Product Manager (Digital) - International
Company Overview
Grainger is a broad line, business-to-business distributor of maintenance, repair and operating (MRO) supplies and other related products and services. More than 3.2 million businesses and institutions worldwide rely on Grainger for products such as safety gloves, ladders, motors and janitorial supplies, along with services like inventory management and technical support. These customers represent a broad collection of industries including commercial, government, healthcare and manufacturing. They place orders online, on mobile devices, through sales representatives, over the phone and at local branches. Approximately 5,000 suppliers provide Grainger with more than 1.6 million products stocked in Grainger's distribution centers and branches worldwide.
Position Description
Primary Function: The Product Manager contributes to the product strategy, vision, and roadmap of future products, with high degree of ownership over critical features and the customer experience. This role is inherently cross-functional and will work closely with engineering, design, and operations to develop and launch innovative aspects of a product. The Product Manager is both creative and highly analytical, able to work extremely effectively in a matrix organization, adept at synthesizing a variety of technologies and capabilities into products and applications that customers love. The Product Manager is customer focused and technology savvy – with experience creating successful products and services. The role will solve complex, cutting-edge problems and be part of a team that gets things done. The Product Manager will be accountable for portions of a technical product. |
Principal Duties & Responsibilities: •Define, develop and deliver products and services that will enable Grainger to continue to lead the industry. • Understand and articulate customer needs, conduct on-going customer research, leverage internal knowledge and expertise, and prioritize market requirements. • Retrieve and analyze large data sets to identify and solve business problems. • Develop business plans utilizing data to make recommendations that create advantage for Grainger. • Build relationships and identify stakeholders across the organization. • Conceptualize the needs of the business and build portions of the product roadmap and requirements; as well as ensure we sustain, build adoption, track project management results, and communicate effectively: o Strategy, roadmap, and requirements: Develop portions of the product roadmap by defining plans to achieve the product vision and deliver business results. Assess the needs, opportunities, and pain points for the platform within Grainger's evolving systems landscape. Contribute to a cross-functional process for prioritizing, delivering and launching major product releases and incorporating enhancement requests to existing features. Deliver in a consistent cadence of releases. Translate customer needs into product requirements. o Sustain: Ensure consistent execution of product lifecycle processes from concept to launch. Be the internal and external authority and advocate for your given area of focus. o Adoption: Readiness planning starts when the project is conceived. Communicate and coordinate launch across all stakeholders including business and engineering teams. Pre-coordinate with adopting teams. Define, deliver (or update) readiness materials, FAQs, etc. as required to support launch. o Project management results: Track planned activities for each product release with consideration of schedule, risk management, escalation of issues, balances tradeoffs, etc. o Communications: Both facilitate and develop content for meetings up to the VP level landing the appropriate message for the audience. |
Position Requirements:
Preferred Education & Experience:
Competencies:
• Demonstrated ability to design complex solutions to create advantaged software.
• General manager mentality, entrepreneurial drive, and proven ability to influence others.
• Exceptional written, verbal, and presentation skills; excellent interpersonal skills.
• Superior process design skills and operational orientation.
• Continuous improvement and innovation mindset that results in the understanding of emerging technologies and how they might apply within the organization, as well as driving creativity, acting with agility and thinking outside current boundaries.
• Strong ability to participate in cross-functional teams and navigate a matrixed organization.
• Strong analytical and quantitative skills; ability to use hard data and metrics to back up assumptions and develop project business cases.
• Comfort with ambiguity.
• Thrives under pressure and working to aggressive timelines.
• Insatiable will to get stuff done.
• Ability to travel internationally to Canada and Mexico 25% of the time.
• Bilingual Spanish or French highly preferred.
Experiences:
• BS/BA degree in computer science, engineering, science, math or related field. MS or MBA preferred.
• 3-5+ years' of experience as a product manager or related occupation. The two years of experience must involve: conducting strategic business and financial analysis, retrieving and analyzing large and complex data sets; synthesizing business insights through advanced excel modeling, data retrieval and SQL/SAS; working cross-functionally with engineering, design, and project management counterparts to deliver digital products or services.
• Demonstrated expertise within industrial distribution a plus.
• A track record of successfully managing products through entire life cycle – from inception to launch.
• A track record of delivering business results and managing a product or product line P&L.
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EEOC Statement
Grainger is an Equal Opportunity Workplace and an Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.
