Implementation Manager
The Group:
The Products group is the home of manufacturing and innovation at Morningstar. The individuals in this group transform our high-quality data, independent research, and technological expertise into well-designed products that delight our clients. The group’s product management, product development, and service teams collaborate with our Client Solutions group to help provide clients with relevant products and bundled solutions.
The Role:
The Implementation Manager will partner with our Business Development, Information Products, Technology, and Research teams to ensure that Morningstar's solutions are designed effectively to meet our clients' business needs and requirements, and delivered on time with high quality. This position is based in our Chicago office and is part of the Product Success organization. The primary functions of this role are to work directly with potential clients, starting early in the sales process, to understand and document their requirements, to design the appropriate Morningstar solution to meet those requirements while supporting the sales effort toward a profitable and strategically viable proposal, to partner with product teams to manage delivery of the solution to the client, to coordinate client communications throughout the implementation, and to execute a smooth transition plan to ongoing Morningstar support teams at the end of the implementation effort.
Responsibilities
- Lead discovery sessions with both client representatives and other Morningstar staff to walk through an organization's current business model, needs, and challenges they are facing.
- Provide a comprehensive demonstration of relevant Morningstar capabilities.
- Support sales efforts.
- Design, create and present a recommended Morningstar solution which meets the client's needs while being a scalable and sustainable solution following Morningstar best practices.
- Illustrate how the proposed solution will provide business benefit and address strategic initiatives.
- Produce Statement of Work documentation to detail the solution to be built and reach a common understanding of the solution between the client and Morningstar product team(s).
- Work with internal product owners, business analysts and delivery squads to clearly communicate client business requirements and timeline expectations, monitor implementation progress, provide client and internal stakeholders with regular project status updates, and deliver high quality and timely implementations.
- Serve as the primary point of contact for clients throughout discovery and implementation phases; lead regular client calls/meetings and manage client expectations.
- Identify project risks, develop mitigation plans, and escalate potential impediments.
- Work with product management to incorporate client feedback into our core offerings.
Requirements
- Minimum three years of experience in a client service, product management, project management, or business development role.
- Strong financial services industry knowledge.
- Excellent writing, communication, problem solving, organizational, and analytical skills.
- Ability to work independently and manage competing priorities and deadlines.
- A friendly professional demeanor and ability to excel in a highly collaborative team environment.
- Familiarity with Morningstar products and capabilities.
- Some knowledge of general software and data architectural principles is preferred.
- A bachelor’s degree is required. MBA or CFA is a plus.