Director, CRM

Description

AD is seeking an experienced Director, CRM to join our team and build a CRM practice. This person will serve as AD’s enterprise product owner and business leader for Salesforce, influencing leadership and driving cross- business unit alignment on data, process and system capabilities. This role is accountable for defining and prioritizing the CRM roadmap, managing a cross-functional backlog, re-architecting processes, driving adoption, and business value across the organization.

This leader will serve as the internal champion of CRM and partner closely with Business Units, IT, and cross-functional teams to design and implement AD’s CRM roadmap—including contact management, engagement tracking, business development management, analytics integration, and marketing automation.

• Define and maintain a multi-year CRM roadmap, including an operating model and business unit alignment.
• Lead prioritization of CRM enhancements across Business Units, Finance, Executives and other programs.
• Own future phases of Salesforce implementation beyond ADConnect (AD’s internal website), including contact management maturity, member and supplier engagement, activity management, business development, and marketing automation.

• Design and lead the execution of CRM capabilities and related business processes, ensuring they are scalable, well-documented, and aligned with AD’s operating model.
• Establish a governance structure that defines decision rights, roles and permissions between Business Units, Value Added Programs, Finance, IT and ADConnect.
• Support data governance initiatives as they pertain to CRM. Define and maintain CRM data ownership, update rules, and workflows across AD (who updates what, where, and when).

• Re-architect business processes including contact management, engagement workflows, pipeline management, and marketing operations, defining future-state workflows that are standardized, scalable, and cross-functional.
• Define business requirements and acceptance criteria; IT and external partners execute technical implementation.
• Act as the primary business point of contact for Salesforce-related work tied to ADConnect, Lawson integration, and future applications (e.g., SSO, AD Rewards, surveys).
• Partner with IT on system configuration, integrations, enhancements, and vendor/partner coordination.
• Serve as the escalation point for CRM issues and improvements, ensuring the system evolves with business priorities.

• Develop and deliver a training approach that differentiates between power users, business leaders, and occasional users in utilizing CRM tools.
• Responsible for proactive communications to users on CRM enhancements.

• Define and implement enterprise-wide engagement tracking standards, activity types, and reporting across supplier relations, member engagement, and other activities.
• Design and operationalize Salesforce-supported pipelines for supplier and member business development, including stages, qualification criteria, and dashboards.
• Work with business leaders to support Leadership dashboards, Business unit scorecards, engagement KPIs, BD pipeline reviews, and campaign performance.

• High emotional intelligence with proven ability to lead and influence teams without direct authority.
• Strong customer and market focus, demonstrating a commitment to delivering exceptional value to clients.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and sequencing multi-year change with realistic phases.
• Strong facilitation skills; able to reconcile competing priorities across divisions and functions.
• Bias for documentation and process discipline—able to translate tribal knowledge into consistent, scalable workflows.

• 7–10+ years of experience in CRM strategy or Salesforce administration.
• Salesforce Administrator Certification (Advanced Admin, App Builder, or Consultant certifications) strongly preferred.
• Proven success driving CRM adoption and building business processes that enable marketing, and AD Community-facing teams.
• Strong understanding of…