Derek O'Grady

Derek O'Grady

Customer Experience and Operations Leader

Massachusetts
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Summary

ROI-driven customer experience leader with a background of delivering positive results and transformational change via comprehensive strategic planning, active cross-functional collaboration, disciplined action planning and execution and passionate employee engagement. Lengthy track record building and leading customer experience and operations functions and designing and implementing global process improvement initiatives.

Experience

2017 Jan - 2018 Nov
Vice President Customer Experience
ACI Worldwide / Waltham, MA

Promoted into newly created customer experience (CX) leader role after identifying areas for enterprise CX improvement in prior position. Created, championed and executed the strategy to build a world-class CX program at ACI that is a competitive differentiator for the company. Combined short-term action plans to improve ACI’s customer experience with ongoing employee focused efforts to create a sustainable, long-term customer obsessed culture at ACI.

  • Increased company’s Customer Experience Index 16% in three years (for perspective NPS scores for software and technology companies dropped over 30% during the same time period).
  • Introduced the “X-Factor” as a way to demonstrate alignment between Customer Experience and Employee Experience goals and prioritize actions.
  • Initiated and chaired ACI’s executive level, cross-functional CX Committee with accountability for identifying and governing enterprise and business unit action plan portfolio.
  • Created the “Customer Experience Guiding Principles” to articulate a consistent CX vision to employees and set behaviors that define how ACI wants its customer experience to be perceived.
  • Enhanced the annual customer relationship survey to include focus on key ACI growth drivers and creation of composite CX Index that encompassed customer satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Launched an Executive Sponsor program that aligned ACI executives with counterparts at High Value Customers. Resulted in 7% improvement in “Relationship with Senior Management” score.
  • Introduced Customer Journey Mapping as a CX best practice which improved responsiveness across key customer journeys including support communication for critical events and implementation process.
  • Transformed ACI’s digital support experience into an integral part of the overall Customer Experience, leveraging agile approach to extend self-service capabilities beyond technical support to other areas of the customer lifecycle.
  • Renovated the ACI User Group and ACI Exchange customer conference experiences resulting in an improved customer perception of ACI as a market leader.
  • Key Note Speaker at Greenwich Associates Customer Experience Leadership Forum (2016) and ACI Exchange (2015-2017).Panelist at Consero Customer Experience Conference (2018).
2014 Jan - 2016 Dec
Vice President Business Operations
ACI Worldwide / Waltham,

Key member of the Customer Management and Maintenance (CM&M) Senior Leadership Team reporting to the Group President with managed staff of 16. Served as Ops Leader for P&L organization, managing all operational activities and regularly interfacing with Executive Leadership Team and CEO.

  • Led consistent and high-quality execution of annual key business processes on-time and on-budget, including strategic planning, operational planning, and budget management.
  • Integrated people and processes into business due to numerous acquisitions over time in position, meeting all deadlines and business goals.
  • Designed and scaled high-performance operations organization, enabling CM&M ($400M+ P&L) to exceed budget and operating goals.
  • Enabled continued growth of organization and expansion into new businesses via program management excellence and operationalization of key business processes.
  • Generated exceptional team engagement scores of 92.9 versus 74.1 company score.
  • Coordinated ACI’s enterprise-wide strategic planning for 3 P&L’s and Technology.
2012 Jan - 2014 Dec
Director Business Operations
ACI Worldwide / Waltham,

Partnered with internal department leaders to provide operational leadership and support for customer facing organization. Maintained oversight of 3rd party call center partners used for technical support. Managed global team focused on delivery of world-class service, consistently exceeding SLA and customer satisfaction goals.

  • Directed successful integration of S1 corporation employees and processes into ACI.
  • Executed timely disaster recovery after 3rd party call center ceased operations; coordinated global ACI employees to handle customer priority 1 calls and led concurrent activation of new vendor.
  • Mentored candidates for LEAD24 (Global HELP24’s analyst-level leadership development program).
  • Recognized by peers as Salutatorian for Customer Management Leadership Program.
2010 Jan - 2012 Dec
Program Manager
ACI Worldwide / Waltham,

Launched and implemented “Knowledge Base” program for technical support organization. Created strategy to activate online knowledge base to assist customers solve technical support issues independently. Successfully operationalized and deployed program on global scale.

  • Created strategy for implementing program that resulted in 100% Global HELP24 analyst certification.
  • Led program team responsible for designing, launching and sustaining the program.
  • Conducted and executed Six Sigma process optimization projects for Global HELP24 support teams.
2008 Jan - 2009 Jul
Sr. Manager Sales Tools & Readiness
Monster / Maynard, MA

Managed team of 5 that ensured Sales readiness for upcoming Product releases on Monster.com and maintained and enhancing global sales tools.

  • Introduced and attained 100% adoption of new CRM system for field sales staff.
  • Worked closely with IT on implementation for $100M CRM project.
2004 Jan - 2008 Dec
Director Sales Technology
Fidelity Investments / Marlboro

Led the technology program that enabled the growth strategy for Fidelity’s Tax-Exempt Sales group.

  • Consistently delivered innovative lead generation, lead scoring and efficiency enhancements that were key drivers for sales results that grew from $1.2 B sales in 2004 to $2.1 B in 2007.
  • Conceived program components, created business cases and documentation and competed for funding through the company’s capital investment process (received $700K funding in 2005, $1.1M in 2006, $2.1M in 2007).
  • Successfully proposed and implemented a program that generated leads from external websites and routed them to the sales team using intelligent business rules ($12M sales lift in the first six months).

Prior to Director role above held progressively challenging roles at Fidelity Investments including Project Manager, Lead System Analyst, and Associate Financial Representative.

Education

1985 - 1989
University of New Hampsire
Communication

Skills