Aspire Platform Manager

Aspire Platform Manager FLSA Status: Exempt Position Summary Sperber Landscape Companies is seeking an Aspire Platform Manager to provide strategic leadership, operational expertise, and enterprise governance for the Aspire business management platform. This is not primarily a system administration role. The Manager is responsible for how Aspire is configured, standardized, adopted, and leveraged across Sperber to achieve business objectives. This individual must understand not only how Aspire works, but how configuration and process decisions influence profitability, customer retention, ancillary sales penetration, operational efficiency, estimating, job costing, accounting, reporting, and other business outcomes. The Manager will establish enterprise Aspire standards, lead platform optimization initiatives, partner closely with Operations and Finance, manage the Aspire Platform Administrator, oversee Sperber's strategic relationship with Aspire, and be our lead to the Aspire Ambassador Program. Key Responsibilities Platform Strategy, Optimization & Governance • Develop and maintain the enterprise Aspire strategy and roadmap aligned with Sperber's operational and financial objectives. • Translate goals such as ancillary revenue penetration, customer retention, margin improvement, productivity, and profitable growth into Aspire processes, configuration, reporting, and adoption strategies. • Establish enterprise standards for Aspire usage while balancing legitimate operational differences across Sperber businesses. • Evaluate configuration and process alternatives based on their operational, financial, reporting, integration, and user impacts. • Identify underutilized Aspire capabilities and opportunities to improve business performance. • Establish governance for configuration changes, permissions, workflows, master data, reporting, integrations, and new functionality. • Drive consistency and reduce unnecessary configuration variation across the organization. Aspire Platform Expertise • Serve as Sperber's senior subject-matter expert for Aspire configuration, capabilities, limitations, dependencies, and best practices. • Maintain deep working knowledge across Aspire's major functional areas, including CRM, estimating, contracts, scheduling, work tickets, crew/mobile functionality, purchasing, inventory, equipment, job costing, invoicing/AR, accounting processes, reporting/analytics, project management, integrations/APIs, and security/permissions. • Serve as the senior escalation point for complex configuration and business-process issues. • Evaluate Aspire releases, functionality, configuration options, and emerging capabilities and determine their relevance to Sperber. • Assess how proposed platform changes may affect business processes and downstream systems before implementation. Operations, Finance & Business Performance • Serve as the bridge between Aspire, Operations, Finance, Accounting, Sales, IT, HR and executive leadership. • Apply operational judgment when determining how Aspire should support landscape maintenance, enhancement, construction, and related business processes. • Navigate complex issues involving job costing, revenue, purchasing, work tickets, invoicing, financial controls, accounting interfaces, and reporting. • Help determine whether business challenges should be solved through system configuration, process improvement, training, reporting, integration, or another solution. • Ensure Aspire data and workflows support reliable measurement of operational and financial KPIs. • Partner with leadership to improve visibility into retention, ancillary/enhancement penetration, estimated versus actual performance, profitability, gross margin, production efficiency, sales performance, and operational consistency. • Analyze the relationship between Aspire configuration, user behavior, and measurable business outcomes. Aspire Relationship & Ambassador Program • Own Sperber's strategic relationship with Aspire beyond routine support-ticket management. • Navigate and escalate significant product issues, enhancement requests, roadmap needs, and business priorities through the appropriate Aspire channels. • Participate in strategic discussions with Aspire customer success, product, leadership, and other teams as appropriate. • Maintain awareness of Aspire's roadmap and assess potential business impacts and opportunities. • Lead Sperber's Aspire Ambassador Program, developing knowledgeable users across business units who reinforce standards, identify issues, share best practices, and support adoption. • Create an effective feedback loop between Ambassadors, business-unit leadership, Operations, Finance, IT, and Aspire. Manage our enhancement list across all business units and IT. • Represent Sperber at Aspire meetings, customer events, training sessions, and industry conferences. Training, Projects & Change Management • Co-establish the enterprise Aspire training and adoption strategy with Maintenance Operations. • Determine when business issues are caused by configuration versus training, adoption, process discipline, or other factors. • Co-coordinate role-based training for operational