Job Postings From Our Member Companies Title:
Vice President, Catalog/E-commerce Operations

Post Date
4/8/2014

Expiration Date
6/7/2014

Details:
Summary of Position

The Vice President of Operations will be responsible for overseeing the end-to-end catalog/online operations according to industry best-practices, ensuring our systems, processes, and partners can support the needs of a growing business. Key responsibilities include managing all operational systems and integrations, third-party call center, distribution, and freight vendors for cost, speed, capacity, quality and branding. Will be responsible for overseeing an $8M operational budget.

Responsibilities

Financial Management

- Direct P&L responsibility for the $8M operations budget, which includes business systems, fulfillment, distribution and freight expenses.
- Oversee third-party business systems, call center, warehouse, and outbound freight vendors; ensuring key financial and quality metrics are met. Metrics include order processing and billing time, shipping time and accuracy, shipping costs, packages per order, calls per order, cost per call, average call time, issue resolution timeframe, overall return rates, percentage of return to stock, recovery on damaged merchandise, packaging costs and total operations cost per order.
- Develop detailed operational budgets and reports to measure actual expenses against plan and prior year. Develop volume forecasts for third-party vendors with frequent updates based on actual results. Develop and enforce third party SLAs, to include performance based financial penalties.

Operational Systems

- Responsible for all operations systems including order management, drop ship, manifesting, product information, and forecasting systems. This includes oversight of business processes, infrastructure, network, hardware, and software. Evaluate existing and new vendors, systems, and processes in order to develop both short and long-term roadmaps that enable us to meet our business objectives.
- Work with Director of Systems on process engineering and to implement technical solutions needed to support our operations, reduce costs, increase capacity and efficiency, and improve customer experience. Prioritize technology initiatives and oversee the evaluation, deployment and management of current and future technologies. Work closely with Ecommerce team to coordinate cross platform initiatives.
- Discover true requirements underlying feature requests and recommend alternative technical and business approaches where appropriate, and lead engineering efforts to meet aggressive timelines with optimal solutions. Must have a demonstrated track record of successfully leading the delivery of large, complex, organizational systems initiatives and integrations involving multiple functions. Must have a track record of innovation, able to develop creative solutions to drive the business, not afraid to challenge the status quo.
- Drive effective teamwork, communication, collaboration and commitment across multiple disparate groups with competing priorities. Develop hosting strategy including processes and procedures. Oversee lifecycle management for all server and storage infrastructure architecture. Evaluate processing performance relating to machine utilization and reliability. Develop security and redundancy plans and procedures. Develop business continuance and service restoration strategies. Must have strong knowledge of object-oriented methodology, SQL, XML and web services.

Distribution & Freight

- Work with closely third-party distribution and freight vendors to increase speed, capacity, and quality and to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Determine best mix of freight carriers and ship methods. Implement inbound and outbound freight solutions that reduce costs without negatively impacting customer experience. Oversee manifesting system to execute freight solutions.
- Develop tracking reports to monitor freight costs on a weekly basis. Develop and implement programs to improve the management of imports and to decrease costs. Establish operational procedures for activities such as quality control, receiving, returns, packing, RTVs, and keeping warehouse inventory current and accurate. Work with vendor to ensure warehouse staff is properly trained on procedures and can meet business requirements. Review warehouse operations in all key areas (pick/pack, shipping, receiving, returns, QC, etc.) to ensure proper quality standards are being met.
- Review product packaging and labeling: identify problems and develop solutions. Work with packaging vendors to ensure timely delivery and to manage inventory. Develop programs to increase amount of returned merchandise that can be resold. Develop and implement refurbishment program: Train warehouse staff, monitor on an ongoing basis, improve program as needed. Work with inventory and merchandising staff to procure necessary parts for refurbishment.
- Help determine best methods to liquidate damaged or obsolete merchandise. Work closely with VP of Finance to oversee physical inventory counts. Oversee warehouse space usage to ensure merchandise is kept in the most efficient manner using the smallest footprint possible. Create custom reports to manage business and report results to senior executives. Evaluate new vendors and systems to meet new business objective.

Call Center & Customer Service

- Work closely with third-party vendors to increase capacity, improve efficiency, and reduce costs. Work with call center vendor on staffing plan and ways to reduce staff costs. Develop and implement programs to provide best-in-class customer experience, promote customer retention, repeat purchases, and overall satisfaction and loyalty. Monitor workflow processes to ensure consistency with customer service goals and budget requirements. Identify deficiencies in customer service and propose and implement solutions.
- Determine the best method to assess satisfaction at different customer touch points (phone or online surveys, metrics, etc.) and implement an ongoing plan to solicit, review and act on customer feedback. Identify and recommend appropriate online messaging including such things as extended product information, inventory availability, general customer service questions, etc. Work closely with web team to implement changes as needed.
- Develop methods to solicit appropriate user content, feedback and community within our online store, i.e. customer reviews, customer testimonials, etc. Evaluate results of Click to Chat pilot to determine future investment. Develop programs to incentivize call center staff and to increase upsells. Develop policies to reduce fraud and short pays and create reporting to monitor on a daily and weekly basis.

Supervision Exercised

3-10 staff members.

Qualifications:
Minimum Education & Experience

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related technical discipline required. At least seven (7) years of direct to consumer catalog/ecommerce experience and operations experienced required. Must have demonstrated skills and a proven track record in business systems, operations, customer service, third-party fulfillment, distribution and freight. Proven leadership and project management skills are required.

Knowledge & Skill Requirements

Minimum of (5) years of experience implementing and maintaining operational systems and developing and negotiating contracts. At least five (5) years of management, including vendor management, experience also required. Must be experienced in order management, warehouse logistics, database and inventory systems. Strong skills in SQL. Strong-to-expert skills in MS Word, MS Excel, and MS Access. Must have excellent analytics and spreadsheet skills. Peoplesoft experience is preferred.

Comments:
Equal Opportunity Employer

Please apply online: Job ID 5878

Image:


Employer:
National Geographic Society

Email:
phiggins@ngs.org

Website:
http://on.natgeo.com/1d0WFby