Process Excellence Manager

About Springer Nature Group

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Job Title: Process Excellence Manager - Publishing

Location(s): London or Dordrecht - Hybrid Working Model

Closing date: 11th May 2024 

About the Role

The goal of the Publishing Performance and Intelligence Group (PP&I) is to help deliver next generation digital publishing at Springer Nature and as a result, grow the number of published articles especially in open access (OA). Working closely with the Journals Group, Production, IT, Marketing and Customer Service, PP&I support increasing the number of transfers of articles between journals, commissioning new collections, enforcing research integrity, strengthening editor engagement and delivering enhancements to the end-to-end journal publishing process.

The Centre of Excellence (CoE) team within PP&I creates and drives continuous improvement in PP&I and Journal Publishing teams with their respective stakeholders in order to achieve their strategic goals. With this purpose in mind, we initiate and run several tactical and strategic projects with specific business outcomes. We are a team of professionals who embrace and apply best practice Project Management, Business Analysis, Continuous Improvement and Change Management.

As part of the CoE team, the Process Excellence Manager will contribute to the  delivery of projects across the Research Publishing Business Unit to bring efficiency and effectiveness in any workflow-related aspect of the business. In this role you will be working with key SN journals and PP&I stakeholders as well as Operations, Technology, Customer Services, Research Sales & Marketing, Finance, and others to align, agree, plan and drive improvement of (parts of) the end-to-end Publishing process. You will ensure that all stakeholders are informed of project progress and workflow changes and will coordinate stakeholder engagement as needed.

The Process Excellence Manager develops a deep understanding of a specific publishing area with the aim of becoming a trusted partner of such area, offering both support and consulting to any initiative reflecting their strategic priorities. Ultimately the role owns and manages a selection of projects associated with the publishing area.

Role Responsibilities:

• Understand the strategic goals of the assigned business area and contribute to the activities to achieve them. Help coordinate the project portfolio related to the assigned publishing area. Act as a CoE point of contact in the assigned publishing area.

• For those business needs that cannot be addressed by the area itself and that are of tactical or strategic importance, explore the actual problem to solve, map relevant processes and data, identify inefficiencies and sources of errors, identify improvement opportunities, gather and prioritise requirements, define the improved future state and generate solution options to achieve it; ultimately, contribute to the implementation of the recommended solution.

• Capture and validate publishing requirements from internal stakeholders and translate these into prioritised functional, non-functional, integration and transitional requirements and ensure they are coherent with SN business strategy.

• Perform request-specific tasks such as, for example, produce/update documentation and reports, consolidate or analyse data, enable data consistency and integrity, unify different workflows, build and improve workflow automation solutions, roll out regulatory/compliance requirements, write test scripts, give training on new processes/solutions.

• Work with Technology colleagues and/or external technology third-parties to support delivery of technological solutions in selected activities such as user stories/use cases writing and validation, product roadmapping, testing, training and roll out.

• Coordinate project execution with relevant stakeholders for initiative of tactical/operational nature.

• Contribute to business case / project initiation documentation, ensuring that outcomes are in line with SN business strategies. Actively promote and monitor adherence throughout the project lifecycle.

• In conjunction with Technology colleagues, engage with technology third-parties during the software selection process to ensure relevant business requirements are met. Facilitate and coordinate the review of contractual T&C’s and SLA’s with the relevant teams to protect the SN's best interests.

• Identify risks and issues, communicate them clearly to the project management teams and be actively involved in their mitigation.

• Engage editorial, marketing and production teams as necessary to adopt new workflows and processes associated with transitioning journals onto platform(s) and systems.

• Build close working relationships with key stakeholders in other internal divisions that control and/or develop the processes and systems we rely on, including: the Journal Editorial Office, the Production and Emerging Technology team, the Content Acquisition team and the Product and Platform Group (PPG).

• Contribute to change management planning and execution and take an active role in the successful adoption of change processes, products, and technologies in the organisation. Advocate the need for robust change management across all activities.

• Contribute to measuring the success of projects by establishing key performance indicators (KPI’s), analysing data, and ensuring that the delivered solutions align with business objectives, thereby maximising the value derived from the initiative undertaken.

• Serve as a key CoE spokesperson for initiatives being managed, clearly and convincingly communicating the aims to the wider business.

• Assist with the management of the demand pipeline, conducting demand assessments and positioning demands within the prioritisation framework. Contribute to an overall project status tracker for all CoE activities.

• Actively support CoE Heads to promote excellent teamwork and cross-collaboration.

Experience, Skills & Qualifications:

• Excellent understanding of the research publishing landscape and how journals and journal publishers serve the research community.

• An understanding of all our core brand values e.g., Springer, Nature and other key brands across the Research Publishing business.

• Previous roles must include process optimisation, continuous improvement, process excellence or business analysis.

• A good understanding of the workflows and processes that underpin the submission-to-publication journey.

• Excellent understanding of best practice project and programme management as a result of previous contributions to several projects with strategic impact.

• Experience in the successful transition of new technologies and workflows in a commercial environment.

• Experience of negotiation; experience of successfully integrating customer and operational requirements.

• Familiar with change management concepts and techniques.

• Willingness, flexibility, creativity, and ambition to improve processes and workflows.

• Demonstrate a highly analytical and logical approach and can articulate complex concepts in a clear, concise and unambiguous manner

• Able to inspire confidence and  to maintain a professional attitude in all interactions with colleagues and external partners.

• Excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of colleagues and stakeholders.

• Strong time-management and organisational skills.

• Familiar with corporate IT infrastructure and system architecture.      

• Yellow-belt Lean certification or Business Analysis certification – essential.

• Degree: minimum of BSc level or higher (preferably in a Business or Information Sciences discipline) or significant working experience in a similar role.

• Project Management certification (such as PRINCE 2, MSP, PPM, Scrum or any Agile methodology) – desirable.

• Business Relationship Management certification – desirable.

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Note for candidates in the Netherlands: As per our local policy, please be aware that this role will be open only for internal candidates within the first 2 weeks. Afterwards, external applications will be progressed. 

At Springer Nature, we value the diversity of our teams and work to build an inclusive culture, where people are treated fairly and can bring their differences to work and thrive. We empower our colleagues and value their diverse perspectives as we strive to attract, nurture and develop the very best talent. Springer Nature was awarded Diversity Team of the Year at the 2022 British Diversity Awards. Find out more about our DEI work here https://group.springernature.com/gp/group/taking-responsibility/diversity-equity-inclusion

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