Product Data and Lifecycle Management

The Product Area Lead - Product Data & Lifecycle Management owns the overall roadmap and budget for the products in the product area and leads, inspires and empowers the people in the teams. The role holder is accountable for the development and operation of the products with the goal of maximizing user satisfaction and business value within the budget. This role requires close collaboration with various stakeholders to ensure efficient and targeted product development and operations, especially for cross-product solutions along the product data flow from design to sales channels.

Ownership:Responsible and accountable for the design, build, and operation of the following products to ensure holistic and sustainable solutions:

Product Data & Lifecycle Landscape (Centric PLM, Centric PXM (formerly Contentserv, PIM), Bynder (DAM), SAP MM article master data), organized in three product teams (PLM, PIM, DAM)

The Product Area Lead - Product Data & Lifecycle Management will have the following responsibilities:

• Team leadership & development: Lead the three product teams (PLM, PIM, DAM) consisting of internal and external team members. Hire great talent, act as a role model every day and incorporate the leadership values. Empower team members to take decisions where the expertise lies and foster a culture of learning, continuous improvement and customer orientation. Scout and contract external team members or project resources and ensure the right balance of skills and qualifications within the teams.
• Strategic leadership: Define and drive the roadmap for the product lifecycle and product data applications in alignment with the product creation, sourcing and omnichannel strategy and the IT enterprise architecture. Ensure integration and scalability of solutions across the system landscape.
• Product master data governance: Own the product data model, data ownership roles and data quality rules along the flow from Centric PLM to SAP MM, Centric PXM, Bynder and the sales channels, ensuring a single source of truth for each attribute.
• Ways of working: Support the development and operations processes by designing and implementing the right processes and governance (e.g. Scrum processes, waterfall where needed).
• Budget & vendor management: Plan the yearly budget according to company priorities, deliver cost savings where needed and manage actual cost against budget. Lead vendor selection and vendor performance management. Prepare and negotiate contracts with vendors together with indirect procurement according to the indirect procurement guidelines.
• Steer product development: Support the product owners so developments for the products are delivered on time and within budget, with a particular focus on integration with applications outside of one's own area of responsibility.
• Stakeholder communication & satisfaction: Regular updates and feedback collection from stakeholders to meet business requirements. Closely monitor tickets and feedback, translate them into measures and work closely with the end-to-end process owners.
• Promote collaboration: Close collaboration with other IT teams (e.g. SAP, ecommerce, planning, integration) for smooth communication and integration of the products.
• Provide data for other systems/analytics: Ensure that relevant product data is provided for other systems, sales channels and analytics to enable comprehensive analysis and integration.
• Measure product success: Support the product owners in defining and tracking performance metrics and goals for their products, including data quality and product time-to-market KPIs.
• Risk management: Identify and resolve potential risks and issues that may arise during the integration of various applications.
• Continuous improvement: Promote a culture of continuous improvement and use best practices, especially for cross-module solutions involving the products.
• Train and support users: Emphasize training and support for users to enable easy adoption and use of new cross-module solutions involving the products.
• Compliance and security: Ensure that the products meet relevant compliance and security requirements, including regulatory product data such as EU Digital Product Passport (ESPR), material composition and care labelling, and GS1/EAN.