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Join NTT DATA Business Solutions, a global leader in SAP consulting and digital transformation. As part of the NTT DATA Group, we collaborate with over 16,700 professionals in 30+ countries to deliver innovative SAP solutions that help businesses thrive.

Take the next step in your career and become a trusted partner to our global customers. In this role, you'll support and optimize complex SAP landscapes, drive operational excellence, and contribute to impactful digital transformation projects, all while growing your expertise within a world-class team

Job Title: Reference Specialist Lead

Experience:   6 to 10  Years

Job Location: Hyderabad

Employment Type: Full-time / Work from Office

Role Summary

We are looking for a structured and proactive Customer Reference Intelligence Specialist who can help turn customer references into a reliable sales asset.

The right person will actively maintain the reference database, collect missing information, validate existing references, support international sales teams, and ensure that references are specific enough to be useful in real sales situations.

This is a role for someone who combines data discipline, persistence, stakeholder coordination, and a strong service mindset.

1.Role Purpose

The Customer Reference Intelligence Specialist is responsible for building, maintaining, validating, and improving the customer reference database for NTT DATA Business Solutions.

The role ensures that sales teams can quickly find reliable, current, and specific customer references across consulting, implementation, SAP, managed services, application management, and other relevant service areas.

This is not a marketing case-study writing role. It is an operational sales intelligence role focused on making customer references complete, current, searchable, specific, and usable in sales situations

              2.Mission

The mission of the role is to turn a poorly maintained reference database into a trusted sales asset.

Today, customer references may be incomplete, outdated, missing, too generic, or no longer suitable for use. The Customer Reference Intelligence Specialist will actively collect references from multiple sources, chase missing information, validate existing references, enrich reference details, and support sales teams in finding suitable references for customer opportunities.

The role will be part of a small team and will help execute and refine the reference management process over time

3. Key Responsibilities

3.1.        Maintain and improve the reference database

Actively maintain the central customer reference database and ensure that it becomes the single source of truth for customer references.

Responsibilities include:

• Add missing customer references.
• Validate and update existing references.
• Remove, archive, or pause references that are no longer usable.
• Ensure reference records contain enough detail to be useful in sales situations.
• Identify gaps in reference coverage by country, service line, industry, solution, customer size, and use case.
• Improve data quality, consistency, and searchability.
• Help refine the reference data model and maintenance process over time

3.2 Collect references proactively

• The role should not wait passively for sales teams to update the database.

Responsibilities include:

• Collect references from sales teams, delivery teams, account teams, service leaders, project teams, and other internal sources.
• Trigger structured reference submission requests.
• Email or call sales leaders and relevant owners to collect missing information.
• Follow up on incomplete or unclear submissions.
• Escalate lack of collaboration to the Sales Intelligence Center Leader.
• Ensure new references are captured after relevant projects, go-lives, renewals, wins, or service milestones

3.3.        Ensure reference specificity

Customer reference requests are often highly specific. Sales teams may need, for example, a customer reference for a certain SAP solution, service scope, user count, industry, geography, ticket volume, or delivery model.

The Customer Reference Intelligence Specialist ensures that references contain sufficient detail, including where relevant (for example):

• Customer name.
• Country and region.
• Industry.
• Service line.
• Solution area.
• SAP product or module.
• Consulting, implementation, managed services, or application management scope.
• Number of users.
• Ticket volume or service volume.
• Project or contract size where available and permitted.
• Go-live date or service start date.
• Current reference owner.
• Account owner or sales owner.
• Delivery owner.
• Customer permission level.
• Reference format available.
• Customer quote availability.
• Reference-call availability.
• Escalation or risk status.
• Last validation date.
• Next validation date.

The goal is to make references searchable and useful at the level of detail sales teams actually need.

3.4 Validate existing references regularly

The role is responsible for regular reference validation. Each active reference should be checked at least every six months to confirm that it is still accurate, usable, and owned by the right person.

Responsibilities include:

• Trigger six-month validation checks with sales or account owners.
• Confirm whether the customer still exists and is still active.
• Confirm whether the customer is still willing or suitable to be used as a reference.
• Identify whether the customer is currently escalating, dissatisfied, or otherwise unsuitable as a reference.
• Update reference ownership when the sales or account owner changes.
• Pause or remove references that are no longer valid.
• Keep a clear audit trail of validation status and dates.
• A customer may still exist but temporarily cease to be a valid reference if the account is currently escalating or at risk.

3.5 Support sales teams with reference requests

                             The team will support international sales teams by helping them find suitable references.

Responsibilities include:

• Receive and clarify reference search requests from sales teams.
• Search the database for matching references.
• Suggest best-fit references based on customer need, service scope, geography, industry, solution, and deal context.
• Identify where no suitable reference exists and capture the gap.
• Prepare reference suggestions or shortlists for sales teams.
• Maintain reference slides and reference summaries based on database content.
• Support phrasing and structuring of reference material.

The role may help broker the initial connection to the relevant reference owner, but reference calls and detailed customer interaction should be handed over to the responsible sales or account team.

4.           Required Profile

The ideal candidate is structured, persistent, detail-oriented, and comfortable working with sales and delivery stakeholders across countries.

Required capabilities include:

• English C1 plus one other relevant language.
• Strong data quality and process discipline.
• Ability to maintain structured information accurately.
• Strong follow-up and stakeholder coordination skills.
• Ability to work with sales, account, delivery, and service leaders.
• Ability to ask precise questions and clarify incomplete information.
• Good written communication skills.
• Ability to summarize customer references clearly and professionally.
• Strong service mindset toward international sales teams.
• Comfort working in shared-services setup.
• Ability to improve a process while executing it.
• Good understanding of business services, consulting, implementation, and managed services concepts.
• Ability to learn NTT DATA Business Solutions portfolio language quickly.