Head of Partner Operations

*this role is open to remote working within the UK. Successful candidates will be required to travel to their closest UNiDAYS campus (London or Nottingham) on occasion.

The role in a nutshell

As the Head of Partner Operations, you will be responsible for overseeing all aspects of UNiDAYS partner support and ensuring a seamless experience for our B2B2C partners. The team will deliver end-to-end partner onboarding experience including supporting our new business team. For our existing partnerships, the team will be responsible for supporting commercial teams in executing against their respective account plans including the following: tactical promotions execution, partner affiliate network tracking best practices, partner competitive shopping, auditing, billing readiness, code management and leading the partner support function

Day to day responsibilities 

Pre-sales and launching new partnerships

• Pre-Sales. Developing our pre-sales capabilities to collaborate with partners to understand their needs, present our solutions, and create customised proposals. Working closely with internal teams, you'll ensure a smooth transition from pre-sales to post-sales support. Your ability to communicate technical concepts clearly is crucial for securing successful partnerships and contributing to our business growth.
• Defining and owning the end-to-end launch process. Work with the Commercial Operations, Retail, and Business Development teams to define the partner launch process for new partnerships for each of our implementation types: Partner side verification, affiliate networks, and UNiDAYS direct tracking.
• Launch roadmap. Manage regular launch prioritisation meetings with the commercial team to ensure we’re focusing on the right launches that support commercial account plans. Create visibility of the partner launch pipeline for commercial stakeholders to ensure internal teams and partner expectations are aligned.
• Creating new partner launch plans. Working closely with the business development team to create our partner's launch plan. Bringing together the relevant teams to execute against that plan including Marketing, CRM, Business Development, Account Manager, and most importantly the partner.

Existing partner support

• Executing partner promotional activity. The team will be receiving promotional and medis briefs for fulfilment including relevant collateral and partner codes from the account management team. They’ll then be making the relevant changes to the partner connect / marketing teams and notifying the commercial team when work is complete.
• Code management. Ongoing management of evergreen partner offers. Ensuring our partner codes are working correctly and we have sufficient codes available. The team will be monitoring code availability across our partners and contacting our partners when additional codes are required. You’ll also partner with our Data and Insight team to improve our monitoring capabilities and explore opportunities to create more automation in how we manage this with our partners.
• Monthly manual billing. You’ll be creating the link between our partners and the UNiDAYS finance team relating to our manual billing process. Ensuring that all data is received from partners monthly, in the correct format, and then uploaded to our CRM system for billing by our finance team.
• Credit notes. As with the manual billing process, the team will be receiving monthly return/cancellation data from partners. Then submit the relevant credit request via our CRM system.
• Network media campaign. Ensuring all sold media IO’s values are added into our affiliate networks in the relevant months and with the correct reference numbers to support a more effective revenue recognition process.
• Network CPA change audit. Where our commercial team are making changes to our partners contracts the team will be confirming those rates are accurately reflected within the relevant affiliate network.
• Support tooling. You’ll work closely with commercial operations to understand connectivity with our Salesforce CRM so that we’re able to have visibility on our partner’s support requirements.
• Competitive shopping. Weekly competitor shopping audit across UNiDAYS competitors to support building UNiDAYS competitor insight

Reporting and SLA management

• Defining partner service levels. As well as executing against our partner brief you’ll need to understand the impact of the support work being completed by your team. You’ll be analyzing the types of inbound requests to identify where there is low-impact work or where we are not providing the appropriate level of service for our partners.
• KPI’s. Establish and track performance metrics and KPIs for partner support teams. Managing partner support service standards for efficiency and timeliness..
• Continuous improvement. Recommend improvements to partner support services.
• Service improvement. Address deviations from service levels and implement corrective measures.
• Reporting. Working with Data and Insight (where data is required from our data warehouse) to develop effective reporting system for monitoring partner support performance 
• Gathering feedback from internal stakeholders to align services with company goals. Regularly update management and stakeholders on support performance.

