Eric Thorsen Email & Phone Number

Ann Arbor, Mi, Us

Detroit, Mi, Us

Mountain View, Ca, Us

Exciting opportunity to relocate and help the talented Canadian Sales team:• Lead the development and implementation of innovative solutions to drive pipeline and revenue success in Canadian Enterprise and Public Sector accounts.• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to optimize sales strategies and enhance customer engagement.• Drive revenue through strategic sales initiatives and effective client relationship management.

Mountain View, Ca, Us

Added responsibility for Application Modernization team to existing group of SAP and Apigee, requiring alignment among team members with disparate goals, challenging personalities, and lack of follow-through. Instilled values and team relationships that improved camaraderie, growth, and overall impact, driving team members to successfully exceed sales goals. * Encouraged personal outcomes with focus on 1:1 coaching and team-based creative exercises. Resulting success established more clarity in customer deliverables, improved team relationships, and added psychological safety for personal motivations and goals.* Substantially improved team reputation resulting in increased utilization and direct impact on sales, exceeding quota for the first time in three years. * Promoted and coached a team member to be rated among the highest in the department, resulting in a promotion to leadership within the company. * Led largest team (61 FTEs) in my group (302 FTEs) to achieve the highest performance department-wide due to emphasis on collaboration, mutual success, and outcome-based delegation. * Reorganized management roles by rewarding former CEM with specialty role, promoting within team to manage and support Platform Engineering role. Resulting team dynamics allowed personal expression and joint success.

Mountain View, Ca, Us

Added responsibility for transition of Apigee CE and COE team to our specialist org following acquisition. Required close collaboration with teams to ensure product awareness and collaboration with other solutions. Created a culture of partnership where previously a siloed mentality had separated the team from rest of company. Simplified and streamlined customer presentations, implementation guides, and engagement procedures. Created positive culture through alignment programs with greater org, led by team members.* Coordinate with sales leadership to embed sellers into subregions with customer engineers, hiring GCP leaders to create cohesive approach designed for sales execution and commercial success. * Emphasize teamwork, fostering CE collaboration and securing joint wins across subregion, resulting in faster time through sales funnel (from 90 days down to 30-45 days due to team-built Accelerators) and increased revenue. * Contribute personally to improve relationships, ensuring Apigee's presence in territory planning sessions and valued input to account team strategy sessions. These efforts resulted in improved engagement time, faster access to customers, accelerated wins; and product gaps communicated back to engineering/PM faster through interlocks.* Recruited external leadership to complete management team, leading to improved collaboration and encouraging unique thinking and problem-solving in a once-siloed organization.

Mountain View, Ca, Us

Hired to create and manage SAP CE team for North America. Designed presales team in matrixed national teams supporting customers, sellers, and engineers with scalable and flexible structure. Created and implemented Retail-specific SAP Data pitch and demonstration in collaboration with GTM resources to enhance top-of-funnel pipeline via partners. Grew team performance from zero to over 140% of annual revenue number.* Coached a team member to grow into management as my responsibilities expanded. CE was elevated to M1 role, continuing effective team leadership. Due to continued coaching, the individual went on to be recognized globally as model for SAP CE excellence during Promotion review.* Created challenge-lab based proficiency framework to evaluate and ensure consistent quality and knowledge across SAP CE team. Innovative lab structure required CE candidates to produce customer-facing materials and present in limited time slot to peers and executives who would then provide immediate feedback. Results were strong and created an established framework later used for other teams. * Personally instrumental in NorthAm deals, including SAP RISE, IaaS Replatforming, and data extraction utilizing SAP Cortex.

Scottsdale, Az, Us

Hired to a new role at the company: Field CTO – which was created for my skills in business and technology – while also taking on global leadership for JDA Software’s technology platform strategy. Offered technical guidance to JDA customers, elevating IT prominence in traditionally overlooked sectors. Supervised and monitored highly skilled global team of technical professionals, orchestrating leadership across disciplines. Cultivated internal and robust partnerships with marketing, development, and field leadership to shape product advancements.* Championed JDA strategy, steered architectural direction, and drove product evolution; actively engaged top-tier customer executives in technology and supply chain sectors.* Garnered public acclaim as leading technical influencer through analyst relations, speaking engagements, and social media initiatives.* Delivered compelling value propositions to strategic customers, highlighting JDA’s strengths in technology, architecture, cloud solutions, security, and algorithm enhancement.* Crafted and presented value-focused messages and product demonstrations showcasing extensibility, integration capabilities, and robust modern API functionalities.

