Global Product Owner

Who are we?

Nissan has one of the most comprehensive European presences of any overseas manufacturer, employing more than 17,000 staff across locally based Design, Research & Development, Manufacturing, Logistics, Purchasing and Sales & Marketing operations. Total production in the UK alone is now over 9 million vehicles including award-winning crossovers, commercial vehicles and the Nissan LEAF, the world’s most popular electric vehicle.

We are an aspiring organisation, and we are looking for equally bold and creative Global Product Owner to join our established team. Nissan is positioned to become the most desirable Asian brand in Europe, and we need your help to get there.

Purpose

The digital experience is at the heart of the relationship between the brands and their customers. With project PACE (Platform accelerating customer experience) and enterprise Customer Experience journey organisations, Nissan aims to offer customers with the best experience through market leading technology for their online and offline interactions with the different Nissan brands, be it through a computer, a mobile phone or a tablet, or personal experience with Nissan representatives.

As a Product Owner you will be a key member of the team owning and developing the product vision and strategic intent, defining and validating business cases, determining KPIs, gathering and developing requirements, optimising our current product portfolio and creating and owning the product roadmap and backlog. You will also act as advocate and educator of the product capabilities you will have responsibility for. You will work with global and regional market teams to collaborate in developing the product landscape, building and enhancing strong relationships with various stakeholders across the globe, and proactively overseeing and ensuring execution of key programme initiatives. In addition, you will work in scrums with our global development partners.

Main Tasks & Responsibilities

• Function as product owner for one or more product domains that sit across customer experience journey teams to deliver digital customer experiences.

• Work closely with regional and global stakeholders to understand business needs and strategic direction then build relevant solution mappings and concepts.

• Coordinate with multiple business, experience, analytics and technical teams to define and deliver product vision, business case, and the product roadmap for the area of responsibility assigned to you.

• Work closely with business and product development teams to ensure epics and stories are correctly understood, prioritised, and delivered with a release plan that includes multiple market customer usage.

• Create and maintain materials that clearly communicate to stakeholder’s product capabilities and delivery roadmaps.

• Validate solution value post release through analytics review and market coordination events.

Tasks defined

• Product ownership for designated products that sit within and across customer experience journeys

• Analyse analytics, external research and engage with market stakeholders to continually optimised solutions

• Works with all stakeholders to formulate and communicate ideas and concepts.

• Works with the Capability Owner, Experience Strategist, Journey Manager, Analytics/CEDAR, Functional Business Units, and market teams in formulating the business case.

• Engages with the correct stakeholders to validate ideas and concepts e.g. A/B testing, focus groups, prototyping etc.

• Creates requirements in the product backlogs that are unambiguous and good quality.

• Manages the distribution and baseline approval of communication related to business requirements and their interpretation across the digital products.

• Ensures the prioritised requirements list is kept up to date with the products backlog.

• Ensures that the impact of the business decision is reviewed in the context of the Journey and the associated project.

• Ensures that business components of the Solution collectively provide a cohesive whole for the business.

• Takes responsibility for tracking the business requirements through the business acceptance and the customer benefit realisation.

• Define customer and business relevant KPIs

• Gather and develop requirements for solution definition – detailed business and functional knowledge and design thinking strategies

• Act as the advocate and educator for your digital products

• Develop a complete understanding of the product landscape / journey in scope and its impact on Nissan Motor Corporation business

• Work with global markets and their digital teams / business analysts / regional product managers to understand their requirements, absorb feedback and communicate the product backlog

• Translate the business needs and requirements into detailed product specifications (e.g. user stories, acceptance criteria, mock-ups etc.) and communicate these to product and development teams

• Manage and create specific and detailed user stories and/or reporting/acceptance criteria to identify and prioritise requirements and workflow

• Produce monitoring and management information on the performance of your product area and report to peers and managers

• Work in partnership with other product owners to ensure cohesion across projects and that workload is effectively managed across the team.

• Actively drive the alignment of priorities and acceptance criteria with market-based product owners and digital teams

• Provide input into the training materials distributed to market stakeholders and system users.

