Principal Product Manager

Job Summary:

As leader of the card solutions product line, clearly communicate and drive product strategy, direction, and vision; maintains the roadmap and strategy for the product in sync with that for the product-line and the overall ACI strategy. As the product champion, continually drive product adoption among the customer base and target market, understand pain points and problems and address them in a timely fashion, with a constant eye on maximizing the ROI for the product; Partner with marketing, product marketing and channels to develop the GTM strategy; Stay engaged with the sales team and articulate the value proposition of the product among customers and prospects alike. The product manager shall maintain an intimate understanding of the payments industry and the competition to quickly identify opportunities and threats, leverage our strengths and overcome our weaknesses while influencing the overall ACI product strategy. The product manager shall be the “go to” person for the product and shall work cohesively with the application development team, AOD, finance, sales, sales operations, legal and the business analysts, representing the market and clearly conveying the requirements to ensure that the products are delivered on time and within budget.

Job Responsibilities:

• Elicits and validates stakeholder requirements. Conducts research and data gathering to analyze and determine appropriate solutions. Manages entire Requirements process to include documentation preparation and presentation.
• Functions as the primary product and target market SME (subject matter expert); understands competitive landscape from strategy to functional capabilities; defines the market and market segments; Identifies customer and prospect problems and market opportunities; builds, updates, and communicates the product line vision, strategy and 5-year road map for core stakeholders and for external consumption.
• Drives the positioning and interaction of the product within the product portfolio and its integration with other products. Defines and executes a distribution strategy for the product to achieve growth targets at desired margin, and through optimal resource consumption. Sponsors innovation that helps achieve the strategic plan.
• Responsible for comprehensive definition and cadence of product Release for a product line to achieve the strategic plan, by identifying and delivering requirements that increase market share and exploit ACI’s breadth and depth of solutions across the payment processing lifecycle.
• Clearly articulates the value proposition and positioning of the product. Provides input to solution/product marketing for the go-to-market plan and supports the launch team. Ensures all sales enablement tools are delivered to schedule, and the sales team is trained proficiently. Drives market acceptance by evangelizing product to all stakeholders. Monitors launch effectiveness. Demonstrates thought leadership through participation in conferences, blogs and published papers.
• Actively manages pricing and packaging as a profit and market penetration lever. Monitors key performance indicators of the operations to design, deliver, implement and support the product. Implements corrective action where applicable. Actively manages the product across the entire lifecycle; manages investment levels to maximize revenue and profit performance. Determines timing of sunset of product or release/versions, and follows policies and processes to execute sunset.
• Establishes 5 year and 1 year financial goals of the product; leverages the 4 P&L model to establish goals for Maintenance, Products, AOD and Services performance of the product. Determines appropriate and optimal level of investment to maximize margin performance over 5 year period. Establishes operating budget for expense from the capacity planning process (articulates the demand drivers assessed in capacity planning). Uses the stage gate process to secure funding on projects; develops business cases as input to the stage gate process. Monitors, tracks financial performance of the product; forecasts future performance and executes proactive measures to attain financial goals.
• Improves processes and tools that result in positive impacts across the organization.
• Responsible for over 50% revenue for the product line.
• Perform other duties as assigned
• Understand and adhere to all corporate policies to include but not limited to the ACI Code of Business Conduct and Ethics.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience required for the job:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience.
• 8-12 years related experience in an industry related role such as technical support, product management or product development type roles with exposure to marketing.
• Deep and broad understanding and experience in all aspects of product management. Elicit:
• Obtains information from stakeholders
• Conducts research with payments stakeholders to gather data to determine pervasive market problems of which they are willing to buy solutions
• Uses tools (paper-based and automated) for gathering input
• Uses Voice-of-Customer (VoC) techniques to uncover latent customer needs
• Validates requirements with stakeholders

Analyze:

• Prioritizes requirements
• Organizes and synthesizes information
• Uses various analysis and modeling techniques
• Ensures requirements meet market and business needs

Manage:

• Function as the primary SME (subject matter expert) on the product and its target market; understands competitive landscape from strategy to functional capabilities
• Defines the market and market segments for the product
• Identify customer and prospect problems that represent significant market opportunities
• Builds, updates, and communicates the product line vision, strategy and 5-year road map for core stakeholders and for external consumption
• Drives the positioning and interaction of the product within the product portfolio and its integration with other products
• Defines and executes a distribution strategy for the product to achieve growth targets at desired margin, and through optimal resource consumption
• Sponsors innovation that helps achieve the strategic plan
• Defines the release cadence for a product line
• Defines market and business requirements for product releases to achieve the strategic plan, by identifying and delivering requirements that increase market share and exploit ACI’s breadth and depth of solutions across the payment processing lifecycle
• Defines the comprehensive release plan for product releases
• Recommends buy, build, partner for delivery of feature/function to the market
• Clearly articulates the value proposition and positioning of the product
• Provides input to solution/product marketing for the go-to-market plan and
• supports the launch team
• Ensures all sales enablement tools are delivered to schedule, and the sales team is trained proficiently
• Drives market acceptance by evangelizing product to all stakeholders
• Monitors launch effectiveness
• Demonstrates thought leadership through participation in conferences, blogs and published papers
• Actively manages pricing and packaging as a profit and market penetration lever
• Monitors key performance indicators of the operations to design, deliver, implement and support the product. Implements corrective action where applicable
• Actively manages the product across the entire lifecycle; manages investment levels to maximize revenue and profit performance
• Determines timing of sunset of product or release/versions, and follows policies and processes to execute sunset
• Establishes 5 year and 1 year financial goals of the product; leverages the 4 P&L model to establish goals for Maintenance, Products, AOD and Services performance of the product
• Determines appropriate and optimal level of investment to maximize margin performance over 5 year period
• Establishes operating budget for expense from the capacity planning process (articulates the demand drivers assessed in capacity planning)
• Uses the stage gate process to secure funding on projects; develops business cases as input to the stage gate process
• Monitors, tracks financial performance of the product; forecasts future performance and executes proactive measures to attain financial goals
• Contacts Internal: Regular communications with Business Analysts, Product Line Managers, Product Marketing Managers, Project Managers, Architects, Global Solution Consultants and Quality Assurance.

External: Extensive communications with prospects, customers, vendors and analysts.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Knowledge of the payments industry, customer base and applied technology
• Knowledge and understanding of products, competitive offerings and market drivers
• Creation of quality, easy to understand papers and presentations

Terms of Authority:

• Determines market and business requirements and functional/non-functional specifications to be grouped into releases
• Determines inclusion/exclusion of customer business requirements (gaps) into the base product
• Seeks Product Line Manager support for pricing proposals prior to submitting to the Pricing Committee
• Seeks Stage Gate Committee support for sunset decisions
• Overall responsibility to manage the financial aspects of an individual product
• Works with Application Development counterpart, UXD and Product Line Manager to determine resource allocation for on time, quality delivery
• Works independently with autonomy for decision making without the consultation with their manager.
• Approves requests for Contract and/or Requests for Proposal based on defined criteria (sales of mature product, discounting of product support fees, sale of product not developed, conditions ordeal review committee)

Work Environment:

• Standard work environment
• Majority of time spent on PC (Phys. Req.)
• Travel required

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