Santa Clara, Ca, Us

Created and deployed successful retail technical scenarios like achievements at Hortonworks. Cultivated and maintained global partner relationships, engaging with key executives.* Produced and enabled sales team on GPU technology documentation to drive retail advancements globally. Key areas are Loss Prevention, Shopper Tracking, E-commerce Recommendation Engines, and Autonomous Commerce.* Family moved to Silicon Valley, facilitating close collaboration with development teams, executives, and partner management. * Leveraged retail expertise and personal network to identify over $150M in GPU revenue from targeted use cases.* Developed use cases, focusing on Machine Learning, Deep Neural Networks for Visual Recognition, and Artificial Intelligence.

Santa Clara, California, Us

Directed team of seven industry specialists with focus on leveraging their seasoned expertise through strategic coaching. Educated team members on best practices and set leading examples, implementing performance metrics and providing continuous coaching to enhance productivity and industry visibility.* Mentored Industry General Managers to enhance their social influence, establishing them as thought leaders within their sectors, boosting pipeline growth of qualified leads by 50%; and revenue improvement by ~30% higher close rate – measured by engagement with Industry general managers.* Monitored team budget with strategic approach to maximize business exposure and profile through prudent investments in events, analysts, partnerships, and content.* Designed and executed compensation plans, to ensure involved sales enablement, promoting thought leadership, and scaling content creation efforts.* Engaged in 360-degree collaboration to assess leadership effectiveness, achieving highest rating among peers.* Achieved over 125% revenue growth consistently while serving as General Manager for Retail/CPG sector.

Santa Clara, California, Us

Hired to assist in building new team focused on Industry sales positioning. Spearheaded initiatives for Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods industries, leveraging insights from successful SAP models to craft compelling job descriptions, compensation plans, and best practices, aimed at enhancing thought leadership and industry representation for technical product platform. Liaised closely with Sales Leadership to effectively present to customers, strategically positioning open-source data management solutions in business contexts.* Curated diverse customer use cases and collaborated with marketing teams to create impactful webinars, white papers, videos, and customer testimonials, driving broader industry visibility and engagement.* Achieved outstanding revenue growth of over 150% within industry through strategic leadership and proactive industry representation efforts.* Authored influential blogs and tweets as Thought Leader, significantly boosting platform awareness, increasing qualified leads by ~50%; achieving higher close percentage of about ~30%; and fostering new customer engagement.* Partnered with existing customers to develop comprehensive customer journey content, showcasing successful platform deployments to serve as guidelines and models for prospective clients.

Walldorf, Bw, De

Based on the success I had in the Global Account Director role, I was asked to move into a role working with GAD's and customers in my home region. Our team managed 16 strategic accounts with household brand names in the Midwest, across a variety of industries.We specialized in managing the specific needs of an enterprise technology relationship. We built and managed governance models, long-term strategic plans, and architectural roadmaps in conjunction with these forward-thinking customers. Effective engagement by my team delivered a jointly-adopted and agreed-upon goal of cooperation and development that is mutually beneficial.I'm privileged to have worked with such a great team who is among the brightest at SAP. They consistently manage what is needed for their customer, the industry, and the relationship.

Walldorf, Bw, De

Based on my expertise in SAP technology, and ability to manage a team of professionals, I moved into a unique role, managing a single customer in the retail space. I had been involved with this customer from the initial sales engagement in 2006, and cultivated valuable relationships and knowledge of their industry.A Global Account Director (GAD) is a unique position at SAP. Focus on long-term governance and strategy is matched with short-term revenue and customer satisfaction. You truly see the complete breadth of the software life cycle, both from the customer's and SAP's vantage point. The Global Account Director leads the Global Account Team and Strategy to:• Drive revenue growth across all lines of business (Software, Services, Support)• Establish a proactive strategic and co-innovative customer Relationship, focusedon pipeline growth to deliver consistent, predictable and sustainable revenues.• Establish and lead 3+ year Joint Account Strategy and Roadmap with the customer• Lead the SAP Account Team to maximize customer value.• Drive an effective Joint Governance Model ensuring joint alignment and sponsorship(executive, management, steering and project committees).• Lead communication of business value to customer business and IT stakeholders• Build strategic relationships with the business• Drive adoption of SAP innovations in the account first

