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About the Comapny 

Our client’s mission is to humanize the relationships between businesses and their customers.

With over 4 billion messaging accounts worldwide, people spend more time messaging than any other activity online. This shift, combined with the power of conversation at scale, creates an opportunity to make interaction with the brands we trust more useful, more immediate, more intimate, and ultimately more human.

As consumers grow to demand personal and human communication on a wide variety of channels, businesses are looking to their software vendors and partners to innovate and deliver these customer experiences.

Our client empowers software makers to create the conversational experiences their customers will love. Across any messaging channel, their features, unified API and integrations let software makers focus on delivering the best possible experiences within their products. They measure their success by how much they simplify access to the constantly evolving world of messaging and conversational technology.

Serving large markets such as financial services, professional services, retail, and telecommunications, our client’s mission is to deliver the highest value to its customers with unparalleled industry solutions built on innovative technologies, deep technical knowledge and feature-rich applications. The firm is recognized for the robustness of its technologies, ease of use, flexibility and profound impact on client businesses.

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Scope of Position

Due to the success and growth of the company, our client is currently seeking a VP of Product, to be based in their Montreal head-office location. Reporting to the CEO, the VP of Product leads the product management team and retains responsibility for the product lifecycle of all the company’s products.

As a senior leader with portfolio level responsibility for the product strategy, product management and the market success of the firm’s product offerings, this person is a key contributor to achieving our client’s near-term and long-term objectives. The VP Product works closely with other members of the executive team to deliver product solutions that will be highly successful in the marketplace.

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   Functional Tasks 

• Lead the product vision and strategy development process including Product Roadmap development and annual review process
• Performing market research, market validation and whitespace analysis to identify new opportunities for existing and new products
• Foster close relationships with all key market constituents (customers, non-customers, analyst and competitors) to validate product strategy and roadmap
• Oversee/complete competitive analysis against key criteria. Identify, analyze and distill customer requirements into a prioritized set suitable to achieve the business goals of the company.
• Maintain close oversight of market analyses to develop and provide market requirements in response to customer needs, and market opportunities
• Understand the thorough business case for proposed products and initiatives, including cost/benefit estimates, market trends, competitive analysis, risk analysis, industry best practices and product development timelines. Establish selection criteria for product opportunities.
• Plan, prioritize and manage the product features and requirements from conceptual stages through product life cycles to optimize revenue and meet operational, financial and corporate objectives
• Collaborate with the CTO and Engineering teams to ensure consistent execution of product plans that result in product delivery on time, on budget
• Establish well defined target markets, value propositions, competitive positioning, channel and pricing strategies for the company’s products.
• Collaborate with the Sales and Marketing teams to ensure go-to-market strategies, plans and activities are aligned with the company’s business drivers
• Define goals and success metrics for the product management function
• Attract, train and develop a world-class team of product owners, product managers and designers. Provide ongoing direction, performance management and developmental support of the product management team. Focus the team to drive the business to increased revenue generation, growth, sector leadership, and ultimately profitability;
• Build a strong product culture based on continuous testing, learning, innovation and collaboration with marketers, designers and engineers.
• Define new product roll-out program plans, aligning business, technical and logistic efforts with customer requirements. Develop initial and ongoing management of the product road map in conjunction with engineering, sales and senior management teams.
• Champion on-going improvements in product cost, delivery and quality.
• Ensure that company is represented at relevant external activities such as industry trade shows, customer meetings/presentations and standard body conferences.
• Proactive member of the senior management team involved with all M&A analysis and activities.

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Key Performance Deliverables

In light of the identified responsibilities, the following are deliverables that the position is designed to achieve.

Specific performance measures will be agreed upon with the successful candidate. Corporate measures include bookings, revenues and profitability.

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Competency Profile

The following competencies listed below define the role of VP Product Management at our client:

Results Orientation

Focuses strongly on achieving agreed upon outcomes and ensures that key objectives are met. Conveys a sense of urgency and drives issues to closure. Aims to improve upon past performance. Establishes aggressive personal targets and strives to achieve them.

Strategic Approach

Develops a strategic plan to realize the vision. Revises strategy in light of changing circumstances. Takes a long-term view of organizational success. Works to clarify long term organizational goals. Able to stand back from immediate problems in order to focus on more far reaching ideas.

People Management

Establishes and communicates clear priorities and sense of direction. Clarifies roles and responsibilities. Adapts management style to achieve optimum results.

Planning & Objective Setting

Systematic in approach to work. Produces action plans in which objectives are defined and steps for achieving them are clearly specified. Plans by breaking down large task into subtasks. Develops plans that anticipate obstacles. Is realistic about time-scales and builds in appropriate checkpoints, milestones and controls in order to ensure that desired results are realized.

Communication

Expresses ideas in a clear, fluent and concise manner. Written and oral arguments are compelling and responsive to the needs of the audience. Comprehends communications from others and responds appropriately.

Commercial Acumen

Applies appropriate commercial and financial principles. Understands situations in terms of costs, profits, added-value and return on investment. Appreciates the commercial impact of own work on the organization’s total expenses and revenues.

Customer/Client Orientation

Strives to provide customers/clients with personalized and efficient service. Anticipates customers’/clients’ needs. Quickly follows up on customer/client contacts and complaints. Monitors and acts on measures of customer/client satisfaction.

Team Skills

Helps to create a sense of team spirit and harmonious relations through cooperation and support. Balances personal goals with those of the team. Fosters collaboration among team members.

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Preferred Experience / Education

The following indicates specific industry, academic and functional experience/qualifications that are important to the successful achievement of the identified responsibilities and performance deliverables.

• Have 10+ years professional experience in the enterprise software space
• Experienced in building and launching software applications/platforms/SaaS environments
• Able to operate effectively in an entrepreneurial company
• A strong team-player with proven ability to work effectively with and influence engineering, sales, marketing, services and support
• Able to plan and execute the product strategy
• Have proven business and market planning skills
• Demonstrated excellent presentation and communication skills
• Intellectually curious and highly collaborative
• Established a record of driving market adoption
• Have a strong understanding of sales solution selling and product lifecycle development
• Undergraduate degree in Computer Science or Engineering and MBA are preferred
• Experience in web, mobile, SMS, social messaging is an asset
• Possess strong leadership and interpersonal skills; able to work with all levels of internal staff, clients and prospective clients
• Exhibit strong project management, planning and budgeting skills
• Possess a strong sense of urgency and ownership over projects and deliverables

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Remuneration & Benefits

• Highly competitive compensation package structured to the needs of the successful candidate.