Program Manager – Business Technology Solutions

This strategic leadership role is an exciting opportunity to support an existing Centre of Excellence (CoE) to help local United Ways/Centraides (UWCs) across the country achieve their next level of digital business transformation. The CoE and its associated projects are part of UWCC’s network modernization strategy designed to position the UWC network for long-term growth and impact. The goal is to enable UWCs with next-generation technology and processes to innovatively meet new consumer (individual donors and partner organizations) expectations. It will also facilitate data management to support building an insight driven culture and organization.

An essential component of this strategy is the development, adoption, operation and ongoing maintenance of a shared Business Technology Solution product suite (with Salesforce’s Non Profit Cloud CRM as the foundation), its common operations centre as well as implementation of the centre’s governance model. While LUWCs will lead their own implementations of the product, the CoE’s knowledge resources and infrastructure will be critical to their success.

As Program Manager, you’ll lead initiatives and projects within the CoE for the benefit of your customers – the LUWCs, in alignment and support of UWC’s network-level strategic objectives. In addition, you will be responsible for governance, business development, vendor management, and supporting your customers and internal teams in the delivery, adoption and ongoing operation of their product implementations. UWCC’s System Integration vendor, responsible for system development and ongoing support, is one of your key partners.

While a separate CoE Product Owner role will be the expert on the Salesforce solution suite, you will also work to understand the fundamentals of the product suite to be able to help your customers assess their readiness to adopt it. You’ll be a central CoE point of contact for LUWCs to help them understand and adopt organizational standards, to support development of practices that enable them to deliver business objectives, and to continually improve the way we work together. Excellent collaboration and communication with stakeholders will be a critical part of your success.

Strategy and Development

• Maintaining a focus on program success that goes beyond technical excellence to include an enterprise-level change management, training frameworks and activities that promote the adoption of the product suite by UWCs
• Building and leading a great multi-stakeholder team including internal resources, vendors and partner-UWCs. As UWC’s operating model is a federation of independent local United Ways and Centraides, and key skillsets may be provided by vendors, you will lead teams of matrixed personnel by earning trust through relationship management, collaborative design processes, and governance
• Building and maintaining timelines, project plans, and communication artifacts (such as dashboard reports, and visual documents) to ensure accountability and accurate information sharing
• Managing the product release schedules and key release milestones across all the program’s activities
• Leading the team’s creation of thought leadership, best practices and standards for both CoE operations and as supporting toolkits and learning opportunities for UWCs

Governance and Growth

• Managing the operations of the program while leading a growth phase; this includes optimizing the operating model for ongoing support of the product suite and implementing privacy and security measures to ensure the integrity of the solution.
• Deploying the full governance model and adapting it over time as circumstances change; this includes chairing one or more of the governance bodies
• Develop, maintain and support business case to drive expansion of the solution to new UWCs and encourage stakeholder buy-in and adoption. Provide consultative decision support to UWCs considering joining the program through providing information and stakeholder engagement support in relation to their strategies and plans for digitization and adoption of the product

Operations

• Scaling the CoE program to ensure it meets customer requirements while at the same time operating as efficiently as possible
• Representing the CoE team to senior leadership and customers
• Budgeting and budget management; including organizing funding and resourcing between UWCC and participating UWCs
• Overseeing ongoing support and operations of the CoE, in partnership with the vendors who provide product maintenance/support and associated hosting services
• Identifying program/project risks, blockers and proactively seeking out mitigation and remediation actions

• 7+ years of experience managing software implementation or business transformation programs/projects, including overseeing a simultaneous focus on new projects and ongoing support of existing deployments
• Post-secondary degree in IT / business administration or related fields or extensive experience in technology / project management
• Experience in development and deployment of cloud-based CRM technologies (ideally Salesforce) and preferably in a distributed, multi-client environment
• Experience in organizational behavior, general management, governance, contracting, and basic accounting/budgeting
• Ideally, experience establishing or managing a Centre of Excellence for a new program Demonstrated thought leadership in business technology transformations, including the ability to think strategically and balance technical knowledge with business acumen
• Highly organized, communicative, and detail-oriented, with a sharp focus on on-time delivery and efficiency
• Ability to lead and inspire a multi-stakeholder team working in multiple locations to deliver results in a collaborative manner and drive alignment on both short and long-term strategies
• Strong verbal and interpersonal skills to facilitate groups, and deliver concise and informative presentations
• Excellent written communication skills with the ability to create presentations that engage stakeholders and succinct reports for consumption by executives and boards
• Ability to work in ambiguous environments and define a path to resolution
• Works well under pressure and knows how to juggle multiple priorities simultaneously
• Ability to identify and manage risk

Location

United Way Centraide’s national office in Ottawa, Ontario. Works in an open space environment and may work from remote locations at times.

United Way Centraide Canada hires based on merit and is strongly committed to diversity and equity within its community and to providing a welcoming and inclusive workplace. It especially welcomes applications from Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, women, persons with disabilities, people of all sexual orientations and genders, and others with the skills and knowledge to productively engage with diverse communities.

Please send your application letter and resume in confidence to: careers@unitedway.ca

We thank everyone for applying; however, only qualified candidates will be contacted.