David Gehant Email & Phone Number

Minneapolis, Mn, Us

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

Lead Customer Operations team through transformational development of all phases of the Customer Journey including Onboarding/Implementation, Platform Adoption, Upsell/Cross-sell, Customer Success Programming, Data Services, Digital Transformation, and Support ServicesProvide vision and leadership to team of Directors and Managers within Customer Ops team and across all partner organizations including Sales, Engineering, Product, Research, and Finance

Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

I build and improve Customer Success Organizations focused on effective Customer Onboarding, Adoption, and Retention within the SaaS/subscription model.Provided Consulting and Advisory services to two SaaS startups helping to design their Customer Success strategy and development plans.

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Hired in 2017 to increase customer retention, improve operational discipline throughout the organization, and develop scalability in service delivery and support. Conservis was successfully acquired in July 2021 by a JV between the world’s largest Ag Lender, RaboAgrifinance, and TELUS, a large Canadian telecom targeting the AgTech Industry.Increased annual retention by 27% in both revenue and customer count for Financial and Operations Management SaaS platform designed for agriculture and large scale crop productionLed and developed multi-tier Customer Success and Operations Team of 22 people across US and AustraliaTransformed company-wide culture to modern SaaS/Customer Success mindset Improved team diversity and SaaS-oriented skill maturity through growth and cultural transformationCreated management layers and role specialization to drive scalability and enhanced customer experienceHands-on coaching to identify up/cross-sell opportunities and manage risk/churnPromoted a deep understanding of SaaS and Recurring Revenue business model throughout orgOverhauled and redesigned all stages of end-to-end Customer Journey (Pre-Sales, Deal Review, Onboarding, Adoption, and Renewal)Collaborated with CEO (direct report), SVP Sales/Marketing, SVP Product, and Director of HR in development and execution of strategic initiativesPartnered with Sales team through pre-sales, deal review and contracting (all deals required my approval)Implemented Digital Training and Adoption strategy (embedded within UI) using WalkMe throughout entire Conservis platform (on-demand training and adoption)Designed and managed complex five-year capacity planning model aligned to sales forecastIntroduced annual Customer Summits, Quarterly Webinars, and Monthly Customer Newsletter to promote user community and inclusive customer engagementDeveloped sophisticated customer dashboard and metrics to manage risk and monitor usage patterns for globally distributed customer base

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

• Led and developed multi-disciplined, multi-tiered, and geographically distributed delivery organization of 40+ people responsible for Onboarding, Training, Adoption, Cross/Up Sell, Support and Retention of SaaS customer base in Healthcare IT vertical with focus on: -Increased productivity - process improvement, scalability, standardization, and automation -Improved Adoption/Retention - risk management/intervention, value-based training -Customer Experience - Customer Journey, release readiness, proactive engagement -Internal Partnership - Sales, Sales Ops, Marketing, Product, Release Management, Finance• Completed more than 15,000 implementations and training sessions per year• Redesigned end-to-end Onboarding program to promote rapid solution adoption and early detection/intervention of retention risks• Re-engineered all Salesforce.com-based performance metrics and reporting to track Customer Onboarding lifecycle, Risk Management, and Organizational Productivity• Designed and executed Salesforce.com workflow and complex historical data conversion of 260k records to support new service execution strategy• Developed and activated intervention tactics for somewhat change-resistant healthcare customer base to illuminate solution value, benefits, and ease of use• Leveraged Voice of the Customer to influence innovative feature development • Created high performing, customer-focused, and collaborative culture through team reorganization, productivity metrics, performance appraisal, and mentorship

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

• SaaS Application, Cloud Operations (DevOps), and Managed Services program ownership• Customer Experience, Customer Success, and Renewals accountability• Executive-level partnership with Sales, Product, Marketing, Legal, to develop and promote new business opportunities • P&L and resource forecasting• Escalation point and customer success storyteller • Recruit, develop, and lead multi-tier, multi-functional team of globally distributed team of technical and non-technical professionals

Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area

Selected to launch, develop, and lead two new “start-up” Enterprise Managed Application Service offerings. These two new service offerings expanded the Business Critical Services (BCS) portfolio to include comprehensive remote-management of Symantec’s NetBackup and Enterprise Vault software solutions for a global portfolio of Large/Medium Enterprise customers.

Minneapolis

Lead remote team of 16 customer-facing Business Critical Account Managers responsible for 70+ globally distributed Large Enterprise, Federal, and State Government accounts. Focus on proactive and thorough engagement to drive customer success and demonstrate customer ROI. .

Roseville, Mn

Provide proactive services, project management services, and enhanced support resource management to Symantec’s premier Enterprise level customers requiring uninterrupted availability to data and applications on a 24x7x365 basis. Become a trusted advisor to customers through consistent and dependable delivery of the Business Critical Services product while continuing to seek new and creative opportunities to grow the customer relationship.

Selected for leadership and CRM skills to manage six multinational airline accounts subscribing to mission critical SaaS-based airline reservation system. Principle responsibilities include developing functional and technical business requirement specifications, prioritization of development pipeline, managing account growth strategy, establishing and cultivating broad client relationships, directing product demonstrations, creating value propositions, writing commercial proposals, and driving defect and outage resolution.

Selected to join elite onsite team of consultants responsible for implementation of complex accounting software for Air New Zealand and Qantas Airlines. Embedded at customer sites for one year each in Auckland, NZ and Sydney, AUS. This role included design and development of GAP solutions and custom enhancements, consultation to align business rules with product functionality, guidance of customers through exercise to redistribute division of labor on new product more efficiently, creation of functional and technical specifications and user guides, leadership through customer UAT and regression testing cycles, engineering and execution of seamless data conversion strategy, and conducting product training and focus groups.

Roseville, Mn

Performed cell proliferation and colony forming assays with experimental anticancer compoundsDesigned and executed in-vivo toxicity and efficacy studies of experimental compounds (including post-mortem dissection/analysis)

Benque Viejo Del Carmen, Belize, Central America

Introduced comprehensive curriculum for math and science programsDesigned innovative laboratory experiments using available resources in support of textbook concepts

Master Of Business Administration (Mba)

Bachelor Of Arts (B.A.), Pre-Medicine And Biochemistry

Human Anat/Phys, Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Physics