Industry Consultant – Transportation – SAS Institute Inc – Cary, NC

SAS seeks an Industry Consultant with proven experience in government Department of Transportation (DOT) agency operations to provide strategic support to SAS US Government and Public Sector sales teams in achieving revenue targets and to support successful customer engagements and collaboration with USPS and CIS delivery and hosting services. Consultant will provide industry/business domain, change management consulting, and public policy expertise specifically related to how data and analytics can drive improved decision making and outcomes in transportation operations and policy.

Reporting to the Director of Industry Consulting in the U.S. Government and Public Sector business unit, the candidate will provide industry, sales, and implementation support for SAS within the federal and state transportation ecosystem. Responsibilities and functions include:

Knowing SAS

• Learns current SAS products, practices, service offerings and resources that help position SAS within the federal and state transportation ecosystem and grow new customer sales and solution implementation opportunities in support of transportation policy areas.

• Participates in product and solution training to acquire and maintain a detailed level of product knowledge of core components of SAS offerings, how each solution addresses transportation related business challenges, competitive information to identify how our solution stands apart, and what challenges/limitations may be encountered.

• Utilizes knowledge of broad range of SAS software to design and demonstrate solutions to emerging and unique customer needs using current SAS offerings.

• Understanding of enterprise level business process flows in areas related to supported solutions.
• Understands, utilizes, and communicates best practice methodologies associated with transportation programs and related information systems internally and externally.

Planning and Supporting Sales Activities

• Develop and support industry specific business development strategies that enable sales teams to establish SAS as the preferred partner in the transportation space for key advanced analytic capabilities and platforms. These strategies will need to address what solutions are best suited for current and future client needs for all areas of transportation including infrastructure, safety, operations, and financial management.
• Provide support for corporate and sales goal attainment and strategic guidance on business plan development for SAS industry-focused account teams.
• Provide support and strategic guidance to SAS sales organization leadership to develop new account penetration strategies.
• Assist with identifying additional business needs and sales opportunities to address what solutions are best suited for current and future client base
• Articulate compelling SAS capabilities at the C-level and across organizational layers
• Work with government affairs team, provide talking points, quantitative and qualitative ROI, and awareness of potential external communications from the Department that may impact SAS.
• Identify competitive advances in the marketplace.

Supporting and Growing Industry and Customer Relationships

• Identify industry trends and sources of major disruption in the industry that well-position SAS and its offerings
• Establish and support strategic vision and value propositions based on SAS offerings and the demand of the industry
• Establish relationships with customers including strategic high-level influencers, policymakers, decision-makers, operational management, and end users that establishes SAS as a credible and trusted advisor for informing current and future technology and analytic needs.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the interdependence between the technical side and people side of the client engagements to meet program objectives
• Builds a trusted relationship with account manager, USPS, CIS, IC’s and client account to provide practical and theoretical guidance in the business value of program.
• Support onsite activities at client location 2-3 days per week to ensure relationship building and facilitate client’s questions to development team.

• Collaborate with delivery team for bi-weekly updates to the client sponsors for each project workstream, help facilitate quarterly stakeholder meetings with project managers and the client, and support development of business value and ROI for each workstream.
• Identify and support escalate issues within the organization to ensure quick response and awareness to client.

• Ability to motivate and guide internal and external teams to ensure accurate, efficient, and timely delivery of service.
• Participates in discovery meetings to help project managers collect, analyze, clarify and document business requirements during requirements gathering meetings.
• Assists in the response to RFI/RFP’s utilizing the RFP Repository and crafting thorough and compelling answers with a focus on domain and business value.
• Ability to maintain SME-level industry and product knowledge and inform the company of changing market conditions and competitive issues.
• Provide customer engagement activities including establishing business requirements, planning and executing adoption and education activities, visioning on expansion of analytic work streams, and building business value statements.
• Identify competitive partnership opportunities to further SAS solution opportunities
• Provide support for all states of sales engagement to foster current account relationships and drive greater business growth.
• Build customer references and support strategic opportunity growth through project expansion and identification of new sales opportunities.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelors’ Degree, preferably in Engineering, Transportation Management, Transportation Public Policy, Public Administration, Business, Computer Science, MIS, or related discipline. Masters, Graduate or Doctorate degrees are considerable plus.
• Require 8+ years of experience in transportation agency operations and/or policy.
• Experience with IT or analytic system implementation a plus
• Proven ability to work collaboratively to facilitate business development strategies
• Excellent communication skills and ability to work collaboratively in a dynamic team environment.
• Excellent project management and facilitation skills.

Additional Requirements:

• Demonstrated industry relationships and credibility with ability to present to all levels of an organization.
• Excellent analytical and creative problem-solving skills.
• Ability to work independently, or as part of a team.
• Strong project management and facilitation skills.
• Ability to understand and translate complex technical and business information to internal/external audiences with varying depths of knowledge regarding technology and public policy.
• Public speaking experience.
• Ability to relate current industry issues and trends to SAS offerings.
• Work Location: Cary, North Carolina

Additional Information:

SAS is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants are considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law. Read more:Equal Employment Opportunity is the Law. Also view the supplementEEO is the Law, and the Pay Transparency notice.

Equivalent combination of education, training and experience may be considered in place of the above qualifications. The level of this position will be determined based on the applicant’s education, skills and experience. Resumes may be considered in the order they are received. SAS employees performing certain job functions may require access to technology or software subject to export or import regulations. To comply with these regulations, SAS may obtain nationality or citizenship information from applicants for employment. SAS collects this information solely for trade law compliance purposes and does not use it to discriminate unfairly in the hiring process.

In order to work at SAS, you must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. If there is a medical or religious reason preventing you from receiving an available COVID-19 vaccination, and you are selected as a candidate for consideration, we have an accommodations process in place to evaluate those requests.