Director Strategic Customer Initiatives

Job Summary

The Director of Strategic Customer Initiatives plays a vital and critical role for both the Global Channels and International Business Units and is responsible for leading and delivering against several important initiatives, workstreams, and business deliverables including managing a team of 2-3 direct reports. This role has four primary functions. First this position leads, directs, or oversees all project plans for all Foodservice, CPG, eCom, Inspire, or International business opportunities. Second, this position is directly responsible for overseeing our commercialization process (Stages & Gates) of bringing new items and products to the market as we continue to innovate and adapt to consumer demands and expectations. In addition, this position directly manages our business relationships, sales, and forecasting with all our Ingredient Suppliers who support our manufacturing partners. Finally, this position supervises, manages, and mentors a team of direct reports who lead, direct, manage, or help support the business leads across several other critical areas including conventions, legal, customer complaints, Pipedrive, strategic accounts plans, and product catalogs.

Essential Functions

• Project Plan Management
• Builds relationships and collaborates with key stakeholders to identify business needs and then manages, directs, and leads project plan across all departments (business development, marketing, culinary, legal, and R&D) to ensure delivery of commitments and deliverables.
• Partners with the business lead to review the progress of the project and effectively manages change requirements, dependencies, milestones, risks, issues, priorities, quality, etc. to ensure project goals, objectives, and deliverables are met in a timely and cost-effective manner.
• Develops best practices, processes, procedures, and tools for project execution and management to increase efficiency.
• Proactively identifies, resolves, and/or escalates risks, challenges, barriers, and issues to relevant stakeholders.
• Leads and directs weekly project meetings with all key stakeholders.
• Conducts post-implementation audit reviews and documents lessons learned.
• Performs risk management planning, risk identification, and mitigation.
• Sets project quality and performance standards.
• Commercialization (Stages & Gates)
• Leads, directs, and manages all stages and gates of the commercialization process internally.
• Responsible for holding each key stakeholder accountable for all deliverables and timing to ensure project completion and bringing product into the market.
• Oversees our Pipedrive platform to ensure accurate information, timing, and deliverables are established, achieved, and communicated.
• Leads the monthly leadership update on status of all projects and products.
• Sales Leadership
• Leads day-to-day relationships and partnerships with all our Ingredient Suppliers who support our manufacturing partners in producing products.
• Leads all aspects with our ingredient suppliers including management of our contract, terms, forecasting, lead times, and our royalty program.
• Coordinates linkage between our ingredient suppliers and our manufacturing partners to ensure we can deliver on all opportunities.
• Responsible and accountable for the revenue as part of the Global Channels AOP and Business Plan.
• All Other Essential Functions
• Leads, directs, manages, and is responsible for a team of 2-3 direct reports.
• Manages set-up, payment, logistics, and execution for all Conventions (SONIC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Applebee’s, SUBWAY)
• Leads weekly legal review meetings with all business leads to track, hold accountable, and execute all legal documents (MDLA, TLA, PDA, NDA, etc)
• Manages, leads, and oversees our customer complaints by securing information both internally and from all our top business partners to publish a monthly scorecard.
• Manages and oversees our CRM platform (Pipedrive) to ensure all business leads are leveraging this to ensure complete system alignment on all open projects.
• Assist VP of Business Development in the annual strategic account plan activities and deliverables.

Education

• Bachelors required
  
  

Work Experience

• 8 years of experience in project management, Req
• Experience with project management tools, Req
• Experience managing multiple projects under various deadlines, Req
• Experience with consumer products or food service industries, Req
• Experience with CRM systems, Req
  
  

Skills

• Knowledge of project management methodologies and tools
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Solid organizational skills including attention to detail and multitasking skills
• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office
• Ability to build and maintain strong working relationships
  
  

Certifications

• PMP certification preferred
  
  

Travel Requirement