PURPOSE & OVERALL RELEVANCE FOR THE ORGANIZATION

The purpose of the product owner role is to enable operational excellence and future readiness across Supply Chain, covering global SCM (and adjacent) functions, as well as market SCM teams.

As a member of the Global Outbound Transportation team, you will bring technical innovation while identifying efficiency and process excellence opportunities with a keen focus on our regional market operations. The key objectives of the role are 

• Translating strategic direction & demand into a domain strategy and product portfolio which is well-balanced between solving operational problems (12-month horizon) and enabling future readiness (3+ years horizon)
• Executing product ownership for all digital products in the domain
• Executing business process ownership on an operational level
• Provisioning of change management & support for these processes and the related systems
  
  

As a Product Owner for Outbound Transportation, you are responsible for the quality and strategic impact of complex digital products, such as transportation management solution (TMS), multi-carrier management platform; as standalone solutions and in the context of the roll-out of our new SAP S4 ERP platform. You will work on continuously improving and evolving the product in order to maximize the value for all internals customers.

Partnering with IT and internal stakeholders to define a robust product backlog, managing capability expansion increments and leading the team towards definition of new functionalities and best practices are a few examples of the activities that will be expected from this role. Additionally, you will be the strategic interface to various key stakeholders (such as global SCM functions, local SCM teams and adjacent Global teams such as Finance and Procurement) for the product area, to drive user engagement and satisfaction, as well as ensuring future readiness. 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Product Strategy and Delivery
  • Be accountable for the product success considering the value for the consumer and the company (ROI)
  • Specify the product vision and roadmap as well as user stories considering the value for the user community and the company
  • Ensure industry standards and template best practices are implemented
  • Be accountable for product delivery in line with the roadmap and committed delivery dates
  • Identify and solve dependencies with other product owners to ensure efficient delivery. Coordinate interfaces between different product teams
    
    
• Product Backlog
  • Prioritize and manage product backlog, ensuring alignment with business goals and customer needs
  • Collaborate with stakeholders to gather requirements and refine product backlog
  • Ensure the product backlog is transparent, visible, and understood by team members and stakeholders
    
    
• Transport Management Integration (TMI)
  • Be accountable for TMI delivery as part of SAP S4 ERP implementation
  • Develop and maintain detailed functional specifications to guide product development
  • Establish and manage data specifications to ensure data integrity and consistency across systems
  • Lead system integration testing (SIT) efforts to ensure product quality and performance
  • Ensure technical and business documentations are kept up to date and handed-over in key user training (KUT) phases
  • Ensure handover of user acceptance testing (UAT) to roll-out responsible team, and provide clarifications as needed
    
    

• Monitoring
  • Be accountable for monitoring, optimization and enhancement of the configuration, features and functionalities related to the product
  • Ensure that objective data sources and feedback are used for the optimization of the product

KEY RELATIONSHIPS

• Product Owners and teams
• Global and Market SCM teams
• Global and Market IT teams
• Finance/ Controlling
• Procurement
• External Consultants and Software Vendors

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES

• Ability to think strategically and develop innovative solutions
• Expert level domain knowledge on Outbound Transportation processes
• Extensive knowledge of ground transportation modes (parcel, pallet, LTL/FTL) in the consumer goods industry
• Understanding of the bigger picture and end-to-end supply chain with the focus on transportation (DC to customer, consumer)
• Proven experience with transportation systems, and technology platforms (Blue Yonder TMS, nShift carrier integration platform, SAP S4, yard management solutions)
• Comfortable working with enterprise-level platforms and technologies
• Ability to lead and influence without formal reporting line
• Ability to analyze and synthesize complex data sets
• Ability to be self-directed while working under tight deadlines
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment with different international cultures
• Strong communication (both written and verbal) and facilitation skills (small and large groups) especially when interacting with different levels of business
• Ability to travel, domestic or international, as required
• Fluent English (verbal and written),
• Strong MS-Office skills (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)

REQUISITE EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE 

• University degree in supply chain management, business administration or a related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience
• 8+ years of experience working in Supply Chain / IT
• Experience as a Product Owner in at least one additional product area or domain
• Experience in multi-national supply chain/logistics/transportation work experience in fast moving consumer goods industry (preferably apparel, fashion background)
• Experience in working with stakeholders and experts at various organizational levels