Product Management Director - Policy Admin & Rating

EMC Insurance Companies is an insurance organization focused on working collaboratively to improve lives through caring leadership, close partnerships, and responsive expertise. The Product Management Director leads digital product strategy for policy administration and rating products, overseeing product roadmaps, value realization, development, cross-functional coordination, and team management.

Responsibilities:

• Serves as the business unit authority and subject matter expert on all assigned products to ensure EMC has the right digital products in place long term to support corresponding value stream and business capabilities and to meet user/customer expectations
• Creates and maintains strategic, high-level product roadmaps based on input from business owners and appropriate stakeholders
• Facilitates critical conversations to drive the prioritization process and resource alignment
• Researches insurance industry trends, technology advancements, and competitor actions in the digital product space to inform product strategies and vision
• Ensures roadmaps align across all products within the value stream and align with enterprise strategy to enable EMC to meet business goals
• Makes adjustments to strategic vision and roadmaps as necessary
• Serves as the steward of assigned product portfolio to ensure overall financial value of portfolio
• Manages total cost of ownership (TCO) for assigned digital products
• Tracks overall costs to deliver and maintain products with focus on cost containment, value maximization, and business strategy alignment
• Creates and maintains financial benefits of the product to share with stakeholders and the enterprise
• Partners with business areas and IT to recommend buy versus build decisions and procurement of vendor solutions
• Monitors cost and capacity of product teams and pursues corrective action as needed
• Manages current product life cycles and maintains market awareness of potential third-party solutions
• Drives the highly complex product development effort to ensure products generate desired benefits and support value streams
• Collaborates with Product Owners on product roadmap development and changes
• Provides guidance to define business/customer needs and execute product roadmaps, create feature/enhancement requirements, and plan releases
• Serves as the voice of the customer to ensure that all plans will enable EMC to ensure maximum value and alignment with the product vision and partners with customer experience team to ensure the appropriate personas are understood and incorporated within the product vision
• Evaluates the viability and value of new ideas, proposals, initiatives, and requests
• Incorporates and implements approved changes and ensures they are built into the product roadmap
• Manages coordination among Product Owners to align deliverables of product teams and supports interaction with other business and support areas
• Supports Product Owners and product teams in executing their responsibilities
• Establishes and measures KPIs and/or OKRs and monitors business outcomes to confirm expected benefits realization and takes corrective action as needed
• Partners with Strategic Analytics and Business Process Management to document, design, and implement underlying process improvements to products
• Collaborates with leadership and other stakeholders  to ensure coordination among all product teams that support common value streams and business capabilities
• Serves as a product leader in corporate initiatives and large-scale programs that impact assigned digital products
• Coordinates cross-functional IT program activities and works with corresponding steering committees
• Leverages common solutions across product teams and drives digital product management strategy.        
• Builds culture and develops team members while overseeing team
• Collaborates with team members to establish performance goals and monitors status, conducts performance reviews, and provides coaching.  Interviews, hires, and recommends salary adjustments for team members
• Resolves disciplinary issues, reviews results, action plans, and progress
• Develops team expertise and completes succession planning, including identifying talent and implementing development plans for critical positions
• Coaches and mentors Product Owners to deepen their knowledge and to mature their skills, techniques and competences
• Provides feedback to Product Owner leaders regarding product ownership duties and skills, including areas for training and improvement

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant experience
• Ten years of experience in product management or related experience
• Applicable insurance business area experience in progressively responsible roles may substitute for some of the product management experience
• Experience in product and service-based delivery environment
• Prior experience working with end users to develop customer focused solutions
• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
• Advanced understanding of the Scrum framework and Agile development techniques
• Excellent knowledge of workflow management and road mapping tools, such as JIRA, Aha or ProductPlan
• Advanced business knowledge in appropriate field to lead development in coordination with all stakeholders
• Strong ability to align product strategy and subsequent roadmaps while collaborating to drive implementation
• Ability to adapt technical specifications to meet end user expectations and deliverables
• Strong skills with Atlassian stack (Jira), MS Teams and/or similar collaboration tool(s)
• Strong coaching and mentoring skills, including the ability to coach upward
• Excellent skills in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook
• Exceptional interpersonal and servant leadership skills
• Ability to resolve conflict, motivate and influence team members and communicate effectively
• Ability to develop and manage multiple products with competing priorities
• Advanced analytical and problem-solving skills with excellent attention to detail
• Advanced certification in the field of product ownership/management preferred