Implementation Consultant
Implementation Consultant
As an Implementation Consultant, you'll take new Smartly customers from sign-up through to their first successful pay run — the moment their payroll actually works and they start getting real value from us. You'll own that journey end to end: understanding how their business and payroll work, configuring Smartly to fit, migrating and validating their employee and payroll data, testing, and guiding them through go-live.
For our smaller customers you'll be the single point of contact through the whole implementation, owning both the relationship and the technical work. On larger or more complex customers you'll partner with a Service Delivery colleague to get them live. Either way, the job is to do whatever it takes to get each customer to a confident first pay run, as quickly and smoothly as possible.
This role sits in our Activation team, part of Go-to-Market. It's a genuinely hands-on role for someone who enjoys combining technical problem-solving with customer relationships, and there's room to grow into more complex, higher-value implementations as our model develops.
Ideally you'll be based in Wellington — our implementation and service delivery teams are at our Lower Hutt head office, and it's the fastest way to learn Smartly and the payroll domain. We'll consider Auckland-based candidates too; once you're up to speed, the role runs largely online with your customers. We like to bring people together in person when we can, but we're mindful of the benefits of working from home for work/life balance.
Own end-to-end customer implementations, from kick-off through configuration and data migration to a successful first pay run
Diagnose each customer's payroll and business-process requirements, and configure Smartly to fit their context
Map, migrate, validate and reconcile employee and payroll data — including complex data like leave balances and historical entitlements — so it's accurate before go-live
Guide customers through each step of a multi-step setup, showing them how to use the product as you go so they're confident well before go-live
Run customers through a first pay or parallel pay against their existing system
Test and troubleshoot the configured system; document and escalate technical issues to our Product and integration teams
Own the customer relationship through implementation — proactive communication, clear expectations, and a confident, professional partner throughout
Keep several implementations moving at once without dropping anything, with accurate records of progress
Spot friction in the implementation journey and help fix it, contributing to repeatable configuration and migration approaches, standards and playbooks
Work closely with Service Delivery, Training, Product, Support and Sales to deliver a seamless customer experience
Handle sensitive customer and employee data securely and in line with privacy requirements
Around 2+ years' proven, hands-on experience owning end-to-end software, SaaS or business-process implementations or customer onboarding — taking a customer from kick-off through configuration and data migration to go-live. We're open on industry; it's the end-to-end ownership we care about
Hands-on system configuration and customer data migration, with accurate, methodical handling of customer data
Strong problem-solving and analytical skills — able to understand requirements, configure a system to fit, troubleshoot issues and know when to escalate
Project-management aptitude — able to guide a customer through a multi-step setup to go-live and manage several implementations concurrently
Excellent verbal and written communication, including the ability to explain technical steps clearly to non-technical customers
Comfortable teaching live — walking a customer through the product on a screen-share, fielding questions on the fly, and coaching them through a live first pay or parallel pay
Strong planning, organisational and time management capabilities
A customer-first mindset with a focus on getting customers to value quickly
Energetic, adaptable and calm under pressure; works collaboratively in a small team
A relevant tertiary qualification (bachelor's degree in business, information systems, technology or a related discipline)
Payroll, HRIS, workforce management or payroll process knowledge — a real advantage in our world, though it is learnable and we weight it below proven implementation experience
Experience migrating complex employee or payroll data, including balances and historical records
Exposure to both low-touch self-service onboarding and complex, high-touch customer implementations
Experience driving process improvement or implementation journey optimisation
Formal training design, enablement or change management experience
Familiarity with CRM and customer onboarding platforms such as HubSpot
End-to-end ownership of customer implementation
Contribution to the redesign and continuous improvement of how customers get to value
Room to grow into more complex, higher-value implementations as the model develops