Solutions Associate

Role Overview
The Business Development and Strategy Associate should become an expert on our proposal process and help streamline key processes in the Business Development department in order to help streamline general operations at Sidebench.

The key focus of this role will be to use past project outcomes (both our successes and our failures) and apply learnings to future projects in a way that impacts our success rate. The BD Operations Specialist’s primary role involves the creation of proposals for future work, both original and expansions of current accounts, and improvements on the processes involved in the synthesis of these Scopes of Work.

This will require a deep understanding of the scoping process, SOW creation, contractor utilization, and project hours worked by our team. To do this, we expect them to create and consistently carry out a process for accurately scoping projects with tech/delivery teams, offer more accurate service offerings based on past experience and improve sales enablement material.

They will be expected to help prioritize tasks to pull estimates most effectively from the scoping team, create templates and workflows to optimize efficiency and deliver high-quality proposals to the BD team.

Key Outcomes 

• Audit our best practices in regards to scoping, contractor management, and proposal creation and client deliverables and also propose and design solutions to the problems that you uncover
• Create, optimize and install a process that allows for high-quality proposals to be delivered on time with minimal distraction or wasted time for those team members involved in creating proposals
• Be the MVP of most proposals that we create by being an A+ communicator, project manager, client resource, copywriter and strategist. This will require the ability to gather and build on the information provided by the BD team, incorporating scoping estimates, and drawing parallels to past projects.
• Partner with our Operations team to assess the needs of upcoming projects to strategically determine and qualify upcoming contract hires 

Day to Day Responsibilities 

Strategy & Business Development

• Examine, audit and course correct our best practices within both scoping and proposal creation
• Create and install new processes that streamline both scoping and proposal creation workflows
• Project management of proposal materials, scoping deliverables, sales enablement materials and some marketing materials 
• Create and project manage proposals as they arise for new business

Sales Operations + Best Practices

• Improve efficiency and communication across the Delivery and BD/Strategy team when decisions are being made around scoping and resourcing 
• Assist our operations leads in examining the current landscape of our contractor employee process and consult on new best practices from a BD lens
• Work with operations to determine contract hires as they relate to proposals and upcoming projects

Remaining Time

• Gain exposure to product management practices through regular collaboration with our Product Managers and Head of Product
• Deeply consider the user experience in all facets of your role and raise any issues to our UX and Product designers when you get stuck

Qualifications

• You’re passionate about designing new processes best practices, and generally making things easier for the teams you work with
• You have experience in strategy, business development, or an operations capacity within a consultancy, agency or startup environment
• A general understanding of both the product design and the product development process 
• Experience with or exposure to custom software, creative project development or consulting are a plus
• Hunger to learn quickly, high energy, ability to think on their toes, and motivation to be a key team member within a short period of time with the company
• Proven project management experience and proven ability to motivate proper resources in a thoughtful and timely manner 
• Ability to build rapport with internal teams; a team-oriented culture champion
• Confidence, humility, creativity, a team player mentality, and a positive attitude are a must