Associate Director, Customer Platforms COE

Grant Thornton is seeking a Customer Platforms COE Associate Director to join the team in Chicago, IL. 

The Associate Director, Customer Platforms COE sits within the Customer Platforms Strategy team in the Go-To-Market organization. This role is accountable for ensuring our go-to-market and commercial teams are fully leveraging our platforms to drive client relationships, pipeline, and business development.

You will lead the Customer Platforms Center of Excellence (COE): a function responsible for driving adoption across our go-to-market organization, enabling our commercial teams to work smarter, setting the standards for how our platforms are used, and overseeing how new teams whether through acquisition, firm integration, or organizational expansion are onboarded onto our global commercial systems.

The Customer Platforms Strategy team is the function within the Go-To-Market organization responsible for the strategy, governance, and operational performance of the firm's commercial technology ecosystem including CRM, sales enablement, and client intelligence platforms used by go-to-market and commercial teams across the firm. The COE is a core part of this team, operating as a strategic partner to the business, focused on driving adoption and ensuring teams joining the GT network are onboarded effectively onto our global customer platform.

Your Day to Day

Lead the Customer Platforms COE

• Own the strategy and operations of the Customer Platforms COE as part of the broader Customer Platforms Strategy team
• Partner closely with platform operations and data governance to ensure the COE has what it needs to execute
• Establish intake, prioritization, and governance processes that allow the COE to operate efficiently and consistently
• Serve as a trusted advisor to go-to-market and commercial leaders on how platforms can support their priorities
• Translate business needs into platform priorities and maintain alignment between the COE and firm-wide revenue goals

Enable Go-To-Market and Commercial Teams

• Design and oversee enablement programs that improve how sellers, PMDs, business development professionals, and client-facing teams use commercial tools day to day
• Ensure our go-to-market and commercial teams are leveraging platforms in ways that actively support pipeline development, client relationship management, and business development activity
• Monitor adoption and productivity metrics and develop targeted interventions where gaps exist
• Partner with service line and go-to-market leadership to build sustained engagement and a culture of effective platform use
• Ensure training is practical, role-relevant, and grounded in how our commercial teams actually work

Oversee Onboarding onto the Global Customer Platform

• Lead onboarding strategy and discovery for any team joining the GT network including acquisitions, new market entries, or firm expansions to understand their current commercial operations, client relationships, sales processes, and data landscape
• Define what a successful transition onto the global customer platform looks like and own the plan to get there without disrupting ongoing client activity
• Serve as the primary point of continuity between incoming teams and GT's commercial standards, ensuring new teams are set up to operate at full capability from day one
• Partner with integration teams, incoming leadership, and GT stakeholders to execute onboarding on schedule and within scope
• Maintain and refine frameworks that support consistent, repeatable onboarding regardless of the size or complexity of the incoming team

Contribute to Platform Strategy

• Partner with the Director and the broader Customer Platforms Strategy team to inform the long-term customer platforms roadmap in alignment with firm growth priorities
• Represent the Customer Platforms in cross-functional discussions with Commercial teams, Finance, Marketing and other firm functions
• Ensure COE standards and governance practices reflect how our go-to-market and commercial teams operate and evolve as the business does

You Have the Following Experience

What You've Done

• 8+ years in revenue operations, go-to-market enablement, sales operations, or a related commercial role
• Driven platform adoption across go-to-market or commercial teams in a professional services or client-facing organization
• Led onboarding, commercial integration, or systems transition work including in M&A or firm expansion contexts
• Led and developed teams in a matrixed, professional services environment
• Operated as a business-side owner of CRM platforms (Dynamics 365 or equivalent) configuration or development experience is not required

What Sets You Apart

• You lead with business outcomes, not system features technology is the means, not the end
• You understand what go-to-market and commercial teams need to be productive, and you know how to remove the friction that gets in their way
• You know how to influence senior stakeholders and shift entrenched behaviors across a complex organization
• You bring structure to ambiguous environments and create operating models that hold up over time
• You communicate with confidence at the executive level and make complex ideas accessible without losing substance
• Professional services, Big 4, or financial advisory background strongly preferred

The base salary range for this position in the firm’s Chicago, IL office only is between $152,000 and $228,000 per year.