Project Manager - Business Planning

Overview

Our clients team in Business Planning focuses on enabling the their mission by creating durable profit growth through high-impact monetization strategies, packaging, and pricing. Their charter is significant and spans key growth engines for the company. They are responsible for delivering high-impact monetization strategies, packaging, and pricing to create durable profit growth. Their team is responsible for the end-to-end monetization process from business strategy development through transactability and execution.

One of the key elements of the role of the Business Planner is to support various launches across the team. The launch process is an engine of people, systems, and steps that ultimately take a product or service strategy and get it to market. A launch event is anything requiring a commerce change, including (but not limited to) new product or service releases, price changes, name changes, a change to a service, and a deprecation of a service. In this role, the BP PM will work closely with both the Business Planner and Operations teams to support launches.

Another key element of the role is cross-functional stakeholder engagement in an oftentimes matrixed environment. To successfully collaborate, stakeholders must be aligned, strategies must get proper approvals, and information must be clearly articulated across teams. The BP PM will work closely with Business Planners and their cross-functional stakeholder counterparts (Engineering, Product Marketing, and Finance) to support this engagement through project management.

Job Responsibilities:

The support provided by the BP PM will span across five (5) buckets of work which fall under launch support and project management:

1) Dedicated launch assistance

Engage in and support launch prioritization, escalations, data auditing and validation, and pricing verification leveraging deep fundamental product knowledge gained by being embedded within the individual teams.

2) Launch operational process and stakeholder support

The Operations team is responsible for ensuring a compliant launch process and they have a vendor team dedicated to supporting the Business Planner throughout the launch process for specific launch scenarios and tasks. Not all launches will receive Operations vendor support and Operations vendor support does not cover all launch tasks.

The BP PM will provide launch support as needed when the Operations vendor team is over capacity, or the launch is Business Planner-led only with no Operations support (approx. 31% of launches). In these scenarios, the BP PM will assist the Azure Business Planner with launch operational processes such as: Control Tower card updates (represents a launch), Change Requests (output of launch), pre-production ICM creation and updates (correct mistakes/issues), Change Summary validations (ensure all data input is correct), and the exception process (when launch misses the date). This also includes PM support for key stakeholders such as Software Engineers (meter minting process/reporting) and Business Planners (OBI recommendations and gathering systems issues to facilitate improvements of processes).

3) Meeting coordination and support

Facilitate meeting coordination for cross-functional stakeholder meetings, wallows (reviews) with leadership, and team syncs. Attend launch-related meetings on behalf of the Business Planner and serve as the liaison relaying important updates, sharing back relevant information, and advocating for resource prioritization.

4) Team enhancements, improvements, and special projects

Follow new developments, share best practices, and support the coordination of strategic team initiatives. In addition, support new Business Planners by connecting them to critical resources and key stakeholders.

5) Project & Review Tracker updates

The Project Tracker is a list the team uses to track projects that are not yet in, or may never be in, Control Tower.  Business Planners leverage the Project Tracker to track their projects and identify needed signoffs and reviews. Supplier will be responsible for helping create and update projects and flag when topics are ready to be scheduled for a review on behalf of Business Planners. They will also partner closely with the Business Planners to monitor and coordinate topics for regular standing reviews with the VP.

Requirements:

• 4-8 years of project management experience

• PMI Certification required

• Proficiency in Microsoft Office

• Strong cross team/group/org collaboration skills

• Strong analytical skills and prior experience working with large data sets

• Excellent communication skills, experience working with external vendors, strong project management skills

Preferred Qualifications :

• Master’s degree preferred

• Prior Microsoft experience preferred

• Knowledge/background in software industry products/services/applications, with in-depth knowledge of Microsoft’s products/services/applications

• Ability to foresee and analyze project risks, develop risk management plan and mitigate subsequent issues

• High-powered analytical skills and the ability to understand concepts and situations that pass by many others

 

Top 3 Hard Skills Required + Years of Experience

1. Minimum 4-8 years experience with project management

2. Minimum 4-8 years experience with Strong analytical skills and prior experience working with large data sets

3. Minimum 4-8 years experience with Excellent communication skills, experience working with external vendors.

 

The target hiring compensation range for this role is the equivalent of $52.88 to $58.76 an hour. Compensation is based on several factors including, but not limited to education, relevant work experience, relevant certifications, and location.

Additional benefits offered may include; medical health insurance and dental insurance, life insurance, and eligibility to participate in 401k plan with company match.