Vista Consulting Group helps drive value creation through operational excellence, and the tip of the VCG spear is the Business Applications team (BOSS). The BOSS team gets involved early in the acquisition of a new portfolio company to help the company transition to best practice processes and a best practice systems footprint. BOSS is widely recognized as one of the most important steps in the entire value creation process.

The Program Manager leads teams through the complete project life cycle, including requirements gathering, design sessions, agile testing, go-live and post go-live support. This position is a critical and high-profile role in our company to drive transformational change within our portfolio companies.

If you're passionate about CRM/ERP implementations and a focus on operational excellence, we'd love to chat.

Location: Chicago office preferred; Austin office OK

Responsibilities:

• Guide portfolio companies through complex business transformation programs.
• Direct and assign responsibilities to teams of VCG, implementation partner and portfolio company personnel through the business transformation.
• Validate the translation of business requirements into technical solutions.
• Gain a firm understanding of cloud-based solutions (including, but not limited to Salesforce) to drive adjustments from best practice guidelines when implementing for each portfolio company.
• Guide creation and execution of project work plans and revise as appropriate.
• Facilitate team and client meetings effectively, including workshops, status meetings with the project team (portfolio companies, implementation vendors, and management team) and executive steering committee meetings.
• Review deliverables, perform engagement reviews, and enforce quality assurance procedures.
• Drive across multiple stakeholder groups to successful outcomes on all projects. Enforce strategic and methodical execution of program deliverables.
• Review vendor and implementation partner proposals and statements of work and recommend scope, approach, and staffing adjustments where necessary.
• Manage development of Business Applications program / process improvements, etc.
• Develop relationships with and guide senior executives at portfolio companies and within VCG.
• The ability to organize work and lend structure to a project to ensure deliverables are completed on time. 
• The ideal candidate will have a strong project management background and will be able to see when current strategies need to be tweaked to move the project in a productive direction. 
• Program Managers also serve as mentors to more junior consultants to help them improve their project management and consulting skills to be more effective.

• Bachelors or Masters degree; MS/MBA or advanced degree preferred.

• At least 7 years of project/program management experience.
• Prior experience managing complex packaged/hosted/SaaS software implementation projects. Experience with cloud-based solutions such as Salesforce.com or NetSuite is highly preferred.
• Familiarity with Sales, Order to Cash, Support and Professional Services business processes.
• Strong technical background and knowledge.
• Very strong oral and written communication skills.
• Excellent problem solving, critical thinking, and analytical skills.
• Proven track record of project delivery, interacting with all levels of management.
• Prior experience in a consulting firm is desired, but not required.
• Willingness to travel up to 60% (domestic).