Customer Business Analyst - Customer Operations

Ascend is a fast-growing SaaS company that helps mid-market and large enterprise customers automate accounts payable processing through text extraction, machine learning and powerful integration into their financial systems – saving them millions each year.  Our clients include household names like NASCAR, Panera, Virgin Voyages, Life Time Fitness and PGA Tour as well as many of the nation’s largest and most renown hospitals and health systems, financial services providers, and higher ed institutions.  
  
Ascend is a fully remote company that offers competitive pay, exceptional benefits and unlimited time off.  Most importantly, we offer the chance to learn, take ownership and build your career the way you’ve envisioned. 

What would you do at Ascend? 
 
As a customer business analyst within our global customer operations team, you will be responsible for providing insight and analysis to critical areas of the business and customer facing teams, including the strategic account management team, account executives working on existing customer activities, and act as a resource to finance, business reporting, and Ascend’s Chief Customer Officer.  You will use your business aptitude, critical thinking skills and analysis tools to solve business issues, identify areas of opportunity and detect early business signals. 

The salary range for this role is $85,000 to $95,000 based upon experience and industry knowledge. 

Your day to day would include: 

• Create and maintain financial models for pricing, renewal benchmarks, and customer valuation proposals.  Assist strategic account managers in pricing decisions and various models to attain upsell, expansion and renewal targets. 

• Analyze customer trends for leading indicators of churn, creating a health score and benchmarking leading performance indicators such as automation rates, processing rates, product adoption, volume usage, support usage and statistics, together with customer sentiment data.  Create executive level reporting and work with the Chief Customer Officer to present monthly reporting. 

• Monitor Gross Revenue Retention (GRR) trends and achievement to plan. Analyze and propose solutions to attain plan and effect on Gross Margin goals. 

• Analyze pricing data, assess market trends, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive pricing decisions and product offerings to entice greater adoption and increased retention. 

• Monitor the customer health and adoption of automation and identify trends to increase (adoption) and contraction (churn).  Present aggregate findings to CCO and Strategic Account Managers. 

• Implement scorecards for managing the quality of external services such as Human in the Loop (offshore validation services), and create a repeatable monthly reporting analysis on performance per customer, including billable time and hours. 

• Develop pricing models and forecasts to support business objectives, and analysis of historical contract amounts and pricing performance. Collaborate with sales, marketing and product teams to ensure pricing aligns with business goals. 

• Support system updates and ensure pricing data accuracy in databases e.g. Salesforce and Maxio. 

• Implement automated processes and notification for volume accruals, renewal timeframes and self-service renewals.  

 
What is Ascend looking for in a candidate? 

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Economics, Business Administration, or a related field. 

• 5 years of experience in pricing or financial analysis. 

• Strong analytical skills with proficiency in data analysis tools (e.g., Excel, SQL, Tableau). 

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to present complex data clearly. 

• Experience with pricing software or ERP systems is a plus. 

• Experience with Salesforce and other CRM solutions. 

• Strong attention to detail and organizational skills. 

• Ability to work collaboratively in a team-oriented environment. 

• An out of the box thinking who can question the status quo. 

• A business thinker who can see beyond the numbers to improve business opportunities. 

 
Why should you apply? 

• We offer everything you’d expect from a profitable company including a great salary, comprehensive health care benefits (100% covered for employees, 50% for dependents), and a generous retirement plan match. 

• You’ll receive an annual Lifelong Learning Allowance to use towards learning opportunities of your choice (cooking lessons, dance lessons, language lessons, etc.) 

• You’ll receive flexible time off, 10 paid holidays, Flex Fridays during the summer and one week off between Christmas and New Year’s. 

• A platform for good: a culture of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, charity matching and volunteer days—creating belonging for all is in our DNA both inside and outside of work.  

• Remote-first culture. No matter where you are, you’ll feel connected to the team. 

• We take families seriously and offer flexible schedules and generous parental leave programs. 

• We give you great tools and tech to do your best work: hardware, software, and home office setups. 

  
Our Interview and Hiring Process 
  
We want the best people on our team.  To get them, we’ve built our hiring process around three Ts: thorough, transparent and thoughtful.  Our interview process is an honest evaluation of what you’ve done, what you’re good at, and what you’re working on improving.  The goal of this process is to identify, as objectively as possible, people who will raise the level of play within our company. 
  
Here's how it works: 

• Application 

• Screening interview – phone call (30-60 minutes) 

• Deep dive interview with the hiring manager – phone call (90+ minutes) 

• Focused interviews with select potential teammates – 2 to 3 video calls (30 mins each) 

• Reference calls with your last several managers 

• Offer letter 

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