Director

Director of Product Management – HCL CX (AppScan)

Position

In this role, you will be responsible for the product strategy and execution of the roadmap for the HCL CX portfolio (with a large focus on Unica Marketing Platform) working with Development. Overseeing a team of Product Managers, you will work with Sales and Marketing to ensure HCL’s offering and GTM for this portfolio has what it needs to win, including through BP and GSI-led sales efforts. You will be measured on the growth, retention, and satisfaction of the customers and business partners, and the positive $ impact of this segment on the overall HCL Software business. Have an impact in these areas:

• Understand the existing (on-premise) install base and arrive at incremental features and roadmap to retain the existing customers and drive renewals and incremental license revenue
• Understand key market trends and competitive insights to ideate and put together major breakthrough features in the roadmap to address the existing gaps in the product
• Put together the roadmap for a SAAS solution that blends in the existing strengths of the product, and makes the offering feasible, optimize costs and yet be differentiated in the market
• Deliver on executing the roadmap with prioritization and precision in collaboration with sales, marketing and engineering teams
• Evangelize the possibilities with new feature functions and new version of the product to both internal and external stakeholders
• Deliver significant positive movement in key analyst ratings of the product in collaboration with sales and marketing teams
• Lead & Align the efforts of the other team members in the PM team to deliver effective releases one after the other

Responsibilities

• Help establish HCL Software as a top ISV brand for Customerl Experience platforms by engaging with customers, partners, analysts, industry experts, and other influencers in the CX platform markets.
• Drive strategic clarity for the CX product differentiation through an outside-in analysis of market, competitive, customer, and technological forces on what’s needed.
• Create well-defined major release roadmaps with WOWs working with CX Solutions stakeholders. Do outside-in roadmap and feature validation and align requirements, where necessary, to the HCL Software Product Principals.
• Work with Development, Customers, and Partners to ensure that the right features get built in a timely manner with 1) excellent product quality, 2) ease of upgrading and adoption, 3) that delight; 4) and create stickiness.
• Ensure major release launch readiness by working with Marketing to create an impactful market message, rationalize pricing & packaging, and work with influencers (social, analyst and media) to get favorable mentions.
• Work closely with Sales, Support, and Services teams to ensure customer success with our products, including ensuring timely launch readiness in terms of Fulfilment & Enablement for sellers, BPs, and GSI partners.
• Measure on-going adoption, and unblock barriers to upgrades, where necessary. Also, lead the design and execution of cross-functional adoption activities if required.
• Enable product specialists, CSMs, and Client directors to win on both renewals and net new deals, specifically, support them with technical product knowledge, and competitive insight.
• Work with your CRM, and operations teams to ensure seamless product fulfillment and design of license enforcement, where necessary.
• Continuously improve your skills and knowledge to drive optimal results with sales and the channel. Learn new technical and PM domain skills that allow managing your product more effectively.
• Working a cross-functional team, define the industry analyst strategy for CX and ensure successful leadership position in tier 1 vendor reports. Engage with tier 2 vendors to support GTM efforts.
• Lead & Align the efforts of the other team members in the PM team to deliver effective releases one after the other

3-month Goals

• Identify and rank the critical backlog, product, and technical debt issues in HCL’s Jira instance.
• Establish Aha within the existing community as the designation for ideation. Conduct f2f events as necessary to collect feedback on new features and designs. Forum and run (with help from marketing) a design partnership with key customers and partners.
• Build and communicate the HCL roadmap for this portfolio with all stakeholders.
• Ensure customers understand the HCL mission for this portfolio and the commitment to innovation and sustained investment.
• Provide ongoing guidance and technical knowledge sharing with our Technical Advocacy leader, on how the HCL CX product should be positioned, demo’ed and POC’ed to win in competitive selling situations and RFPs.
• Work with Marketing to ensure the key marketing messages and assets for every launch of the HCL customer journey are relevant, accurate, and on message.
• Participate in customer briefings, plus, HCL and third-party events, webcasts, and analyst sessions.
• Play a highly visible role in the successful launch of new products and cultivate relationships with customers to enable the creation of references.

Qualities

• Works well under pressure and can prioritize workload to meet deadlines.
• Ability to multi-task, work independently, and communicate with diplomacy and tact.
• Able to influence cross-functional teams with thoughtful insight and without formal authority.
• Team player with a positive attitude and demonstrated optimism.
• A passion for winning in a competitive market.
• Collaborate with team and stakeholders across a wide geography

Experience

• Proven background and in-depth product and technical knowledge of similar customer experience platforms such as Pega, Adobe Marketing, Sales Force Marketing, Hubspot…
• Knowledge of using Aha (or similar Product Management tools) is a plus.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent.
• Product Management experience is a plus.
• Experience working with Sales, and Development teams is essential.
• Understanding and/or demonstrated experience of how to infuse AI/ML into a marketing product in a very meaningful way