Merchandising Product Owner

Company Description
**Join our team to achieve your full career potential We are proactive, outside the box thinkers and doers who stop at nothing to make the iconic Laura and Melanie Lyne brands shine Privately owned and based in Laval, Quebec, with a strong vision for innovation and optimizing the employee and client experiences, we continue to help generations of Canadian women to look and feel their best**

**Job Description**:
**Role Summary**

Under the general direction of the VP of Information Technology, the Merchandising Product Owner [GR1] (which includes PLM, Assortment and Merchandise Financial Planning systems), will lead the modernization efforts to replace, enhance and support all merchandising systems. Merchandising Product Owner will review business requirements, generate project specifications ensuring they are in accordance with best practices. The Merchandising Product Owner will also work in conjunction with the Business Technology Manager, IT Scrum Master and Business Product owners to effectively manage project timelines, resources, deliverables, and risks. The Merchandising Product Owner will works closely with Department Heads (including merchandising, finance, marketing & eCom) to define all system and process needs and to ensure proper documentation of all as is and to be documented. The Merchandising Product Owner will contribute to the team with their specific functional and technical expertise to help steer the strategic direction towards fully implemented services matching Laura’s specific business needs.

**Critical Responsibilities**_ _
- In conjunction with the Business Technology Manager, generate various project documents: Charter, Scope, Project Plan, Project Status.
- Reviews business requirements on an ongoing basis.
- Documents, refines and manages requirements, as is documentation as well as to be documented.
- Works closely with the vendor(s) to ensure alignment and project cadence.
- In conjunction with the IT Scrum master delegates responsibilities to project team members (Infra, Security, Dev, QA) and performs follow-ups to ensure quality standards and timelines are respected.
- Interact and coordinate with Subject Matter Experts (Business Product Owners) and various stakeholders to gather requirements and define the design and the implementation plan for the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system.
- Work closely with the merchandising team to ensure gaps are understood and clear plan to address them is communicated.
- Collaborate and coordinate with external consultants regarding any configuration, customization, integration, training, and with any Laura external partners to use the PLM platform as a standard collaboration space for defined processes.
- Follow up and foster the adoption of the platform by supporting the internal customers, including writing usage guides, and organizing training.
- Support coordinating the assessment and the integration of any tools and services in the Applications Landscape with the PLM system and solutions.
- Follows up on action items resulting from the various discussions with users, vendors and team members.
- In conjunction with the IT Scrum Master, and Business Technology Manager, supports in Managing the timeline and mitigates all issues and risks related to the project.
- Ensures end-users buy in and sign off on all development issues.

**Additional Responsibilities**
- Works closely with IT on issues relating to interfaces and additional development requirements.
- Manage scope creep and future enhancements while documenting backlog for all of merchandising.
- Works with the different IT (Infra/ Security) team on issues relating to hardware, software, network components and communications.
- Adheres to all new and existing Company policies and procedures (i.e. IT Methodology, Loss Prevention, Health & Safety and Human Resources).

**Qualifications**:
**Requirements**:

- Minimum of 10 years experience leading multiple projects in a fast-paced business environment.
- Merchandising experience is a must.
- PMP or CAPM Certification is an asset.
- PLM is an asset
- Working knowledge of the standard Systems Development Life Cycle
- Experience implementing Retail merchandising systems and an understanding of financial systems including Aptos CRM, WMS, Great Plains, or equivalent is preferred.
- Excellent working knowledge of Microsoft Business Applications (MS Project, MS Office), Confluence & Jira
- Ability to work in a team environment
- Strong communication skills (verbal, written and presentation)
- Detail oriented and able to create user documentation
- Bilingualism is an asset.
- Good experience to support gathering, collecting, and validating requirements from the business stakeholders (internal and external), and leading challenging projects, ideally in the retail area.
- Self-driving, proactive, with a can-do attitude and excellent coordination and communication skills, able to build a strong collaboration be