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Role Summary:
- A senior role, responsible for the management of the lifecycle of the China Market's Autoline and Layered Applications product portfolio and product lifecycles.
- The Product Manager is responsible for leading the future development of their managed products. This is achieved by reviewing enhancement requests and translating the most strategic into the appropriate release to optimise product appeal, and where necessary adopting some short term tactical changes . This includes managing these requests as development projects and creating appropriate functional requirement definition documents.
- The other key aspect of the role is product communication. This includes marketing the features and benefits of the product area to internal and external audiences to enforce the product’s position within the market. The Product Marketing Manager will be the focal point for their area of Autoline and associated Layered Applications and should be proactive in developing this understanding across the ADP DS China market.
Main Duties and Responsibilities:
- Working with central product teams, defining the China product roadmap for Autoline and Layered Application products. In addition, managing the delivery into the local business of all new products, including Managing research, creating concepts, creating business cases, defining and executing introduction and launch plans.
- Through detailed financial measurement manage Product risk and working with Sales and Marketing Operations to manage all other aspects of the Marketing mix.
Primary Duties and Responsibilities include:
- To maintain a thorough understanding of the current Autoline and Layered Application products
Lead the local market product development strategy for Autoline and Layered Application products. This includes developing product differentiators to create customer value and competitive advantage propositions
- Manage the intregration projects between Autoline and key Layered Applications
Provide thought leadership and knowledge transfer to ADP Associates on best practise all products
Validate the specifications produced by local market Business Analysts for the enhancement of local market products. Maintain a perpetual product enhancement review and document the results for all products
- Validate the functionality of new and enhanced software provided by development departments, intended specifically for the China market
- Assist in the development of release notes and other documentation for new and enhanced software to agreed standards and time scales
- Prepare and deliver training for sales & marketing, plus implementation & support on product benefits & return on investment
- Assist in hand-over training of new product releases to support analysts and implementation consultants designated for acceptance testing
- Assist in the training and implementation of local market pilots of new products
- Attend and support any pre and post-sales customer and/or franchise meetings that may be required
- Ensure that all documentation development is secured on a daily basis and backed-up to an off-line media regularly (minimum once per week)
Job Function Competencies:
- A strong understanding of the relationship between product lifecycle, risk and profitability
Ability to identify and persuade others of the benefits of following a structured product lifecycle methodology
- Strong written and verbal skills at the highest level
- Possess an ability to assist in negotiations between technical staff, sales staff and customers
Managing Enhancement Requests:
- Maintain a balanced focus between the expectations of customers and the best interests of ADP
- Ensure functional requirements documentation is clearly structured for each accepted enhancement request so that this can be used by R&D for development and testing
Market and Product Understanding:
- Maintain a good understanding of the business and process requirements of the retail and wholesale automotive industry for which we provide IT solutions. Developing a Product best practice approach to all communications
- Maintain a thorough knowledge of the product functionality for the products adopted in the China market
Project Management:
- Proper utilisation of the ADP standard project management systems in order to manage collections of enhancements requests to an agreed deliverable
Product Communication:
- The production of clear and concise product marketing materials for internal and external audiences that make clear the features and benefits to our customers of using our products
- Lead the knowledge transfer to key internal associates of Product best practise, new product functionality and the associated benefits
Experience and/or Qualifications Required:
- A minimum of 5 years consulting, sales and or marketing experience within a software or internet business.
- Experience of working in a Automotive OEM or Dealership environment .
- A formal marketing qualification would be an advantage.
- A working knowledge of the retail and wholesale automotive distribution process
- A full understanding of current MS applications (such as Word, Excel,PowerPoint etc.)
- A good understanding of current and future operating systems (UNIX, MS Windows etc.)
- An appreciation of the techniques used to market products and other services
- Line Management experience of running a small team working to tight deadlines
Personal Skills Required:
- Ability to plan both logistically and financially
- Ability to empathise and negotiate with stakeholders and customers
- Strong written, verbal and presentational skills
- Ability to build and foster team work across multiple departments
- Team working (within formal team structure or virtual team)
- To help and guide other Product Managers and Business Analysts where required
- To manage the contribution of other key players in the management of the product, especially in the area of Marketing Operations, R &D and Country Operations (support/consultancy)
Communication:
- The ability to communicate effectively to internal and external audiences using a range of tools, product presentations, written documents, email and verbal explanations
Customer Focus:
- To develop and empathy for our customer situations and an understanding of requirements for their business needs (Dealer and OEM)
Problem Solving & Decision making:
- The ability to resolve priorities using own judgement where possible, but seek guidance from manager where necessary
Planning and organising:
- The ability to work under limited supervision and effectively manage one’s own workload whilst delivering the departments objectives
Working under pressure:
- The ability to manage and prioritise many projects at any one time with, or without, the guidance of the regional Product Marketing Manager
Attitude & Behaviour:
- To maintain a positive “can do” approach
- To represent ADP in a professional manner when dealing with all internal and external parties
- To develop and motivate the Business Analysts to perform to their highest ability
Initiative:
- To actively seek improvements in the product area of reasonability through functional improvements
- To contribute to process improvements for the Product Marketing team
Flexibility Statement:
- The fast moving nature of the company’s business also means that you may, from time to time, be asked to perform roles outside your original job description. This allows the company to utilise its people in the best possible way at all times and to help employees make their contribution to a changing environment.
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