Senior Practice Manager, Professional Services - India

As a Senior Practice Manager within Professional Services, you will handle aiding Practice Directors/Regional PS Leaders with managing Professional Services. You will be accountable for Cornerstone's growing customer and partner base on the design, implementation, and ongoing support of the full suite of products and services. You will also manage and handle project or account escalations and provide pre-sales support when needed. You will be responsible for ensuring on-time, high-quality deliverables and high levels of client satisfaction. You will be responsible for mentoring project team members in all facets of project governance including developing project scope, timelines, budgets, and deliverable schedules. You will also identify opportunities with existing customers for additional services.

In This Role You Will:
Build Practice by establishing processes, procedures, and templates for pre-sales through delivery experience.


Support the Services Sales on pursuits based on knowledge from previous project/customer experiences.
Mentor and provide coaching to consultants and project managers.
Manage and build client relationships with key decision makers from project inception to post-implementation; ensure customer satisfaction.
Manage account and customer escalations; facilitate on-site client meetings where needed; articulate issues and resolution options clearly and succinctly.
Monitor on-site and remote day-to-day activities between client and CSOD personnel during the projects.
Interact with account managers, sales, support, success, product engineering, and product management to ensure organizational continuity.
Review weekly status reports and project updates that are within your portfolio. Communicate any escalations or risks that can cause escalations to the Regional PS Leaders.
Provide pre-sales support to the Services Sales and look for opportunities to upsell to existing customers who are in flight on projects or recurring services.
Assume areas of ownership within the Professional Services department for internal and external development of staff, processes, procedures, methodologies, and areas of excellence.
Hire and train staff for project delivery while managing billable & productive utilization KPIs for your team.
People Management - Mentoring and coaching a team of direct reports.
Manage partner relationships in coordination with the Alliances and Partner Success Management teams and provide governance for partner-delivered projects.
Plan and manage services project/portfolio schedules and budgets.
Drive best practices adoption and continuous improvement initiatives.
Mentor team members aspiring to take up Practice Manager as their next role.
You've Got What It Takes If You Have:
A minimum of 5-7+ years' experience managing software as a service (SAAS) deployment.
Proven record of accomplishment in developing and keeping profitable and referenceable customer relationships
Confirmed experience in proactively identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks during bid development and project execution; managing delivery of projects; identifying, developing, and closing services engagements.
Demonstrate and ensure timely and thorough communication of strategy, deliverable status, and results.
Experience in measuring the progress of projects against established objectives such as revenue, expense management, utilization metrics, delivery quality, and customer satisfaction.
Exposure to monitoring results and taking corrective action to ensure the achievement of the objectives within budget.
Have experience as an escalation contact for implementation issues with the customer decision-maker for resolution.
Ability to build out value proposition presentations and service offerings for Professional Services during pre-sales cycle at prospects location addressing all facets of the implementation process.
Excellent communication skills both written/oral; excellent presentation and facilitation skills.
Skilled at rapidly creating visual frameworks (process maps, architecture diagrams, data flows) using Lucidchart, Visio, or equivalent tools to support solution discussions, problem-solving, and executive communication.
AI-Enabled Consulting and Outcome-Driven Delivery
Leverage AI-powered tools and capabilities to enhance delivery efficiency, accelerate analysis, and improve decision-making across implementations.
Utilize AI in day-to-day consulting activities such as requirements analysis, documentation drafting, solution design validation, test case generation, and project insights to optimize time spent on operational tasks.
Drive a shift in the team's focus from configuration-heavy execution to value-led consulting, enabling consultants to spend more time on business advisory and solution outcomes.
Encourage and guide teams to adopt AI-assisted workflows to streamline implementation activities (e.g., documentation, discovery insights, data analysis, reporting preparation, and knowledge synthesis).
Ensure teams leverage AI responsibly while maintaining data security, compliance, and quality of outputs.
Business and Outcome Orientation
Demonstrate strong understanding of business outcomes enabled by the product suite, and guide teams to align solution design with measurable customer objectives.
Translate product capabilities into industry-relevant business use cases, helping customers understand the value realization from the platform rather than focusing only on feature configuration.
Partner with customers to identify business transformation opportunities, ensuring implementations deliver tangible outcomes such as improved workforce productivity, talent insights, learning effectiveness, or performance alignment.
Guide consultants to frame discussions around business processes, use cases, and outcomes, rather than modules or technical components.
Build industry awareness and help teams contextualize how product capabilities apply across different customer environments and industry scenarios.
AI-Driven Practice Leadership
Promote a culture of AI-enabled productivity within the practice by identifying opportunities where AI can reduce manual effort and improve delivery quality.
Evaluate emerging AI capabilities within the product ecosystem and external tools, ensuring the practice remains current and leverages them effectively during implementations.
Coach consultants on using AI as a thought partner for solutioning, problem-solving, and advisory conversations with customers.
Extra Dose of Awesome If You Have:
Strong understanding of HR processes and talent management practices.
Technical Degree preferred, Computer Science degree a plus.
Project Management Professional (PMP) certification is a plus (or willingness to work towards).
Experience with Salesforce (SFDC), MS Project, Smartsheet, Kantata or other PSA.
Pre-sales support experience.
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