Portfolio Project Manager

The Portfolio Project Manager is accountable for the successful delivery of Royal Canin Canada Cross-Pillar (Vet, PSR, PRO) portfolio activities including; product innovation, renovation, harmonization, and rationalization to maximize value creation for pets, customers, and the business. The Portfolio Project Manager must take regional deployment plans and localize the scope and timeline for Canada, managing and monitoring project readiness through the approval of stage gate readiness to advance project to more mature stages to enable on-time product launches. The Portfolio Project Manager is responsible for early identification and escalation of issues, problem solving/providing alternatives, making decisions happen, and driving accountability and actions. Facilitates strategic portfolio planning meetings (CA PMR), a key feeder meeting of NA PMR; where the Portfolio Project Manager is responsible for representing Canada at regional level, sharing a point of view on portfolio activation preferences/intentions, reporting on activation results, identifying support needed, and sharing post launch reviews. The Portfolio Project Manager owns the process protocol & continuous improvement for local activity management, as well as helping to support the end-to-end portfolio planning for the Canadian organization.

**What are we looking for?**:

- Undergraduate Degree in Business related field
- Relevant Mars experience will be taken into consideration in place of a degree
- Project Management Certification (PMP, Prince2, or Prosci)
- Minimum 5 years of business experience
- Proven ability to engage and influence across functions and levels and build strong and objective internal partnerships.
- Experience driving continuous improvement in process management
- Experience dealing with ambiguity in a complex organization or setting
- Excellent understanding of annual planning process internally (S&OP)
- Experience in areas such as (but not exclusive to): activity management, product commercialization, project management and planning
- Track record of ability to consistently meet and enforce deadlines
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills and proven ability to develop long term, effective and influential business relationships with key decision makers.

**What will be your key responsibilities?**:
Project Management from start-up to post-activity evaluation:
1. Set Up and Plan Activities

**Globally/Regionally Driven Activities**:
Coordinate, communicate and report stage gate status on regionally lead projects. Ensure local timelines and requirements are considered in early global and regional planning phases.

**Locally Driven Activities**:
Collaborate with Portfolio Managers and Trade Marketing Managers to define local market opportunities for New Product Requests. Support local team with innovation roadmap planning, understanding cross border implications, risk mitigation, and development of project timelines/scenario planning.

2. Lead Activity Management Process Locally While Integrating Global and Regional Project Impact into Local Process

**Global Items**:
Represent Canada business unit’s strategic intentions and share local challenges with Global stakeholders as part of long term innovation planning discussions.

**Regional Items**:
Attend Regional R&D Deployment and Pack Write Off calls as the ‘voice of the market’ to ensure that local market needs are being heard, challenging effectively, and communicating information back to local teams as needed.

**Local Items**:
Coordinate the development of local project timelines, identify and agree in key decision points and issues. Understand business process to implement a project delivery plan in full.

3. Complete Activity Management Process Through to Execution

Facilitate the AM process: set up and chair Commercialization and Transition Management Phase in/Phase out meetings, resolve cross-functional issues and agree on actions arising, follow up on actions, define and report on milestones. Keep team members fully updated on progress of the activity and ensure inputs from all functions are on time and as required. Identify critical decisions and ensure full sign-on to agreed solutions. Ensure that the project plan is developed, and all members of activity team sign on to it. Anticipate roadblocks and plan accordingly. Find creative solutions to mitigate project risks.

4. Participate in Post-Game Evaluation

Collaborate with Portfolio/Trade Marketers in post-activity evaluations of key activities, identifying delivery vs targets and key learnings to integrate into S&OP+ (PMR) for continuous improvement to deployment of new activities through Commercialization Learning Log.

5. Canada Portfolio Management Review (PMR) Facilitation

Act as gatekeeper of activity updates into Canada PMR, ensuring full visibility to 3 year innovation roadmap, deployment risks/opps, and portfolio optimization/rationalization work. Manage the agenda, prioritizing in