Solutions Architects (SA) are the trusted advisors to GitLab prospects and customers during the presales motion, demonstrating how the GitLab application and GitLab Professional Services address common and unique business requirements. SA's add value to GitLab by providing subject matter expertise and industry experience throughout the sales process.
SA's identify and propose comprehensive solutions to complex business problems and workflow scenarios after compiling inputs from customer conversations. Desired inputs include pain points, role-based visibility concerns, opportunities for improved efficiencies, current technologies and tools, corporate initiatives, target outcomes and more. SA's also act as the technical liaison between the sales team and other groups within GitLab, engaging GitLab employees from other teams as needed in order meet the needs of the customer.
In addition to core responsibilities, Solutions Architects may assist in other client-facing activities aligned to Content Marketing or Product Marketing such as blogs, videos, webinars, presentations and industry trade show presence. Some examples are listed below:
What is the reason to engage the SA team? Discovery, application demonstrations, technical deep dives, whiteboarding sessions, etc.
What is the size/quality/status of the opportunity?
Is there a business plan or sales approach defined?
2) Preparation
Outcome: WIIFM/T. What’s in it for the client? Why look at a new strategy for software development? Solutions Architects need to be able to tailor conversations and demos to demonstrate value as well as how to address current problem areas.
Infrastructure: What tools are currently have in place? E.g. Jenkins for CI, Ansible/Chef for automation, Gerrit for code review, Eclipse for IDE, GitHub for source code management, etc.
Challenges: What problems/roadblocks have been uncovered? Release velocity? Visibility or efficiency concerns? Collaboration or governance issues? Compliance concerns?
When and How to Engage a Solutions Architect
The SA should either be included in a discovery call or provided with Outcome / Infrastructure / Challenges (see above) information uncovered by prior interactions with the account. Occasionally, SA's may support a combination call of discovery and technical demonstration/deep-dive on a single call, but this is suboptimal as the latter approach does not allow the SA time to prepare for and/or tailor the discussion.
Strategic Account Engagement Model
SA's are aligned regionally with Strategic Account Leaders and aligned in their respective account activities. Each team collaborates according to their own Working Agreements.
As a general guideline, no more than 2 Solutions Architects should join any single client-facing call, whether it be assistive for the topic or for learning / shadowing.
Initial engagement: use the "SA Activity" template to ensure the proper data is collected and available
Follow up activity: use the "Follow Up" template
4) To help the SA group ensure success for the client, the following information should be made available prior to SA engagement
Customer Information: Customer name, opportunity size, SFDC link
Preferred Date Options: When would the customer want to have the call (including time zone information)
Opportunity Details: What is the size of the opportunity? What is the timeframe for purchase?
Outcome: What's in it for the customer?
Challenges: What roadblocks are the customer facing?
Infrastructure: What tools does the customer currently use?
SA Tasks: What do you need from the SA's (demo/technical assist/services evaluation/etc.)
5) (Optional) Associate one or more of the following labels as needed
EXPEDITE: This label is only to be used if there is a turnaround required prior to the next Triage call
Current Quarter Label: e.g. Q3-2018
Services: If this opportunity involves or requires services, use this label to indicate that.
Weekly SA Triage Assignment
Each week, a Solutions Architect is assigned as the 'Triage SA' for the week. This is indicated both in the SA Triaged label (e.g. SA Triaged - Feb 12-16 - @dt) as well as in the #customer-success channel in Slack.
Triage Call
The Solutions Architect group hosts a triage call two times each week. Each week, a volunteer "Triage SA" facilitates this call.
The call is on Tuesday and Thursday at 12:30 pm EST (9:30 am PST). Anyone at GitLab is welcome to join these calls via Zoom
Board Label Descriptions
SA Backlog: New issues coming into Customer Success
SA Triaged: This label will change names to show which SA is triaging this week. Once the activity has been vetted by the Customer Success team, approved, and SA Ownership is assigned, it is moved to this label
SA Doing: Once an SA signals they are actively working the issue, the issue is moved to 'SA Doing'. The issue will stay in this status until the SA, customer and sales team agree the issue has been completed
SA Action Items: These are long-running strategic issue that SA's own
SA Waiting: This label indicates that an SA is waiting on a sales team member or the client for more information before advancing this issue
EXPEDITE: This label is only to be used if there is a turnaround required prior to the next Triage call
Services: If this opportunity focuses on services, use this label to indicate that.
