Product Manager

Additional Locations: Other HMH office locations are acceptable including Boston, Evanston, Orlando.

Role Summary:

The Product Manager is a vital resource within the company and is responsible for defining key market problems to solve to drive customer success, achieve product-market fit, and deliver on business goals. The Core K-5 Science Product Manager oversees the K-5 Science Core product line with an emphasis on strategic growth/profitability, iterative product enhancement, and life cycle management.  Primary responsibilities include product line planning; guiding editorial and technology development of superior, differentiated product; advocating customer/sales needs in the product development process; guiding market research activities; and taking a portfolio view of life cycle management.

Additional responsibilities include participating in creation of business cases, product launch and maintenance activities, and competitive selling support.

Primary Responsibilities

Market Strategy:

• Identify new market and growth opportunities and develop solutions through business case process. Conduct ongoing market intelligence activities that yield develop deep customer insights and "job-to-be-done" to support new opportunity identification and business case development.
• Manage product planning and development activities for a solution in collaboration with product development teams
• Create market and business requirements for new solutions that satisfy customer needs and revenue/profit goals.
• Recommend and maintain partnerships and affiliations to enhance marketability of products/product line
• Make recommendations for revisions of and extensions for existing solutions, including product customization, new components, and pricing models.
• Research and report information about market trends, competitive issues and products, customer issues, and sales force needs to stakeholders as directed.
• Anticipate, monitor, and respond to competitive issues. Implement the development of strategic competitive information
• Set goals for market research activities.  Implement efficacy studies, user studies, and pilots
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Business Strategy:

• Perform objective analysis of potential market opportunities to provide a basis for investment, articulating market learnings and quantifying the risk, including a financial model.
• Establish a pricing model, schedules, guidelines and procedures.
• Determine the most effective way to deliver a complete solution to an identified market problem. Where you have gaps in your offering, analyze whether to buy, build or partner to complete the solution for your market.
• Monitor and analyze key performance indicators to determine how well the product is performing in the market, how it impacts the company operations, and ultimately, how it contributes to profit.

Product Life Cycle Management:

• Analyze financial performance of an assigned product, including investment, revenue, and profitability
• Analyze and evaluate market performance and product positioning of an assigned product
• Benchmark performance of an assigned product against competition and market; implement pricing plans in line with product strategy
• Implement tasks in the product launch and sunset process
• Implement product maintenance plans and manage the phases and gates in the product life cycle

Planning:

• Position the product by its ability to solve market problems.
• Create internal positioning documents that will be used to develop external messages focused on each key buyer or persona.
• Define the archetypical users of your products or services through user personas.
• Articulate and prioritize personas and their problems through requirements so that the appropriate products can be built.
• Build an effective relationship and team between PM&S and development
• Serve as a checkpoint along the way to provide context and clarification to development
• Illustrate market problems in a “story” that puts the problem in context. Use scenarios are one component of requirements.
• Manage proactive communications with relevant stakeholders from strategy through execution.
   

Launch and Support

• Work with Product Marketing on go-to-market strategy for new product or solution.
• Partner with VP or Director to identify product positioning strategies. Partner with Product Marketing and Sales to ensure proper competitive positioning for product or solution.
• Serve as product expert across the HMH organization
• Provide support for the sales and services enablement process

Communication & Supervision:

• Maintain strong, ongoing channels of communication with Learning Experience Design, Technical Product Management, Content Delivery, and other internal departments.
• Lead cross-functional teams to execute processes and plans.
• Requirements:
• Bachelor's Degree in a related discipline
• Minimum of 3+ years of experience in K12 educational technology
• Experience in an entrepreneurial or start-up environment
• Experience using lean-agile and design thinking methodologies to develop and launch products strongly preferred
• Demonstrated strong leadership skills
• Superior verbal and written communication skills; superior presentation skills
• Superior inter-personal skills with all levels including executive management
• Demonstrated conceptual & analytical thinking; vision; leadership & management; prioritization; collaboration; decision-making; negotiation; problem-solving; tactical execution; product & market knowledge.

Preferred Education:

MBA or Masters --preferably in the content area or in business management or marketing

Experience using lean-agile and design thinking methodologies to develop and launch products strongly preferred

Pragmatic Marketing Framework certification desired

Physical Requirements:

• Might be in a stationary position for a considerable time(sitting and/or standing).
• The person in this position needs to move about inside the office to access file cabinets, office machinery, etc.
• Constantly operates a computer and other office productivity machinery, such as a calculator, copy machine, and computer printer.
• Must be able to collaborate with colleagues via face to face, conference calls, and online meeting

PLEASE NOTE:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is an equal employment opportunity employer and participates in E-Verify. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of gender, race/ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, or other protected group status.

ABOUT US:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (NASDAQ:HMHC) is a global learning company dedicated to changing people’s lives by fostering passionate, curious learners. As a leading provider of pre-K–12 education content, services, and cutting-edge technology solutions across a variety of media, HMH enables learning in a changing landscape. HMH is uniquely positioned to create engaging and effective educational content and experiences from early childhood to beyond the classroom.  HMH serves more than 50 million students in over 150 countries worldwide, while its award-winning children's books, novels, non-fiction, and reference titles are enjoyed by readers throughout the world.