Product Adoption Manager

ABOUT THE ROLE

OpenCounter is Accela’s pre-application front door, helping residents and business owners understand permit requirements, costs, and next steps before they apply. Because its value depends on resident use, adoption has to be activated—not assumed. If staff do not use it and residents cannot find it, agencies are less likely to realize the value and renewal will be challenged.

The Product Adoption Manager owns the post-implementation window where adoption is critical. You carry each agency through its first six to nine months: train staff broadly, confirm guides are published where residents start, and return on a cadence until adoption holds. You will work the customer base in three groups, each with a different purpose, and serve as Product’s direct view into how agency staff use OpenCounter day to day. What you learn about where users get stuck feeds the roadmap. This position reports to the Director of Product, OpenCounter.

SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES

Adoption

• Own adoption across the full OpenCounter customer lifecycle so agencies launch well, keep staff engaged, stay current as the product evolves, and see enough ongoing value to renew.
• Launch new agencies with the training, placement, and early follow-up needed for adoption to take hold.
• Re-engage recently launched agencies to deepen staff use, close training gaps, and prepare for renewal.
• Monitor mature accounts for renewal risk, usage signals, and opportunities to reinforce product value.

Pre-release product review

• Review new features and changes before they reach production, from the perspective of the agency staff and residents who will meet them.
• Flag what will confuse users, create support load, or be hard to train, and distinguish a defect from a design concern when you raise it.
• Confirm that new capability is explainable to an agency audience, and identify what training or enablement material a release needs.
• Give engineering that feedback directly, in the team's own tracker and review cycle, and be available during release weeks.

Product feedback and enablement

• Carry field observation of how agency staff use the product back into the roadmap, including where they abandon a workflow.
• Partner with Product Marketing on adoption and enablement material for the installed base.
• Tag each agency with its launch cohort and log adoption and risk signals per account, building the early-warning record the business does not have today.
• Travel to customer sites for launch training and business reviews. 10-20% travel required.

Success metrics

• Launch and Public Usage. Ensure Permit Guides can be easily found by the public and is advertised in multiple channels.
• Staff Usage and Adoption. Train staff on features, meeting regularly in the first 6-9 months to ensure they are using the site properly. Set a standard for adoption of specific features, track, and work with agency to meet this number.
• Improve the first year retention rate (i.e. whether the agencies you launch in this program are more likely to renew than first year customers from previous years), and whether the accounts we flag as at risk at the start of each year are still customers at the end of it. Metrics to be defined with Finance.
• Customer satisfaction. Agency staff satisfaction, captured after go-live training and again at the annual business review. Establishing that measurement is part of your first year.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field or equivalent work experience.
• 5+ years taking government or enterprise SaaS customers live and through adoption, in professional services, implementation, training, solution consulting, or customer success.
• Exceptional training and facilitation skills, including the ability to design and deliver effective materials, engage mixed agency audiences, assess whether users can apply what they learned, and build internal champions who can support future staff training.
• Experience driving voluntary adoption of a product or process inside an organization, including the ability to influence users who are not required to change their behavior.
• Experience working inside a city, county, or state agency.
• Experience launching a new product or module into an existing customer base.
• Subject matter knowledge of municipal permitting, planning, or licensing, deep enough to judge whether a guide is giving residents the right answer, to be credible with a building official or a planning director, and to follow the conditional logic, eligibility rules, and fee calculations behind it well enough to describe a needed correction.
• Comfort using product and usage data to assess adoption, explain trends, and diagnose common launch barriers, including whether residents can easily access an agency’s Permit Guides online.

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Background in customer support or QA, with the judgment to separate a product defect from a configuration gap from a training gap.
• Experience configuring or administering a permitting, licensing, or land management system.
• Familiarity with Accela Civic Platform, Public Portal, or ACA, including how records move between a guidance layer and a system of record, and where those handoffs break.
• Experience driving adoption of an AI-enabled product.
• Ability to communicate product value to executive audiences by translating agency usage data into clear recommendations and renewal-supporting business outcomes.

ABOUT ACCELA
For nearly 20 years, Accela has been an industry leader in designing and delivering government software to improve efficiency, increase citizen engagement and enable the development of thriving communities. Today, citizens are savvy to how services should be delivered, and expect a consistently convenient, openly transparent view into their local government. While government agencies struggle to do more with less, our mission has never been more critical. Accela provides a robust, cloud-based platform of government software solutions that accelerate growth, efficiency, and transparency in communities of all sizes. From planning, to building, to service request management and more, Accela’s SaaS offerings level the playing field for small and medium governments and enable smaller agencies to leverage larger city technologies. Our open and flexible technology helps agencies address specific needs today, while ensuring they are well prepared for the emerging challenges of the future.

OUR COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION
Accela believes in developing and nurturing a workplace community where our differences are celebrated, and everyone feels a sense of psychological safety and belonging. Accela is committed to putting resources and attention towards evolving our practices, policies, and philosophies to enable diversity to thrive and to support equity in opportunity for everyone.

COMPENSATION AND WELL-BEING
The annual base salary range for this full-time position is $120,000-$135,000 (less applicable taxes). The actual annual base salary offered may be adjusted based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to, location, education, skills, training, and experience. In addition to an annual base salary, this position is eligible for an annual bonus target. This is a discretionary bonus awarded based on company and individual goal achievement.

Accela’s U.S. team members will receive a generous benefits package consisting of options including flexible time off, comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans, family planning benefits, 401(k) retirement savings plan with company match, health savings account with company contributions, flexible spending account, life, accident, and disability coverage, business travel insurance, employee assistance programs, and other well-being benefits.

Accela is an Equal Opportunity Employer/Affirmative Action Employer and will respond to requests for job accommodations.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, national origin, protected veteran status, or based on disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation

Originally posted on Himalayas