure end-to-end process alignment driven by commercial change / need continuous review and update. To include Finance, OCTO, Practices, Legal, HR, etc.; Influence these functions to participate in change to align with commercial and business targeted outcomes and associated activities.
- Be the representative voice of commercial on group-wide projects and programmes, understanding the impact of those initiatives on commercial activities and its direction of travel, and navigate any adverse commercial impacts, addressed in a constructive manner.
- Oversight of effective Governance and Operational cadence within commercial; ongoing measurement of success through attainment of specific targeted outcomes.
Qualifications
Experience
- Direct experience in sales operations and strong line management, operational and programme/project management experience gained over 10+ years, managing the delivery levers, ensuring both operational activities are executed and all improvement initiatives are appropriately delivered and operationalised efficiently and effectively.
- Ability to isolate, focus on and resolve key impacting challenges to a programme of initiatives, across processes, technology and people, requiring a strong understanding of each and a deep understanding and application of change management techniques in programme delivery.
- Recent experience in the leverage and deployment of AI within a commercial environment, as it relates to personal productivity, task automation, service enhancement and/or efficiencies delivery.
- Manage the delivery quality, work focus and overall output of teams that don’t report into you.
- Experience in building strong relationships and in influencing stakeholders with an ability to gain the trust and respect of those key stakeholders you are dependant on to deliver.
- Have extensive experience in delivering excellent oral and written communications for team, peer and executive communication to support influencing and communicating core messaging.
- An ability to quickly understand the commercial and delivery business, understanding the details of our processes and systems, specifically cross function and system interdependencies, and, cultural considerations that impact how we do business.
Qualifications
- Suitable for manager level applicants with a minimum 10 years’ experience working in similar/related role(s) in IT Services.
- Demonstratable capability to manage both ongoing Business-As-Usual operational activities as well as a range of parallel projects driving change into those operations.
- Strong organisational skills, ability to multitask and not get phased with managing a significant number of ongoing activities in parallel and to work at both a detailed and macro level, and, to work effectively in an environment where both planned and unplanned activities arise on a daily basis. To include excellent planning skills with the ability to prioritise and manage large volumes of work, to tight deadlines.
- Be highly driven with the ability to manage personal deadlines and always demand excellence in outputs.
- A high attention to detail, is precise, accuracy and has excellent numeracy skills.
- Excellent knowledge of MS Office productivity tools, in particular PowerPoint and Excel, including an ability to work with large, complex datasets.
- Has a good understanding of AI leverage and deployment in a sales environment and is comfortable in engaging with AI as a key infrastructural component in scalability initiatives.
- Is highly discrete with sensitive information.
- Desirable but not essential skills or experience include working with SaaS applications MS Dynamics 365, Contract Lifecycle Management systems (ideally Sirion), and Professional Services Automation applications (ideally Kantata), and, with reporting & visualisation tools including PowerBI.
Additional Information
At Version 1, we believe in providing our employees with a comprehensive benefits package that prioritises their well-being, professional growth, and financial stability.
One of our standout advantages is the ability to work with a hybrid schedule along with business travel, allowing our employees to strike a balance between work and life. We also offer a range of tech-related benefits, including an innovative Tech Scheme to help keep our team members up-to-date with the latest technology.
We prioritise the health and safety of our employees, providing private medical and life insurance coverage, as well as free eye tests and contributions towards glasses. Our team members can also stay ahead of the curve with incentivized certifications and accreditations, including AWS, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat.
Our employee-designed Profit Share scheme divides a portion of our company’s profits each quarter amongst employees. We are dedicated to helping our employees reach their full potential, offering Pathways Career Development Quarterly, a programme designed to support professional growth.
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