Walldorf, Bw, De

I joined SAP as the technology platform called Netweaver was just being created. Netweaver provided the "glue" between SAP Applications, and allowed customers to easily take advantage of their investment in core ERP, CRM, SRM, PLM, and Supply Chain.By combining my communication skills with a passion for technology, I was able to articulate value to the most cynical IT professionals. SAP had earned a reputation for core integration, and through the benefits of the Netweaver Technology Platform, this integration extended throughout a company's application landscape. It was my job to articulate and demonstrate the immense value of this enterprise integration.Through my focus on all industries, I was able to help customers see the value of a heterogeneous landscape, stitched together with technology from SAP. This also provided a rich foundation on which to build value from additional investments in SAP applications. I was honored to be selected the #1 SE in North America in 2007, having shown value to sales cycles in Retail, Consumer Products, Financial Services, Life Sciences, and Mining.My tenure in Solutions continued as the Netweaver platform "grew up" and evolved to be a predominant technology platform in enterprise computing. The SAP Portal technology, Business Warehouse, Mobility, and Integration platform represent the solid foundation that exists today for groundbreaking applications like SAP HANA, Mobility, and Cloud.

The dot-com startup Synchrony represented the best thinking in Cincinnati at the turn of the century. In the rapid growth times of the dot-com startup, Cincinnati witnessed some incredible ideas come to life. Synchrony was a brilliant idea backed by visionary leadership, venture capital, and the entrepreneurial commitment required for a successful startup. Synchrony's multi-tenant, cloud-based solution provided support for a virtual call center, uniquely blending the accessibility of the internet with the robust reliability of the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS), delivering a web-based Java Applet that functioned along with the bullet-proof resilient copper telephone lines. This blend of internet technology with call-center switch-based telephony delivered the flexibility required for call centers serving multiple brands, banners, or the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) organizations. I joined the company as an Inside Sales Rep, and covered the southern region of the continental US. I successfully identified, grew, and closed business in a net-new territory, finding both new green-field companies, as well as existing "brick and mortar" companies who were interested in equipping call centers with the benefit of this product. It was at Synchrony that I discovered the concept of PreSales and became a technology solutions professional, focusing on the proper positioning and demonstration of this key technology to strategic sales cycles nationwide.Eventually Synchrony was absorbed into another dot-com and eventually sold to a local computing vendor. The technology was outstanding, and continues to support a number of other concepts today.

Thorsoft was a bet, followed by a commitment, delivering a dream. As the wild west of desktop development, computer networking, and personal computers was evolving, I quickly realized this was more than a fad, and became quite excited about the options to build something marketable, useful, and stimulating for business.When talking with some friends at the publishing company where I worked, I debated that I knew enough to do this on my own. This bet turned out to be fortuitous, as no more than six months later, I was delivering software and collecting a check from a local municipality who needed an application to track their recycling program.I hired liberal arts majors who had a passion for technology. There were five of us at any time, with collective backgrounds from English, History, Art, Journalism, or Political Science. We all had technology fever and enjoyed delivering creative solutions to businesses in the tri-state area.Some major projects included technical writing for national marketing firms, transportation companies, and a large consumer products company.We developed an application for Manufacturers Reps. Think of commissions as a percentage of a percentage of a percentage, with key account assignments and the necessary accounting. This was sold as a mail-order product nation-wide with significant adoption.We also jumped into the emerging Customer Relationship Management (CRM) marketplace, then called Sales Force Automation (SFA). We represented GoldMine, Tracker, Telemagic, and SalesLogix. My family grew and my wife retired from teaching. The business was taking off. We were acquired by a larger company in 1997, and I focused exclusively on technology sales.

My first "real" job out of college. I was hired for my English degree and ability to be a working manager. My management responsibility was to supervise and streamline the tasks of the production department: Typists, Proofreaders, and Printing.All work was done on a vintage WANG word processing system, which cost hundreds of dollars per month to maintain. The proofreaders literally "cut" and "pasted" the work done by the typists, and hard copy went back and forth until the proofs were error-free. Printing of complex dual-column type was printed on custom-manufactured wide paper, and reduced at final printing to fit an 8.5x11 paper book.Needless to say the operations were at least one century old. I stumbled upon a PC in the back conference room and figured out how to simulate the printed output using WordPerfect. By investing in some personal computers, an HP Laserjet printer, and a disk conversion tool to read the WANG media, I created a new system for the company which cut cost, improved efficiency and raised morale. ROI was in a few months, and ongoing savings directly impacted the health of the company.My job managing the team was combined with evenings and weekends ironing out technology issues and stringing network cable to replace our "sneakernet".This was the catharsis I needed to realize my life should be spent in technology.