Product Manager - Upstream

Job Summary:

The Product Manager position is a strategic, high-visibility role with a direct impact on the company’s innovation strategy, product portfolio planning and execution. This is an upstream, global strategic marketing role with responsibility for market analysis, customer insights and business case development to inform product development decisions. This role collaborates closely with cross-functional business partners and owns delivery of commercial milestones throughout the stage gate product development process, from concept initiation through launch, including customer unmet needs analysis, competitive assessment, identification of product requirements, pricing, market modeling and product forecasting, positioning and messaging, and development of launch strategy and support materials. This role also has life cycle management responsibilities for products currently in market, including claims expansion, feature enhancements and end of life activities.

Responsibilities (Specific tasks, duties, essential functions of the job)

Associate Product Manager

• Supervises and controls an orderly and prompt workflow of marketing and sales related projects requiring DCR (Document Control Review) routing and approval while providing a focal point for all approval steps.

• May assist Marketing in the development of plans and implementation schedules for marketing projects and tasks; monitors completion of action items and performance to plan.

• Participate in the development of budgets and negotiating all relevant contracts as needed.

• Manages the meeting and convention schedule for the company.

• Coordinate the collection and dissemination of sales leads generated during conventions and tradeshows.

• Makes creative recommendations to expand product base and vision.

• Suggest ways to track product use and impact on end users.

• Coordinate and provide creative direction to external design agencies for product labeling and sales enablement collateral.

• Manage and fulfill internal and external production related requests (scanning, sending out logos to vendors, preflighting files.)

• Collaborate with Commercial Marketing to monitor social medial feeds and accounts for product feedback and insights. Summarize and present findings for action.

• Maintains and logs all customer feedback.

• Designs and prepares email communications to various customer segments.

• Maintains demo unit and accessory inventory.

• Manage and document product changes through Quality system process including:

o Issuance of new part and catalog numbers

o Update to Bill of Materials

• Creates and maintains company pricelists. Makes recommendations regarding price changes and strategy to maximize margin.

• Manage pricing requests from Sales.

• Supports commercialization of new product launches including:

o Creation of product labeling

o Setting up product identification and SKU

o Creating pricing in system

o Compliance with SOPs

• Manages product portfolio SKU creation and maintenance in system

• Conducts User Evaluation studies for new products

• Support Manufacturing Operations as Product representative, providing guidance for manufacturing needs

• Perform clinical literature review

• Maintain regular and punctual attendance.

• Comply with all company policies and procedures.

• Assist with any other duties as assigned.

Product Manager:

In addition to items listed for Associate Product Manager, a Product Manager may also be responsible for the following:

• Routinely monitors global competitive activity and pricing. Communicates competitive product changes to the Inogen team. Benchmarks Inogen products versus competitive products and develops product positioning and selling scripts to maximize sales, customer value proposition. Recommends pricing strategies consistent with Inogen’s product position and business objective.

• Publishes sales bulletins to internal sales force and external distribution sales force highlighting product position, selling strategies and scripts, competitive product changes, and Inogen product changes.

• Identifies and establishes adequate post-sales support processes to provide total customer service experience commensurate with product and company brand position. This includes management of field repair programs.

• Monitor’s customer feedback and makes product change recommendations based on data and insights. Summarizes customer feedback and reports findings to Inogen management team on a regular basis.

• Develops written strategic plans to support the commercial launch of new products. Leads new product launches, including execution of end user studies, and product positioning.

• Perform ongoing business analysis looking at drivers and key metrics by segment to establish trends, insights for use in guiding the business and developing business cases.

• Develop sales forecasting and financial modeling in support of new business opportunities.

• Produce and review product Target Product Profile (TPP) and user requirements documents.

• Develops product sales training programs for the organization and external distributors. Provides support to the training department on product training needs.

• Provides product support to key customers as needed.

• Evaluate product performance by markets and channels, analyzing trends to develop insights

• Support Sales and Commercial Marketing with product value messaging and sales enablement content

• Prepares customer facing educational content to be used by Commercial Marketing.

• Assist in driving awareness and adoption of innovation processes and procedures.

• Manage opportunities through company innovation stage gate process.

• Conducts/supports post-market surveillance per company procedures.

• Facilitate post-project retrospective and lessons learned activities. Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities • Possess experience and thorough understanding of product management, project management, product marketing, technology products, and business finance.

• Able to conduct custom market research, develop budgets, and collaborate with several parties simultaneously.

• Proven experience as a Product Manager or similar role

• Experience in product lifecycle management

• Familiarity with Agile framework

• Organizational and leadership abilities

• Excellent communication skills across all levels of the organization

• Creative thinking skills and problem-solving aptitude

• Analytical Problem-Solving skills required to identify root causes of basic technical and nontechnical problems associated with advanced respiratory care products.

• Collaboration & Teamwork to establish good working relationships between engineering, marketing, sales, and manufacturing.

• Must have Flexibility and the ability to adapt to the changing internal and external variables.

• Must be adept at Organization, Planning & Execution to manage product development and launch process.

• Presentation skills required to build internal support for projects as well as sell customers/sales reps, etc on product and programs.

• Decision Making & Problem-Solving skills required to provide clear direction for priorities and responsibilities.

• Management Administration Skills Knowledge and experience in the following required:

o Project Management

o Lead cross-functional teams

o Must have strong work ethic.

o Excellent oral and written communication skills required.

o Attention to detail is required.

o Effective conflict resolution.

o Analytical & problem-solving skills & ability to multi task.

o Solutions-oriented problem solver.

Qualifications (Experience and Education) Level II Product Manager

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business or related technical discipline, required.

• MS/MBA/MA, preferred

• 5-7 years’ experience as an Associate Product Manager or Engineer, required. 1-3 years project management experience, required.

• Intermediate knowledge/proficiency in Microsoft Office, online databases, required.