Profile: Our client is a UK leader in providing schools and colleges with a diverse set of educational products, ICT services and solutions all designed to support teaching and learning.
Sector: Education Technology
Number of employees:
Recruitment requirements
Job description: Our client is one of the UK's leading providers of onsite ICT support and solutions designed to support teaching and learning for educational establishments. Support to the school is provided by a technical support team based onsite and remotely, project managers and educationalists as required and they are all overseen/managed by the Service Account Manager. The relationship with the schools is via managed service support contracts that range from delivering an individual school's requirements through to large circa £40m plus contracts with local/central government. Maintaining their reputation as a partner of choice for education and growing this business is of vital strategic importance to our client and the role of Service Account Manager is essential to achieving this.

Purpose of the role:

The Service Account Manager will be entirely accountable for ensuring that schools needs are understood and met and will be empowered to take the action necessary to achieve this and to develop profitable, longstanding relationships with these establishments. The Service Account Manager will work with senior school leaders and the delivery teams that they manage to ensure that an excellent service is delivered and a firm basis is developed upon which to retain and grow the business. Field based and reporting to the Regional Director, the Service Account Manager will typically oversee 16 schools and will have line management responsibility for onsite delivery teams being able to mobilise the support required and create a shared understanding of the customer’s requirements.

Role and responsibilities

• Customer Retention: Develop strong relationships with key customers, manage your teams and influence appropriately within the company to ensure a minimum of 95% managed service contract renewals is achieved. Be an advocate for driving customer focus within the support teams and more broadly within the organisation. Take accountability for the resolution of customer issues. Ensure each school endorses a technical roadmap, shaped in collaboration with our client, which secures their long term partnership with the school.
• Growth: Recognise, create and seize opportunities that will deliver significant business growth within your schools and additional establishments.
• Profit: Take appropriate action both in terms of growing the business, identifying new revenue streams and managing costs to achieve year on year profit targets. Own the P&L and protect the company's commercial position by ensuring that any financial targets and service level agreements as defined in the contracts are met. Negotiate profitable contracts.
• Management: Manage your team to ensure that, in the eyes of the customer, they are achieving operational excellence and are essential to the running of the school. Provide clarity and focus on the achievement of specific objectives.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience

• Likely to be a graduate.
• A passion and interest in education, perhaps having worked in a school or held a position as a school governor.
• Able to demonstrate account management capability or experience.
• Able to demonstrate the capability to manage effectively within a highly complex, operational environment, demonstrating good judgement, delegation and planning skills.
• Demonstrable drive, energy and passion for understanding and meeting customer needs. Able to drive the delivery teams to continually improve the service.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, a highly personable, engaging approach. Strong listening skills and the ability to adapt complex messages according to the audience.
• Ideally able to demonstrate previous experience of effective financial management (P&L), contract management and negotiation.
• Experience of motivating a team to achieve goals, managing individuals and teams effectively setting out clear expectations and monitoring ongoing delivery of results.
• Determined and self-motivated.
• Creative and resourceful problem solver.

Previous experience in this sector is not necessary, just a passion for improving standards in education. Our client would be interested to meet candidates with previous experience in account management, sales, management consultancy, general management, IT sales and educational sales.

The role will be field based, allowing candidates to organise their own time and place of work. We are looking for individuals to cover a group of schools within their local area, so that they are familiar with them. Our client is happy to explore the possibility of term-time only working if desired by the candidate.
Sector: Technology/IT Please contact rebecca.defazio@workpond.co.uk for further details and if you would like to apply?