leaders, administrators, account managers, finance teams, and other users with Maintenance Operations. • Lead significant Aspire projects from requirements and business case through design, testing, deployment, adoption, and post-implementation evaluation. • Leads the prioritize of projects based on business value, risk, organizational readiness, and available resources in conjunction with the Executive team and Business leaders. • Ensure significant changes include appropriate testing, user validation, communication, and adoption planning. • Measure whether completed Aspire initiatives achieve their intended business outcomes. Team Leadership • Manage, coach, and develop the Aspire Platform Administrator. • Establish priorities and appropriately separate strategic platform ownership from routine administration and support. • Provide escalation support for complex configuration, operational, financial, and process issues. • Develop the Administrator's Aspire expertise and understanding of Sperber's business operations. • Build sustainable organizational Aspire knowledge rather than allowing expertise to reside with a single individual. Qualifications Required: • 5+ years of hands-on experience using Aspire, preferably within commercial landscaping or a closely related field-service environment. • At least 3 years in an advanced Aspire administrator, implementation, consulting, operational leadership, or enterprise platform-management capacity. • Advanced expertise with Aspire configuration, administration, workflows, reporting, and business processes across multiple Aspire functional areas. • Completion of relevant Aspire Academy, Aspire-provided administrator/power-user training, implementation training, or equivalent advanced Aspire education. • Demonstrated expertise across Aspire's operational and financial lifecycle, including estimating, scheduling, production/work tickets, job costing, purchasing, invoicing, reporting, and accounting-related processes. • Strong understanding of commercial landscape operations and how operational activities affect financial performance. • Ability to translate operational objectives into technology, workflow, reporting, and process solutions. • Experience leading enterprise system optimization, implementations, or significant business-process changes. • Strong project and change-management capabilities. • Experience establishing standards across multiple locations, branches, or business units. • Strong financial acumen, including understanding of revenue, costs, margins, job costing, purchasing, invoicing, AR, and accounting interfaces. • Experience managing, coaching, or mentoring system administrators, analysts, or similar professionals. • Strong analytical, communication, facilitation, and executive-level relationship skills. • Ability and willingness to travel approximately 15-20% to Sperber locations, training sessions, vendor meetings, and conferences. Preferred: • 7+ years of Aspire experience or experience serving as the primary Aspire platform owner for a large, multi-branch organization. • Completion of multiple Aspire Academy role-based learning paths, particularly System Administrator, Operations Manager, Branch Manager, Controller, and Executive curricula. • Experience participating in an Aspire implementation as a power user, trainer, implementation lead, system owner, or executive sponsor. • Experience with a multi-company commercial landscape organization. • Previous landscape operational leadership experience. • Experience with ERP/accounting integrations, APIs, business intelligence, and data/reporting platforms. • Experience creating super-user, ambassador, or train-the-trainer programs. • Experience working directly with Aspire customer success, product management, implementation, or executive teams. • Project management, change management, accounting, business, or technology certification or formal training. Leadership Profile The successful candidate will combine business judgment, operational credibility, financial acumen, systems thinking, and deep Aspire expertise. This individual must be comfortable working with Presidents, Operations leaders, Finance, branch leadership, and Aspire while understanding that the objective is not simply to administer the platform-it is to use Aspire to improve how Sperber operates and performs. Measures of Success Success will include increased Aspire standardization and adoption; improved operational and financial data quality; stronger visibility into customer retention and ancillary opportunities; improved estimating, job-costing, and operating discipline; successful Aspire optimization initiatives; an effective Ambassador Program; stronger management of strategic Aspire issues; and continued development of the Aspire Platform Administrator. Travel Requirements Periodic travel to Sperber's corporate office, operating-company locations, training sessions, Aspire meetings, and industry conferences is required and is expected to average approximately 15-20%. Compensation Sperber Landscape Companies offers a competitive compensation and benefits package commensurate with experience, qualifications, and geographic market.