Associate Director, Customer Implementation and Deployment

Associate Director, Customer Implementation and Deployment Req ID #:  179334 Location: 

US Wilmington, MA, US, 01887 At Charles River, we are passionate about improving the quality of people’s lives. When you join our global family, you will help create healthier lives for millions of patients and their families. 

Charles River employees are innovative thinkers, who are dedicated to continuous learning and improvement. We will empower you with the resources you need to grow and develop in your career. 

As a Charles River employee, you will be part of an industry-leading, customer-focused company at the forefront of drug development. Your skills will play a key role in bringing life-saving therapies to market faster through simpler, quicker, and more digitalized processes. Whether you are in lab operations, finance, IT, sales, or another area, when you work at Charles River, you will be the difference every day for patients across the globe.

IMPORTANT:   In order to be considered for this position, a resume/CV must be uploaded and submitted during the application process.  Please make sure work history and education are added correctly.   

  Job Summary  

Responsible for implementing an external customer success program, assessing needs of external CRL customers and implementing plans to ease external customers through various changes, including process, technical, and system related to IT initiatives and others.  Includes development and management of global scheduling processes to onboard customers at sites and track and report success and adoption metrics.  Initially this role will focus on the Customer Success program for the global rollout of Apollo, but the vision would be to scale the program to include other applications.  

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:  

•    Assist to create and implement a structured and repeatable methodology for use across CRL for onboarding customers to Global IT applications

•    Define customer success team services offerings and business cases 

•    Educate relevant stakeholders including the IT organization and project/product teams on the customer success operating model and methodology

•    Incorporate changes to the operating model into core approach / methodology as appropriate

•    Research, recommend, create business cases, and implement tools and technologies to support customer success initiatives

•    Provide leadership for customer success resources in executing the customer success strategy

•    Reduce resistance and improve adoption related to the customer success operating model through project support and by training others on how to engage with the team and use the model

•    Create and implement a process for evaluating the customer success effort of projects and work with the Portfolio team on using this in project forecasting, planning & prioritization

•    Provide oversight and guidance on multiple customer success projects and initiatives, as well as manage strategic customer success efforts, as needed

•    Review and provide guidance on the development of a customer success strategy and playbook for defined projects and products

•    Advise and influence project timelines based on customer success needs; provide scheduling roadmaps for onboarding external customers to the Apollo application ADDITIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES:  

•    Work closely with business partners to better understand specific customer success requirements

•    Demonstrate cross functional collaboration by developing necessary partnerships to achieve strategy and outcomes

•    Account for local cultural and process differences when developing customer success playbooks and planning templates

•    Develop consistent approach for tracking and measuring customer onboarding and satisfaction of the onboarding activities 

•    Establish and maintain effective communication channels with the key teams, stakeholders, and others (vendors, partners, etc.) to ensure successful implementation and onboarding of customers

•    Ensure quality, consistency, and alignment in key messaging

•    Provide direction and guidance on the types of training materials to deliver consistently to external customers to onboard them to Apollo (working with OCM)

•    Deliver progress reports on customer success efforts for assigned project

•    Manage risks, escalate issues, and confront resistance proactively. Identify the necessary change agents and support resources to address changes and continuous improvements to the customer success operating model across businesses, regions, and functions

•    Provide customer success/deployment/implementation coaching to build this competency for project teams, leaders, business stakeholders, and IT in general

•    Lead work efforts of others critical to customer success and customer implementation, including consultants and Senior Change Managers

•    Demonstrate customer success/deployment/implementation experience within an environment of ambiguity

•    Prepare executive stories (both verbally and written) illustrating the customer success models, frameworks, process and results in an easy to understand manner

•    Perform on-going assessments of customer success impact by defining and tracking customer satisfaction measures and project post-mortem assessment of customer success 

•    Manage activities of assigned group(s) to ensure optimum performance of the group/function

•    Responsible for personnel management activities such as: scheduling, personnel actions (hiring, promotions, transfers, etc.), training and development, providing regular direction and feedback on performance, disciplinary actions and preparing and delivering annual performance and salary reviews. Job Qualifications

•    Education:  Bachelor’s degree (B.A./B.S.) or equivalent in computer science, organizational behavior, business administration or related discipline.  MBA or other relevant graduate degree preferred.

•    Experience:  8+ years related experience in IT and program / project management, including a strong track record of successfully delivering large, complex programs consisting of multiple interrelated projects that span across locations and/or functions.  Experience in Project deployment, implementation and customer onboarding for highly-complex and integrated applications and environments, with demonstrated track record of planning, coordinating and delivering effectively.  Experience managing people required.  Big 4 consulting a plus but not required.  

•    Certification/Licensure: Project Management preferred but not required

•    Other:  Strong leadership and interpersonal skills including collaboration, influencing, aligning, and active listening.  Interaction with executive-level management to negotiate and to influence programs and policies. Effective communication skills for large, multinational audiences. A strong understanding of financial, portfolio, and governance processes required.  Excellent prioritization skills required.  Global experience and experience in the Life Science space preferred but not required.  Excellent knowledge of standard Software/Solution Development Lifecycles preferred such as Agile.  Knowledge of and experience with Smartsheet, Scheduling, Project management tools required. 

IMPORTANT: A resume is required to be considered for this position. If you have not uploaded your resume in your candidate profile, please return to upload field and attach your resume/CV. 

About Corporate Functions

The Corporate Functions provide operational support across Charles River in areas such as Human Resources, Finance, IT, Legal, Sales, Quality Assurance, Marketing, and Corporate Development. They partner with their colleagues across the company to develop and drive strategies and to set global standards. The functions are essential to providing a bridge between strategic vision and operational readiness, to ensure ongoing functional innovation and capability improvement.  

About Charles River

Charles River is an early-stage contract research organization (CRO). We have built upon our foundation of laboratory animal medicine and science to develop a diverse portfolio of discovery and safety assessment services, both Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) and non-GLP, to support clients from target identification through preclinical development. Charles River also provides a suite of products and services to support our clients’ clinical laboratory testing needs and manufacturing activities. Utilizing this broad portfolio of products and services enables our clients to create a more flexible drug development model, which reduces their costs, enhances their productivity and effectiveness to increase speed to market.

With over 17,000 employees within 90 facilities in 20 countries around the globe, we are strategically positioned to coordinate worldwide resources and apply multidisciplinary perspectives in resolving our client’s unique challenges. Our client base includes global pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, government agencies and hospitals and academic institutions around the world. And in 2019, revenue increased to $2.62 billion.

At Charles River, we are passionate about our role in improving the quality of people’s lives. Our mission, our excellent science and our strong sense of purpose guide us in all that we do, and we approach each day with the knowledge that our work helps to improve the health and well-being of many across the globe. We have proudly supported the development of ~85% of the drugs approved by the FDA in 2019.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Charles River Laboratories is an Equal Opportunity Employer - all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.

If you are interested in applying to Charles River Laboratories and need special assistance or an accommodation due to a disability to complete any forms or to otherwise participate in the resume submission process, please contact a member of our Human Resources team by sending an e-mail message to crrecruitment_US@crl.com. This contact is for accommodation requests for individuals with disabilities only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.

For more information, please visit www.criver.com.

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