Partner performance improvements

• Enhancing tracking: Strive for continuous improvement in tracking accuracy across all partner activities, such as clicks, CPA, verifications, and other pertinent metrics. Including moving partners to full value attribution and away from manual data. 
• Cultivating Partner Relationships: Establish connections with senior operational and technical leaders within our partner and affiliate networks. Gain insights into partners' goals, challenges, and their interactions with businesses akin to ours.
• Promoting Integration Excellence: Leverage industry expertise to understand the various types of implementation impacting our performance, including client-side versus server-side approaches, mobile tracking encompassing App-to-App and Mweb-to-App scenarios. Share best practices and insights with commercial teams and partners to enhance integration processes.
• Informing Product roadmap: As the key internal customer for our Partner Product team you’ll work closely with the Partner Product Manager to inform the roadmap, relating to both our internal partner management requirements offering context on partner challenges, competitive landscape, and potential opportunities to enhance our solutions.
• Staying Informed About the Industry: Ensure team representation at pertinent affiliate and industry events to stay abreast of industry developments and glean insights that can be applied at UNiDAYS. Keep abreast of technological innovations and changes in privacy laws that may affect our business. Cultivate relationships with non-competing businesses (affiliates) in the performance marketing space to identify valuable insights for potential adoption by UNiDAYS.

Team Leadership

• You’ll be leading a Partner Operations team based across the UK, Australia and US.  In addition to your inhouse team the role involves managing the relationship with our outsourcing vendor, determining tasks for outsourcing versus in-house operations. You will focus on efficient capacity planning, ensuring the team possesses the necessary skills and resources to meet business and partner demands while defining service levels for partners. Collaboration with the Commercial Operations, Billing team, Cat. Leaders, MD Identity as well as Financial Ops to ensure you’re providing effective cross functional support.

What we need from you

• Significant experience in a B2B client / partner operations role (e.g., Sales Operations, Partner Operations, Revenue Operations). In a SaaS or marketing technology business.
• Extensive leadership experience, ideally having led remote teams across multiple time zones.
• Extensive knowledge of CRM/ERP tools, experience working with Salesforce as part of the support process is highly desirable. You’ll have examples of where you have defined, improved and automated manual processes.
• Experience of affiliate / partner marketing and having working knowledge of affiliate network technology is highly desirable.
• Experience supporting commercial teams with external partner / client meeting and presentations,
• Comfortable working with senior executives and individual contributors across Commercial, Product, Support and Sales Operations areas.
• Detail-oriented, highly multi-tasked. Customer-focused.
• Exceptional analytical skills & confident working broad cross-functional teams.
• Structured, solid organisational skills including attention to detail, multi-tasking skills & bias for action.

Perks

We've accomplished a lot since we started in 2011, but in many ways, this is just the beginning. This is the chance for you to get in on ground zero. An opportunity to make a difference within the business with global reach. We are the world’s largest Student Affinity Network, with over 22 million verified members in 115 markets including the US, UK, Germany, India, Canada and Australia. We work with 800 of the world’s biggest brands globally, taking their products and services into the hearts and minds of tomorrow’s professionals, delivering engagement, building affinity and sales. You’ll also be working for a Great Place to Work CertifiedTM company who have been recognised on the UK’s Best WorkplacesTM for Wellbeing and UK's Best Workplaces for Women 2022 list. To find out more about our workplace initiatives, see our UK exclusive case study with Great Place to Work and be sure to visit our profile for more information.

We offer a fast paced, fun & social working environment where you can truly make an impact. We believe that work should enhance and complement your life which is why we leave it up to you to decide where you work. You can choose to work from your assigned campus (either Nottingham or London) or from home, whatever works best for your individual needs. Your manager may request you attend team meet ups at your campus but other than that it is up to you! We work hard at UNiDAYS, but we also believe in fair compensation for hard work. That's why we're pleased to offer all employees full access to our comprehensive benefits package.

Our perks include:

• 25 days holiday per year increasing with length of service, plus flexible bank holidays
• Competitive salaries
• 4pm finishes every Friday
• Company bonus scheme
• Company pension scheme
• Private health insurance (Vitality)
• Income protection policy
• Life assurance policy
• Employee Assistance Program
• Enhanced parental leave pay
• Core hours with flexibility around how/when you manage your time
• Regular team building activities
• The latest tech and hardware will be supplied from day one
• Good Vibes Program: we know we’ve all had to adapt to new ways of working and UNiDAYS has always taken pride in the community we’ve created in the office but we’re just as committed to creating an innovative approach to fostering connections and improving engagement outside of the office! We want to boost your remote working experience so think virtual parties, pottery classes, wellness classes and guest speakers just to name a few!
• Support for home working for all new team members. We will help assess your home set up and you can expense £150 towards any additional furniture you may need to be safe and comfortable when working from home

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability status.