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Guidewire

Business Owner, Digital Solutions - Remote, US

Guidewire Software provides the industry standard technology platform used to run and transform Property & Casualty (P&C) insurers world-wide. We execute against this mission by understanding the complex and pressing needs of our customers and delivering high quality solutions to fit those needs.

The Business Owner Organization is accountable for Guidewire performance in both growth and profitability.  We engage with the market to understand opportunities and needs in this rapidly changing industry.  We partner with cross functional teams to build financially sustainable, tech-driven value propositions from solution ideation to market execution, and evangelize these opportunities to the market. 

A Business Owner is a key leadership position within the Business Owner Organization at Guidewire, responsible for the profitable growth of a subset of Guidewire’s market facing solutions. Reporting to a Principal Business Owner, the Business Owner works closely with customers, the field, and product management to capture the voice of the customer and transform that knowledge into a compelling solution vision and set of executable requirements and bring that solution to market.

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The successful Business Owner will exhibit the following attributes:

  • Successfully defines and articulates the requirements to fulfill the market facing value propositions and works hand-in-hand with our Product leadership to execute on those requirements.
  • Contributes to long-term success of Guidewire by creating business plans, executing against those plans, and communicating cross-functionally to gain internal alignment.
  • Key resource for Guidewire sales and customers, and an entrepreneur who sees opportunity and can coordinate the organization as well as partners to achieve our goals.
  • Catalyst for innovation by identifying new value propositions that showcase the strengths of the Guidewire InsurancePlatform from concept through delivery.
  • Evangelist that develops and delivers the go to market vision, thought leadership, solution packaging, and message (in conjunction with product marketing and marketing teams) to motivate market and customer adoption of the value propositions.

Skills of a Business Owner

Business Owners share these common skills, and the ideal candidate will exhibit an impressive track record in a number of these areas:

  • Understanding business drivers and the impact of technology.
  • Applying technology and innovation to optimize, disrupt and drive business results, preferably in the Property and Casualty Insurance arena.
  • Financial acumen to model and build business cases to support opportunities and investments.
  • Leadership – ability to be forceful in articulating and defending a vision, and to influence without direct authority multiple stakeholders. Ability to not take disagreement personally and empathy for understanding the point of view of others.
  • Working with senior business leaders to develop trusted, counselling relationships and influencing them to act; Working collaboratively with different groups in mid- to large-size organizations.
  • Working in fast-changing, agile environments with rapidly evolving information and shifting priorities.
  • Objectivity and openness to others' views and continuously builds a positive culture, defaults to team work style and collaborative information sharing.
  • Excellent skills and talent for communications in all forms and media - spoken, written, visual, presentations, websites, social media, video; formal and informal. Effective at engaging with industry professionals, executives and analysts at multiple levels as well as building support across internal peers and stakeholders.
  • Ability to work with Product Marketing to ensure consistency between strategy/vision and outbound marketing materials, guide competitive intelligence efforts, win/loss analysis, market analysis, and outbound collateral.
  • Leading change (vs. managing people).

Logistics of being a Business Owner

Guidewire is a global company, and have employees across the globe. You can be remote, as long as you can be present at important customer and internal discussions as needed with convenient access to an international airport. You are expected to travel 25 – 40% of your time. You will have exceptional flexibility to be independent and manage your schedule as you see fit.  While not required to work out of a Guidewire office, it is encouraged when and where feasible.

Measures of success

Business Owners' primary mandate is to build and take Guidewire value propositions and make them successful in the market. In order to do this, the successful Business Owner should have, or should quickly develop, a deep expertise in his/her solution area. In addition, he/she should also attain a holistic, end-to-end view of the Guidewire product portfolio and be able to work across global, cross-functional teams that cross Product, Sales, Services, etc.  A key deliverable for success will be the development and stewardship of a go-to-market business plan and set of requirements with revenue and profit growth targets (Annual Bookings Contracts, margin, number of customer accounts) within your solution area that is crafted in collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders. The BO should be able to successfully distill market facing value propositions into a set of crisply defined business requirements that can then be translated into capabilities. Other success metrics that the business owner organization will be measured on:

  • Extent to which our customers buy into our vision (e.g., attach rates, retention rates, market ratings).
  • Success in aligning our internal teams (e.g., training participation metrics, Net Promoter Scores).
  • Our ambitious multi-year growth projection targets (revenue growth of 20% and operating margin of 30%).
  • Other specific objectives as defined by the Principal Business Owner.

The Business Owner will also be equipped with a set of tools and evolve new tools to enable success in the areas of ownership.

Career path of a Business Owner

Playing the Business Owner role for 2 – 5 years will help you develop a combination of business and technology skills that are rare in the insurance industry. Within Guidewire, you will be well positioned to take on a Principal Business Owner role, perhaps for a new Business unit, grown organically or through acquisition. At Guidewire, the Business Owner orgs own the P&L of a business unit and coordinate activities between Product, Sales, Services and corporate functions. If you want to pursue a more technical route, you will likely have significant leadership opportunity in the Guidewire Product organizations. Finally, while we will love for you to build a long career at Guidewire, if you wish to pursue external opportunities, your skills will likely be highly valued by insurers, technology vendors, InsurTech startups and venture capital groups.

 

Qualifications

  • Highly motivated, self-directed, and attentive to detail.
  • 5 years plus progressive experience managing and directing a solution specialized in the area of insurance or related-area technology (IoT, digital solutions, etc.).
  • Business experience in a SaaS company preferred.
  • Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment.  Demonstrated ability in establishing solutions to solve business problems.
  • Ability to bring together and collaborate with global, cross-functional teams.

 

About the Business Owner Organization

The Business Owner Organization is charged with the responsibility to define Guidewire’s market informed, ambitious, multi-year strategy. Our plans are informed by our commitment to deliver to the value propositions our customers demand:

  • Leverage Cloud Platforms to modernize and optimize business to achieve strategic goals.
  • Unleash the power of core, digital and data: explore new value propositions, markets, channels and business models; predict and automate decisions and operations.
  • Accelerate Time to Value (TTV) and lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
  • Harness the power of ecosystem of partners.

The Business Owner Organization is populated by a team of creative, ambitious and market driven entrepreneurs motivated to deliver products and solutions that deliver high value and high margin growth, while engaging the needs of the market and our customers. The group aims to deliver overall revenue growth (20%) and operating margin (30%) targets across the portfolio.

Job ID: o1sc6fwv-CKsSVfwJ
Employment Type: Other

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