Employment Spot

Job Description

PURPOSE:  As a DSL Product Manager, you will drive the strategic management of the DSL products across all North American residential markets.  Provide tactical leadership to the product development team to continue to develop and manage the lifecycle of the DSL product set. Implement product enhancements across assigned markets in alignment with ACN’s corporate strategy.  Areas of management include:  writing product plans; developing and analyzing product financials (including P&L), conducting impact evaluations for each proposal; developing new product business cases; development of requirements documents; coordination of the development cycle with all impacted functional areas; drive operational, field support, and business process changes; documentation of process design and flows; manage product testing; coordinate product release and rollout (including internal and external training materials); provide support for Canadian and other applicable team members, and manage to the compilation of post launch “lessons learned" and lifecycle management of products.

MAJOR TASKS

• Develop and manage products to drive revenue, product usability, product trial, and product awareness across customer channels. Manage assigned US DSL products.
• Responsible for P&L of assigned product set and reporting product volume, revenue, cost, margin, churn and other required product and market metrics
• Determine product design and requirements to meet and exceed customer’s expectations
• Facilitate business processes with vendors, carriers and business partners, spearhead support process and other key stakeholders
• Set product performance/quality standards and coordinate product performance tracking
• Work with the product team to develop marketing strategies to drive revenue, product usability, product trial, and product awareness across customer channels
• Drive inter-company peer group on the specific needs of the product to be sure that we will be able to support, provision and market to projected plan
• Meet strategic competitive positioning, cost control objectives, gross margin, and revenue objectives
• Manage customer segmentation to drive new sales and service opportunities
• Assist Canadian services product manager with respect to voice products as needed

 HUMAN RELATIONS AND PERSONAL SKILLS

A.  Excellent analytical skills

• The ability to write business plans
• Report, track and analyze product revenue and costs
• Determine/recommend good business processes or design
• Strong organizational skills

B.  Excellent communication skills

• Strong written and verbal skills
• Articulate, business-like and professional
• Ability to deal with varied personalities
• Ability to write proposals, communicate and negotiate with vendor and service providers as well as with all company department management and staff
• Ability to develop and communicate requirements and persuade others
• Diplomatic when working with other department heads and peers

C.  Interpersonal skills

• Must be a team player and be able to work in project environment
• Must project positive image and maintain the ability to deliver initiatives on time by working through and with others

D.  Flexibility, Efficiency and Adaptability

• Must be very detail oriented
• Will assist other departments with project and action planning with timeline development
• Ability to handle multiple tasks
• Adapts to different environments and people
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and produce results across multi-functional organizations

E.  Other skill sets

• Beginning-to-end ownership of products and projects
• Demonstrated ability to establish a strong connection to various functional departments, especially call centers/inbound sales channel
• Integrated approach to competitive situation analysis
• Start-up experience and/or new product experience
• Understanding of sales distribution channels
• Knowledge of marketing and its relationship to product management

Job Requirements

FUNCTIONAL PREREQUISITES

• Minimum Bachelor’s degree in Marketing or Business Management
• MBA preferred
• Minimum of 4+ years experience in the local telecom industry (preferably CLEC)
• Minimum of 2+ years experience in product, project management, telephony or technical products preferred
• New product development and lifecycle management of residential and commercial products preferred
• DSL knowledge is required 
• VoIP knowledge is preferred