Overview
About Us:
Publicis Groupe is one of the "Big Four" advertising agency companies, alongside WPP, Interpublic, and Omnicom. It operates in over 200 cities across more than 100 countries and employs around 100,000 people.
Re:Sources is Publicis’ support organization, centralizing finance, administrative, legal, tax, IT, procurement, and property functions, allowing the agencies to focus on client business.
The rOar team is a global team based in France, the UK, India, LATAM, and the USA. Our clients are the agencies within the Publicis Groupe.
Our product, rOar, is Publicis Groupe’s Project Management, Resource Management, and Time Tracking platform. It integrates with the Groupe's HR, sales, finance, and production ecosystem,
including Salesforce, SAP, and specific production agency tools. Currently, it has approximately 80,000 active users for timesheets and 2,000 for complete project management (PPM) activities.
rOar is built around leading SaaS PPM solutions and complemented by Publicis custom developments using a modern "React" UI and Azure micro-services infrastructure. Relations and integration with our SaaS PPM partners are essential, as is our capacity to develop in-house complementary custom solutions.
The rOar team is responsible for building and evolving the solution and ensuring its seamless deployment across Publicis' global agencies, in collaboration with the Groupe's Centers of Expertise (COE) and business representatives.
Role Overview - Senior Product and Functional Manager in the rOar Deployment Team:
This role will be positioned within the rOar Deployment team, under the responsibility of a rOar Deployment Lead.
The objective of this team is to deploy rOar across Publicis Agencies and enable the “Power of One” (one vision of the availability and usage of resources across agencies, inter-agency staffing, global reporting).
As a Senior Product and Functional Manager within this team, you will be expected to ensure the successful deployment of the rOar solution to Publicis Agencies. This includes deploying new versions or enhancements to agencies already using rOar and greenfield deployment for agencies not yet using it.
Responsibilities
• Gather requirements from agencies in collaboration with their business and IT representatives.
• Analyze gaps with the current solution and determine change management actions required to "fit to standard" and harmonize business processes whenever possible and relevant. Ensure budget-boxing and schedule control to avoid "scope creep."
• Prepare Design Authority cases and meetings when change actions or enhancements with significant impact need to be approved by program stakeholders and sponsors.
• Supervise the correct configuration of the platform for the needs of the agency, including providing instructions to development teams and organizing the test scope with the development, QA, and product teams, followed by business (Business User Acceptance Tests / BUAT).
• Ensure the data migration approach for the agencies meets the requirements for successful go-live.
• Ensure the interfaces/integrations for the agencies meet the requirements for successful go-live.
• Oversee the delivery of enhancements and change actions approved in DA.
• Ensure the good documentation of processes and training documents for the agencies.
• For every deployed entity (in all cases: updated rOar version, new rOar evolutions or greenfield implementation), ensure hypercare and activities required for a smooth transition to the COE and Business As Usual (BAU) / maintenance teams.
• Maintain constant communication with both business stakeholders and representatives and the rOar Program teams (functional/product teams, development/tech teams, QA, Core ecosystem/maintenance, etc.).
• Proactively ensure the rOar solution and deliverables are well documented by all contributors and adhere to the program’s standard and tools.
The rOar Product is built following an Agile methodology. The other rOar activities can be managed through an Agile, Waterfall or Hybrid approach, depending on the relevance and context.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
• Project timelines and delivery progress
• User adoption metrics
• Deployment success metrics
Qualifications
• Functional or product consultant with 5 to 10 years of experience, including:
o IT system implementation and deployment.
o Product/application functional design and build (general design, detailed design, functional configuration, follow-up of technical developments, tests, deployment).
• Candidate with an engineering or management school background.
• Functional experience in project management activities (project scoping, pricing, resourcing, operational delivery, monitoring of actuals vs. plan and forecasts, financial management including margin and burn, and management reporting) in the context of major international companies:
o Projects with > 100 resources and > 1000 delivery activities.
o Cross-agency, cross-legal entities, and cross-country projects.
o Mix of different resource work (creative person, project manager, resource manager) and non-labor deliverables (business service, production assets).
o Different types of project contract arrangements with clients: fixed price, T&M, T&M capped, etc.
o Margin and burn control management.
• Financial controlling functional experience in the media production, advertising industry, or other services-focused industries.
• Work experience in an international business context, for companies with global international business integration.
• Fully fluent in English.
• The role involves possible travel abroad, including with short notice. The candidate needs to be able to travel to at least the following countries: UK, India & France. Ideally, the candidate should have already worked with people in these countries directly, with proven and material job experience.
Team Leadership and Mentorship:
• The role involves the coordination of up to approximately 5 "Product" (functional) resources, and the synchronization of work with Tech teams, QA teams, scrums masters, workstream leads / project managers etc.
• The Senior Product / Functional Manager is expected to guide and support junior team members, fostering a collaborative and productive work environment.
Stakeholder Management:
• Effectively communicate with various stakeholders, including business representatives,
technical teams, and external partners.
Continuous Improvement:
• Proactively identify areas for improvement within the deployment process and implement
best practices.
Technical Proficiency:
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies, experience with specific software tools, and
understanding of integration processes.
Cultural Fit:
• Align with Publicis Groupe’s values and work effectively in a diverse, global team.
Work Arrangement:
4 days out of 5 of presence onsite at the office in Chicago is expected.
Additional information