NYU Stern School of Business

New York University

Customer Success @ Georgian

Nashville, Tennessee, United States

At Georgian, I work with our portfolio companies on go to market strategy, customer lifecycle mapping, customer health score methodologies and customer success advisory.

Georgian

Founded a business consultancy focused on helping start-up, mid-market and enterprise companies to build, scale, and refine their Customer Experience, Customer Success and Professional Services organizations.

Bowery Square LLC

Principal

Brought in pre-IPO to build a global CX organization and enable growth for this $325M technology learning organization, with specific accountability across Professional Services, Pre-Sales & Support and Customer Success Management. Reported directly to the CRO and member of the Global Sales Leadership Team.

-  Established the entire global Customer Experience vision and organization – transformed their CX approach into a world-class, repeatable, low/high/tech-touch strategies that increased Gross Retention to 87%, grew Net Retention to 129%, generated cSAT scores above 94%, and positioned company for successful IPO

-   Within 9 months, scaled team from 25 local to 142 global staff in North America, AMEA, India and Australia to support Enterprise, Mid-Market, Government, Multi-National and Digital customer segments
-   Within first 6 months, devised and implemented a Professional Services monetization strategy that commercialized a $10M run-rate business leveraging both internal and partner consultants
-   Established clear processes for all customer-facing roles to expand lifetime value (LTV), and introduced an “Enable, Influence & Advise” approach that turned generalists into technology specialists
-   Created their first unified Voice of the Customer (VoC) program that provided more transparency and highlighted need to pivot the go-to-market strategy to better reflect where customers see most value
-   Defined the company’s first clear vision, direction and go-to-market CX strategy designed to ignite growth and quickly impact MRR and ARR growth
-   Introduced customer journey touchpoints for value definition and realization, on-boarding, customer engagement, VoC and customer marketing
-   Rationalized and distilled a cumbersome analytics dashboard to the most useable data, and introduced reporting that integrated Salesforce, Gainsight, Wrike, Qualtrics, Financial Force, Qlik and Tableau

Pluralsight

Senior Vice President, Customer Success

Led the transformation of the Consulting Services business for this $600M EU-based technology company from regional commodity expert services to a full-scale global professional services organization. Led 260+ global consultants in 18 countries (NA, EMEA, APAC). Member of the Global Sales Leadership Team. $50M P&L.

-  Turned an underdeveloped consulting service into a world-class global professional services organization with advanced delivery models and CX processes – grew cSAT to 96 and improved margins from -15% to +15%

-   Created a professional services organization of 8 Regional and Global practices (Americas, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, APAC, Technology, Advisory, Project Management, Solutions Development)
-   Championed the enterprise shift to adopt customer success and built an international leadership team to realize the vision
-   Introduced a design studio delivery model in both New York and London supporting advanced UI/UX application development – generated $10M in license and service revenues within its first 12 moths
-   Served as executive sponsor and partner overseeing delivery strategy for Qlik’s largest customer deployments in the US, UK and Netherlands
-   Reengineered margin activities in Italy, Dubai and Japan – critical in creating margin for the company following acquisition by PE firm Thoma Bravo
-   Strengthened partner channel relationships representing 60% of the business
-   Worked with the Product team to assemble a formal VoC program to provide more transparency in how customers were using the products
-   Recognized for consistently seeing and acting upon emerging trends (analytics, pricing, delivery, customer success) ahead of the competition

Qlik

Global Vice President, Consulting Services

Recruited to lead D&B’s pre-/post-acquisition service and support their $250M enterprise strategic division with a focus on revitalizing their end-to-end customer experience, all during a recessionary period and against growing global completion for cheaper, more commoditized business information providers. One of the Top 100 executive leaders in the company. Acted as COO to the Enterprise EVP. 25+ staff.

-  Completely transformed D&B’s entire CX strategy and infrastructure – more robust “high-touch” model quickly increased all customer success metrics (400-point cSAT increase, 91% retention) with enterprise clients

-   Evaluated and restructured the entire business operation – redefined business processes and roles improved customer satisfaction levels by a full 25% within first 18 months
-   Quickly established a new strategic vision, purpose, strategy, goals, processes, roles, and measureable KPIs, and developed their first formalized customer success Journey Map
-   Turned the Senior Solutions team into a more value-added, high-touch consultative customer service organization with Trusted Advisor status
-   Developed and introduced D&B’s proprietary customer success program DESIGNRight that improved customer growth, product engagement and loyalty
-   Created customized sales/retention strategies and introduced dedicated Field Services teams that improved service delivery, revenues and retention with D&B’s largest customers (IBM, Amex, Sprint, HP, Microsoft)

Dun & Bradstreet

Vice President, Strategic Client Success

Developed the customer solution architecture to support the North American launch of Oracle’s middleware technology business (service-oriented architecture, identity management and business intelligence) serving their largest strategic clients. Held held full accountability for practice management, customer delivery, staffing and business development.

-  Created and grew Oracle’s middleware business that quickly generated over $15M in license sales opportunities with clients including Time Warner Cable, Lucent, and JP Morgan Chase

-   Directed the team to build and integrate 50+ technology acquisitions during the peak of Oracle’s M&A activity
-   Consistently met aggressive 25% annual booking and revenue targets year over year

Oracle

Vice President, Solution Specialists

Promoted to lead Oracle’s entire North American Technology Service organization supporting the largest and most complex customer implementation projects across the US and Canada.

- Managed and grew the entire North America technology consulting organization with over 750 technology consultants and a $250M P&L

-   Successfully transformed the North America technology division from commodity-based services (Database Administrators Developers) to Trusted Advisor specialists (Architects, Designers, Engineers)
-   Led development of technology services’ first value engineering program (Insight) focused on customer discovery, executive workshops, architecture and blueprints, and solution value assessments
-   Introduced ATS Passport, a cutting-edge training and mentoring program that differentiated Oracle with the highest skilled technologists in the industry

Vice President, North America Advanced Technology

Managed increasingly larger practice portfolios (Media, Entertainment & Technology) within Oracle’s consulting organization, providing custom development to a North American client base including NBC, Bertelsmann AG, Barnes & Noble, Canon USA and others. Full P&L, business development, and delivery accountability.

-  Advanced through increasingly senior practice leadership roles, overseeing a $3M NYC-based business of 8 consultants to a $30M practice of 104 consultants across the US Northeast and Canada

-   Credited with strengthening trust and credibility with the sales organization – expanded billings to include more professional services and helped grow margins to 30+%

Vice President, Northeast & Canada / Senior Practice Director - Technology Services

Directed the $30M technology investment for the launch of <a href="http://bol.com">bol.com</a>, a $250M venture developed to compete with <a href="http://Amazon.com">Amazon.com</a> globally. Managed all logistics planning, database management, user interface and application development.

-   Served as Program Manager for the global implementation of Oracle technology and business processes in 5 countries – North America, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands and France.

Peter Szary