Chief Product Officer, SVP

Charles River focuses intently on delivering market leading and feature rich technology wrapped in an exceptional client service experience. Reporting to the CEO of CRD, the Chief Product Officer is a senior-level role providing leadership to CRD’s technical product strategy and marketing. This person is responsible for identification, development, marketing and execution of an overall product roadmap inclusive of the integration with the overall Alpha Platform Strategy.

Internally, this role will lead product management teams, collaborate with the other CRD department heads, specifically the CTO, to drive product progress and Sales to drive market and client acceptance. Externally it is expected that this role will interface with clients and market participants to inform and drive product requirements and strategy. Ultimately, this person must ensure our products are compelling and demonstrate value to our customers and the market.

• Establish the product organization with clear roles and responsibilities that focus on value differentiation for priority products, and work in conjunction and alignment with the Alpha Platform Strategy. Partner with other product departmental leaders in Alpha and across State Street to align and execute product strategies and ensure that each department receives the right level of support.
• Responsible for overseeing the innovation and improvement of the business’s product as well as the day-to-day product activities in such a way that ensures that the product is constantly growing to suit the consumers’ needs.
• Establish the process for understanding and evaluating products from a market, technical, financial and commercial perspective, allowing for effective investment decisions, prioritization and commercialization.
• Implement an effective product management governance framework ensuring appropriate planning, coordination, and product effectiveness assessments. Establish the process for evaluating the efficacy of priority products in the market and in support of our client, geographic and front to back strategy.
• Articulate an end-to-end product road map. Identify and prioritize areas of focus. These areas generally promote innovation and can help seed the next generation of products.
• Leads effort to prepare overall product positioning including literature, placement strategy, and pricing models.
• Establish key metrics for evaluating effectiveness against objectives, including performance versus competitive offerings.
• Partner with Development, Sales and Client management to create forums internally and with clients to encourage idea sharing and innovation.
• Manage product offerings and review business cases for investments in product technology and commercialization.
• Ensures effective partnership with the Training function in the development of internal training to turn over new functionality to sales, service, and support resources.
• Understand the market, competitive forces and client direction.
• Represents Charles River as a thought leader in the business domain through speaking engagements, press interviews, and byline articles.

Serves as the leadership point of contact with overall responsibility for Product Management and Product Marketing globally. This includes direct line leadership to resources in North America and matrixed responsibility with resources in all other regions. This requires close partnership to drive consistency, effectiveness, and efficiency across these regions. Additionally, this role is responsible for setting organizational standards, budget oversight, defining metrics for measuring the business, and any other aspects that drive overall function effectiveness.

As evidenced by a successful track record of growing a global P&L, this individual will demonstrate a passion to achieve stretch service, quality, and delivery goals. S/he will have proven execution skills and experience setting and achieving aggressive targets.

The successful candidate will be a strategic thinker capable of developing an effective vision to facilitate the organization’s growth objective. S/he will…