• Ensure the development team and relevant business stakeholders are kept informed, that risks / issues are escalated in a timely manner and the development and implementation remains on track

• Organise and participate in reviews, retrospectives, sprint and release planning, demos and other agile project related meetings as required

• Manage multiple priorities and deadlines, providing direction and support to project / developments team regarding the product roadmap and features to be developed

• Creation and management of digital product catalogue for each assigned product domain

• Tracking and reporting of projects across the full lifecycle (backlog -> discovery -> construction -> live)

• Management of Product Domain documentation, including mapping of digital products to live sites

• Tracking and management of usage reporting for priority digital products across markets, across product domains

• Coordination and creation of reporting materials for monthly presentation to markets of new capabilities, projects related to each market, and sharing of global activities in flight

• Coordination with training teams for accuracy of information that is published to markets on digital products, including coordination with the product owners for aligning monthly webinar events with the correct highlighted products (new capabilities, and opportunities to showcase less used features that have high value)

• Tracking of periodic market audit reports of digital product usage (namely PACE) that are created by NCX teams (PACE support, PMO,etc) and shared with the product managers for identifying opportunities for improvements with training materials or new product features

• Tracking of regular production product defect changes by NCX teams (PACE Application Support) and shared with the product managers for identifying opportunities for improvements with training materials or new product features

• Coordination with POD construction management and implementation teams for creation and management of a common project schedule

• Seeking opportunities for aligning product management and reporting activities with partner teams in NCX, including Analytics and Experience Strategy Teams.  This will be used for further enriching monthly market based reporting and sharing of common plans with NCX for resourcing

• Tracking and managing market IDEAS that are captured for planning, and response to markets and NCX teams

• Supporting documentation for processes concerning Product Management functions, such as  RICE/value scoring and prioritisation

• Collaboration at Weekly Product Grooming sessions to report on activities in flight and discuss priorities and new recommendations for execution based on RICE (value), including assessing items that require to be taken to NCX Decision Meeting for approval.

• Coordination of Product Team meetings with focus on product domain plans/roadmaps and assessment of project needs

• Improving processes, such as usage of Aha, Google Data Studio and other tools for sharing plans and capabilities and tracking

Skills & Experience
Skills and Attributes Required

• Understanding the concepts of digital customer experience journey mapping and transformation, and how this translates into product development

• Experience in delivering customer journeys that are focused on conversion

• Experience implementing SEO digital product solutions

• Ability to work and thrive in a fast-past, dynamic and at-times intense environment

• Very strong written and verbal communication skills

• Very strong analytical skills to understand / interpret and support translation of automotive customer’s business needs into application and operational requirements

• Strong problem-solving skills to support creation of workable solutions to automotive business problems, ability to understand and trouble-shoot anticipated and unanticipated changes

• Ability to understand complexities, nuances of stakeholder, core team members and vendor partners to ensure workstreams and activities are delivering

Qualifications or Knowledge Required

• Functional knowledge of web applications, information systems, digital marketing solutions such as mobile, social media platforms

• Product management tools like Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Teams and Aha experience is required for lifecycle management, idea tracking, feature/project tracking, and documentation

• Knowledge of the Adobe Digital Marketing Cloud solution landscape particularly AEM, development languages (Java, HTML5/CSS, JavaScript), infrastructure (CRM, database, and networking systems)

• Knowledge of platform development support tools such as Jira, documentation wikis, configuration management tools

• Digital marketing knowledge, including content creation, campaigns, social media, digital display media

• Design Thinking methodology experience for facilitation of workshop sessions for problem and solution needs definition

Experience

• Solid experience in similar roles

• Technology familiarity with Microsoft Office tools and Adobe suite of products is a plus (e.g. Adobe Experience Manager)

• Experience working with a complex global CMS platform with multiple integrations and local solutions and nuances

• Experience working with and managing multiple digital agencies

• Experience presenting to C-level executives required

• A background in automotive is preferred but not required. Strong product development experience is considered more important with the ability to bring mature process methodologies to Nissan’s product team.

This is not an exhaustive list and you are required to be flexible in your approach to carrying out your duties which may change from time to time to reflect changes in the Company’s approach to a culture of continuous improvement.

What we offer

• Competitive base salary

• 26 days holiday + bank holidays

• Contributory pension

• Private medical & dental cover

• Enhanced maternity leave

• Remote Working Policy (Maximum 2 days per week)

• Flexible start / finish times

• Free onsite parking & subsidised restaurant

• Car Ownership Scheme

What’s more, we think you’ll like working with us because of our valued culture. We pride ourselves on being a transparent, cross-cultural and competitive business; we want you to challenge the norm and contribute to improvement whether you’ve been here ten days or ten years, so apply now to join CEC!

We firmly believe that investment in our employees is integral to their growth and success. As a member of our team, you will have access to many of our benefits - because we want you to feel cared for, supported, and engaged at Nissan. Alongside comprehensive career development and learning opportunities, you will also have access to a wide range of employee benefits. This includes an attractive car ownership scheme, flexible working practices, comprehensive health & wellbeing offerings and team building days.

Diversity and Inclusion:

All of us at Nissan - regardless of functional area or expertise - share a passion to design, manufacture and sell high-performance, fun to drive vehicles. Nissan is an Equal Opportunity Employer for all. Applicants will be considered for all positions regardless of race, gender, military status, disability, or any other status protected by law.