EMEA Head of Product Strategy and Development

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Purpose of the role

• A key leadership role within the EMEA Academy Leadership Team, who are collectively responsible for delivering the growth and development of our commercial training business across the EMEA region, aligned to our Global Training business strategy.
• This role is to drive the growth of the BSI Academy across our EMEA region by shaping and delivering our Academy Portfolio Strategy to provide client-centric learning products and services which deliver learner and enterprise client objectives and contribute to the BSI Academy being the trusted learning partner of choice for its learners and client organizations.
• The role will ensure our portfolio provides learners with a learning pathway supporting their career and development objectives.
• The role will ensure that our portfolio provides every BSI client organization with access to learning and development services to deliver its strategic objectives by improving the resilience of its workforce.
• A key part of this role is to support the Academy’s continuing transformation to a multi-channel learning provider through managing products into and out of the range, new product development, and access to products via partnerships.

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities

Understanding the market

• Represent the Academy business line in owning and driving the process of learning and development horizon scanning, new technological solutions, and product and service ideas to position a resilient BSI Academy product portfolio which delivers learner and enterprise client objectives.
• Be our knowledge leader in the adult education and workplace skills learning and development marketplace across EMEA
• Lead the implementation and management of client advisory panels and insight surveys to ensure our portfolio grows and maintains market relevance in serving and delivering impact for our clients.
• Work closely with the country sales, marketing, and tutor teams to understand client learning needs with a particular focus on ETS.
• Analyse, share, and apply key learning and development, technological, product and service trends to the EMEA  and Global Academy strategy to support the development and positioning of our portfolio.

Ownership of the EMEA Product Strategy

• Using the above insight, manage the structure and content of the Academy’s portfolio to maximise the impact of our products and services
• Own the portfolio architecture to deliver learning pathways to support the delivery of a learner’s career and development objectives 
• Represent the EMEA in Global Academy strategy discussions to influence and steer the global course development pipeline to continue to serve EMEA client needs
• Own the decision-making process determining which global products we launch in EMEA, identifying the target audience, client needs, and the best strategy to bring the product to market
• Shape the commercial framework for new products and partnership opportunities to support our growth and deliver client objectives.
• Set and agree on performance criteria to measure the performance of our products and services in delivering our client objectives.
• Set and agree internal performance criteria to measure the impact of new and existing products against intended outcomes.

Manage the implementation of the EMEA Product Strategy

• Justify, manage, and coordinate the management of products into and out of the range based on sound business and commercial criteria.
• Develop partnership approaches that BSI can use to access new audiences and commercialise its offering.

Leadership & Team Management

• Lead and coach the Product Management and Course Development Team, including personal development plans and performance management procedures that are in place
• Play an active role in the EMEA Training leadership team, continually challenging and supporting balance

Go-to-market

• Support and influence the internal team (global, sales, operations, marketing) to identify the most effective format and delivery vehicle to bring the product market to ensure the GTM plan is effective.
• Support the development of sales and delivery enablement tools to ensure internal teams are competent and motivated to engage clients in discussion about new product and service offerings, the value proposition, target audience, and position in the career and development pathways. 

Performance measurement

• Lead on the delivery and reporting of our product performance, delivery of our strategy, sound learning performance outcomes and customer satisfaction, making the necessary improvements to ensure expected results are achieved.
• Coordinate the performance review of recent product introductions or changes at periodic intervals in collaboration with representatives from the sales and marketing, operations, and tutor teams.
• Lead the portfolio review meetings to ensure required internal stakeholders and partners are aware of current performance and strategic plans, known risks, or product changes which may affect future performance expectations.

Key internal interdependencies:

• Sales: Work collaboratively with sales leadership and sales excellence teams to ensure sellers understand our product portfolio, learning pathways and individual products. Add in about establish process to capture input from sales process on new product ideas & concepts to influence future product development
• Marketing: Work collaboratively with marketing leadership to ensure product portfolio is communicated to target audiences and new products are launched with necessary impact. Key to this is ensuring marketing understanding the rationale behind the products, target audiences, likely competitors & alternative routes a client could choose
• Operations: Work collaboratively with the Operations Diary and Course Development team to provide clarity on new product introductions, timescales and priorities and the necessary information needed by the operations team to operationally set up and schedule new products
• Delivery team: Work collaboratively with delivery leadership to ensure they are clear on the necessary skills needed to deliver new products, ensuring the rationale behind the products & target audiences are clear, so they can deliver with confidence and influence the learner they interact with in the classroom.
• Global Course development team: Build a strong relationship to influence the global team to prioritize the EMEA market’s input in the global PPD roadmap

Key Attributes

Experienced in:

• Commercial/strategic leadership.
• P&L/budget management.
• EMEA market knowledge and understanding.
• Product portfolio management.
• Knowledge leader within the learning marketplace.
• Leading/line managing others.
• Detailed work with a variety of learning platforms and technologies.
• In managing a remote team

Profile

• Passionate advocate of learning.
• Strong financial and commercial acumen, including leading negotiations, tenders, proposals, solution design, and market positioning.
• Strong advocacy, communication, formal presentation, and networking skills.
• Working across multiple cultures
• Understanding of management systems and the 3rd party certification market.
• Digital Technology & Innovation competence.

Key measures

• As a member of the Training Leadership team, you will have shared responsibility for the success of EMEA Training against budgeted targets
• Employee Engagement
• New Product sales and revenue and occupancy where appropriate
• NPD efficiency and time to market
• Client/partner satisfaction
• Gross margin
• Product innovation

Travel requirements:

• Limited EMEA travel

Language requirements:

• Business English
• Other European/Arabic language beneficial

Our Excellence Behaviours: Client-centric, Agile, Collaborative. These three behaviours represent how we do things at BSI. They help us ensure that BSI is a great place to work and a highly successful business.

BSI is conducting face-to-face interviews where appropriate and possible. If you are invited to a face-to-face interview but feel more comfortable with conducting the interview virtually, please speak to a member of our recruitment team.