Lead Business Analyst, Portfolio Commercialization

Your Opportunity as the Lead Business Analyst, Portfolio Commercialization

The Portfolio Commercialization department enables people, process and/or technology solutions for capabilities that help our company to identify, evaluate, and execute against the right strategic initiatives. The Lead Business Analyst, on the Portfolio Commercialization Team, realizes this purpose by serving as a subject matter expert, key partner, and relationship manager for commercial business functions specifically including Marketing, Finance, R&D, Portfolio Directors, and Project Management. This role demonstrates an in-depth knowledge of stage-gate, product development processes, and business analysis, including the ability to translate needs, pain points, and requirements related to business processes and systems into proposed projects and actionable specifications that can be understood by solution delivery teams. The Lead Business Analyst role also utilizes project management skills to organize and deliver efforts, often involving multiple teams. As a leader within the business analysis discipline, this role is looked upon to coach others on skills required to enable change and be an effective liaison between technical and non-technical audiences. This hands-on position requires limited guidance, strong relationship building and communication skills, a customer service mindset, critical thinking, and a commitment to quality deliverables.

Location: Orrville, Ohio (Close proximity to Cleveland/Akron)

Work Arrangements: Hybrid - onsite a minimum of 9 days a month primarily during core weeks as determined by the Company; maybe more as business need requires

In this role you will:

Manage the Stage-Gate process

• Oversee the implementation of stage-gate processes for the development of consumer goods

• Responsible for maintaining training documentation & templates, monitoring general project/portfolio performance, and supporting commercialization stakeholders in identifying process improvements

• Support Portfolio Leads by reporting stage gate progress/metrics at regular intervals

• Perform process and program improvements to existing stage gate program

Cultivate relationships and learn the business

• Serve as the subject matter expert and/or liaison from the Portfolio Commercialization Center of Excellence to the business areas of Marketing, Finance, R&D, Portfolio Directors, and Project Management.

• Build positive, trusting relationships with business customers and develop a deep understanding of how they operate and what they need.

• Foster strong, collaborative relationships with internal team members and vendors in helping to address business priorities.

• Understand the process, systems and data landscape in the business areas, including security and compliance needs.

Initiate, manage and deliver projects

• Support business areas with new project generation/continuous improvement work while constructively challenging ROI, priority, and connection to business and technical roadmaps.

• Consult with subject matter experts to document existing process and business capabilities, research best practices and propose future processes in the spirit of continuous improvement.

• Define requirements based on translation of business needs and gaps collaboratively with stakeholders, leading to solution design.

• Create and/or influence deliverables such as project plans, business process flows, change impacts, solution requirements, test plans, cutover plans and support plans.

• Collaborate with delivery teams on solution design, identifying appropriate actions based on guidelines and acting as a champion to ensure delivered solutions meet the intended design.

• Proactively seeks opportunities to automate and integrate between commercial systems

• Incorporate risk management into project activities and model best practices regarding audit and security controls.

• May serve as a project manager on medium to large efforts pertaining to directly supported business areas, applying standard project methodologies used at Smucker.

Support and maintain existing solutions

• Serve as the point of contact for business partners regarding our portfolio and innovation management solution (Accolade).

• Demonstrates a continuous improvement mindset and works with various stakeholders to identify opportunities to reduce time to market, increase product launch success, and create efficiencies in our processes and systems.

• Works with the organization to provide visibility to the enterprise innovation process, enable data driven decisions, and improve speed to market.

• Participate in planning and execution of x-large initiatives such as implementing and re-platforming a new portfolio and innovation management solution.

Strengthen the Business Analysis community

• Mentor and guide others to help advance business analysis within Smucker as a discipline, community of practice and profession.

• Serve as a contributor to the Business Analyst Center of Excellence, seeking opportunities to lead change and share knowledge broadly.

The Right Place for You

We are bold, kind, strive to do the right thing, we play to win, and we believe in a strong community that thrives together. Our culture is rooted in our Basic Beliefs, and we believe in supporting every employee by meeting their physical, emotional, and financial needs.

What we are looking for:

Minimum Requirements:

• 5+ years of relevant work experience with either a Bachelor's degree in a related field or specialized training (including on-the-job).

• Experience working directly with business customers within, but not limited to, Marketing, Finance, R&D, Portfolio Directors, and Project Management.

• Demonstrated experience translating data into actionable insights to support stage-gate decision-making and financial planning processes.

• Experience with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) implementations within an integrated enterprise environment.

• Experience leading project activities with a strong understanding of project management methodologies and stage gate processes and/or methods used to support new product development.

• Effective communicator and facilitator, with ability to lead efficient meetings with varied audiences (leadership, vendors, etc.).

• Strong customer service mindset, with an ability to understand and advocate for customer needs while setting appropriate expectations and boundaries.

Additional skills and experience that we think would make someone successful in this role (not required):

• Experience implementing or supporting portfolio and innovation management or other enterprise level software relating to portfolio management.

• Professional certification and/or experience leading professional development activities in business analysis, change management or project management.

• Familiarity with data integration methods and data conversion activities. Experience creating requirements and design documentation pertaining to data integration or conversion.

• Experience in the Consumer-Packaged Goods (CPG) industry.

• Willingness to learn system configuration

Learn more about working at Smucker:

• Helping our Employees Thrive

• Delivering on Our Purpose

• Our Continued Commitment to Ensuring a Workplace for All

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