Job Description

KEY INITIATIVES AND RESULTS EXPECTED:

The ideal candidate possesses intellectual curiosity, creativity, strong problem-solving skills, excellent communication skills, and an ability to influence business and technical leaders in a dynamic environment as well as a strong desire to contribute to Zones’ continued success. This person will scope and execute initiatives by partnering with PMO Management, Senior Project Managers, stakeholders (Partner and Product Management, Purchasing, Operations, IT, Finance, Sales) to understand and prioritize initiatives to improve organization performance. Improvement may constitute increased speed, enhanced efficiency, lower cost, higher revenue or a combination of all.

STRATEGIES AND ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

1. Project Management
2. Lead and manages medium to large projects, directs project activities, schedules, risks and meetings, understands dependencies, and manages timelines
3. Manage cohesive plans across all work streams, ensuring coordinated approach when utilizing cross-functional resources for input, data gathering, analysis, etc.
4. Coordinate engagement of partner resources and subject matter experts across multiple projects & organizational functions
5. Proactive identification, documentation and resolution management of project risks and issues
6. Ability to define, track and report on specific measurable outcomes for projects
7. Makes tough decisions and trade-offs between strategic and tactical issues
8. Drive all project requirements through demand planning tools (Kinaxis) including order processing and schedule management with Client and Internal changes.
9. Accountable for project inventory and billing. Drive to manage projects by utilizing customer owned inventory model.
10. Diagnostics & Analytics
11. Identify workflows/procedures that require enhancement/streamlining and identify ways to make them more effective
12. Build models to estimate project costs, assess resource needs, and forecast expenses over time
13. Communication
14. Formulate recommendations and summarize findings via well-organized presentations to senior management; effectively summarize key information (e.g. cost savings, efficiency improvements, accountability metrics, etc.)
15. Implementation
16. Manage issues and decisions to timely resolution. Communicate with senior management teams to escalate/resolve project conflicts & needs
17. Formulate plans to communicate, train stakeholders, and implement approved changes for the best return on investment
18. Responsible for project turnover and start-up to project delivery stakeholders. Coordinate engagement of partner resources and subject matter experts across multiple projects & organizational functions
19. Accountable for deliverables according to project scope as documented in Statements of Work.
20. Responsible for project close out and reporting on project health and risks. Formulate and summarize findings ia well-organized presentations to senior management; effectively summarize key information (e.g. cost savings, risk, efficiency improvements, accountability metrics, etc.)
21. Stakeholder Management
22. Develop deep knowledge and understanding of customer and stakeholder business and needs
23. Build strong relationships with customer operations stakeholders. Be the main point of contact for customer operational requirements.
24. Effectively identify, define, document and manage stakeholder expectations and communications to ensure customer measurable customer satisfaction

PROCESS:

1. Project Management
2. Organize and conduct regular reviews to ensure sufficient progress vs. project objectives
3. Set and drive agenda, roles, and expectations per project to ensure all responsibilities are being met; escalate non-performance issues as appropriate
4. Diagnostics & Analytics
5. Map existing workflows and processes to highlight needed improvements
6. Mine available data to quantify and illustrate impacts of current processes
7. Create models to quantify expected benefits of process improvements
8. Communication
9. Develop and distribute recurring updates indicating status vs. objectives for each project
10. Where appropriate, partner to develop change management communications strategy to keep stakeholders informed of coming changes as well as performance expectations
11. Implementation
12. Partner with stakeholders to develop means for operationalizing change recommendations
13. Install QA/QC metrics and checks to monitor success of changes vs. expectations

METRICS

1. Identify and drive demonstrable improvement of Key Process Indicators (KPIs) vs. baseline measurements developed as part of each project effort
2. Successful management of project scope, budget and scheduled to ensure timely completion of project initiatives
3. Ensure that 100% of all tasks are resolved within appropriate time constraints through proper task management
4. Provide weekly status report depicting:
5. Service engagements
6. Utilization
7. Project Status
8. Risks
9. Issue Mitigation
10. Timely completion of project initiatives
11. Effective project communications with multiple stakeholders, teams and executive management

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

EDUCATION/CERTIFICATION:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• PMP; ITIL Certification or equivalent preferred.

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE:

1. 5 - 10 years of experience in program/ project management, process engineering or strategy within a technology or operations environment
2. Leadership skills: must have experience leading multiple projects and teams simultaneously
3. Problem solving skills: must be able to identify risks and develop actionable mitigation plans
4. Analytical skills: must be highly analytical with experience in using objective data to drive strategic recommendations
5. Communications skills: must be able to concisely explain complex issues, communicate well in writing and verbally, and be able to build strong working relationships across all levels of the organization, including remote areas
6. Intellectual curiosity: must possess a desire to understand why/how things work vs. simply completing the task at hand
7. Knowledge of and experience using Project Management Software
8. Possesses strong Microsoft Office skills including Excel, Word, Outlook,

Required Skills