Head of Product Owners

Job Summary

This role will identify the key product features and capabilities to be built for Salesforce, Genesys and other programs, ensuring that they serve the current, as well as the future, needs of our customers and advisors. In this role you will help us change our current practices and workflows for to best leverage the technology. Partnering closely with various business areas, you will lead project participants in delivering a suite of tools which optimize technology, drives business benefit and leverages experience principles to deliver a transformative service experience. You will work closely with Enterprise Technology, vendor architects and developers to align business requirements, prioritization, timing and scope of project deliverables ensuring business outcomes are achieved. You will ensure development of business requirements align to strategic outcomes, make key decisions on behalf of business areas, solve complex problems, remove obstacles, and define the impact and risk which are critical to the overarching project success. This role serves as the key, autonomous, decision maker relative for project priorities and timeline. In addition, this role ensures that each business area has a sound readiness plan and is ready to support the transition with minimal impact in servicing advisors and customers.

By leveraging skills in project leadership, data analysis and experience/business knowledge, this role will drive results. Agility and resilience are key competencies required to support the shifting roles and accountabilities necessary to meet the needs of this multi-phased large-scale effort. Exhibiting strong communication, influence and change management skills in this role will be critical. Keeping all stakeholders appraised of the project strategy, providing transparency around status and informing them of key decisions and obstacles related to delivery and timeline are critical. You will be expected to lead teams that develop new processes that maximize the value of emerging technology rather than retrofitting outdated processes and thinking within a new operating environment. This will require you to communicate a clear vision, establish stretch expectations, guide teams through change while maintaining a strong focus on the advisor and end customer service experience.

The Impact

• Independently lead/represent the organization on the Salesforce technology solution, used by over 1,500 users across MassMutual as well as indirect interaction by all MM advisors and customers.
• Create a strategy based on the long-term vision for the various products (i.e. Salesforce, Genesys, etc.) and needs of the organization.
• Outline short- and long-term goals and make strategic decisions that will benefit the business and transform our advisor’s/customer’s experience
• Serve as the voice of the customer, ensuring features address real use needs and enhance experience. Identify the key product features and capabilities to be built. Influence leaders and business teams to transform how we deliver service to our advisors and customers with a forward-thinking mindset.
• Maximize business value, through increased advisor and customer satisfaction and reduced business expenses, by fully leveraging platform capabilities and optimizing business processes.
• Engage key stakeholders in senior leadership roles across Operations, ETX, Compliance and MMFA on critical decisions/information throughout the project life cycle to ensure alignment on delivery of capabilities.
• Partner with leadership on the development of initiatives and deliverables to build a roadmap that will raise awareness to potential organizational risks with capacity, change management and success of an initiative.
• Advocate for and coordinate the project team, partners and stakeholders to ensure alignment around strategy and project deliverables.
• Support planning, reviews, demos and acceptance of completed work, ensuring quality.
• Develop the business goals and roadmaps, formulate scope and create a time-based implementation plan.
• Report regularly on initiatives status, escalating risks/barriers to appropriate leadership with recommendations to address the issues.
• Coordinate monthly reporting of key initiatives within the organization to provide leadership insights into accomplishments, barriers, and general awareness.
• Collaborate on the development/execution of the communication plan that supports the socialization of the MM Operations Salesforce strategy,
• Support and collaborate with business owners in the development of presentations that communicate strategy, business cases, current state, etc.
• Leverage operational Salesforce, Genesys, etc. product and process knowledge to provide analysis of operational data that educates the business on impacts of initiatives, workflow changes, environmental effects
• Demonstrate strong leadership and negotiation skills with business partners on analyzing business practices and devising strategies that will improve efficiency, customer experience and/or employee engagement
• Partner with product owner/leadership of the Customer Care Centers, Wealth Management and Enterprise Technology to maximize the value of the combined suite of capabilities.
• Keep change management principles in mind, for proper timing and adjustment of teams
• Create, maintain and prioritize the product backlog (business requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, etc.) for development teams.

The Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience in business consulting or project management
• 8+ years in a leadership, business or strategic consultant role
• Ability to think strategically/big picture and understand how the pieces fit across an operating system
• Ability to multi-task and manage projects and or priorities, as assigned
• Demonstrated ability to successfully collaborate and manage work across teams and business units with competing priorities.
• Experience in working with various project delivery models (agile, waterfall, hybrid)
• Financial acumen with experience in tracking and reporting benefit realization
• Authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future
• Proven ability to develop transformative solutions that leads to significant business results and/or improved customer and advisor experiences
• Demonstrated skill in autonomous decision-making, considering potential business risks
• Ability to work independently with minimal direction and potential ambiguous situations
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills

The Ideal Qualifications

• Experience with Salesforce technology; ideally in deployment or optimization efforts
• Strong data analysis with experience managing complex and multiple data resources
• Ability to leverage data, analytics and/or emerging technologies to apply to a business setting that yields transformative value
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to effectively present complex information clearly
• Extremely organized, detail-oriented individual who is capable of self-managing and multi-tasking in a fast-paced, demanding environment.
• Proven ability to collaborate cross-functionally/cross-organization and influence outcomes
• Demonstrated ability to adapt to changing business priorities and a strong work ethic
• Knowledge of Life systems and workflows within operations
• Proficient in Excel and PowerPoint
• Excellent project management skills

MassMutual is an equal employment opportunity employer. We welcome all persons to apply.

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