Product Analyst
(Ref #D2LPA)
General Description:
This key position is for an individual contributor that combines deep technical insight with market savvy to advise senior Engineering management and Product Management staff and leadership on significant competitive differences that may influence product direction. The candidate will also work with field account teams and customers or prospects to connect technical differentiation to enhanced business value through presentations and written communication.
The Product Analyst is responsible for providing the organization with critical factual capabilities on our competitor's technical and functional capabilities. This role will play a key part in ensuring our roadmaps, messaging and staff are well informed and armed to succeed in an increasingly competitive space.
They will be tasked with creating and maintaining sandbox environments for various competitor products, and working with key stakeholders internally to configure these environments and their data. Because of the breadth and depth of competitors in our space this will be a fast-paced role requiring excellent time management and communication skills.
Product Analysts must be capable of quickly ramping up on new technology and concepts, and reporting findings to product teams, marketing and senior management.
The ideal candidate will have strong experience in product development, implementation or management, understanding of how competitive analysis impacts messaging, as well as demonstrated ability to learn new systems quickly and use their knowledge to influence other leaders to achieve goals.
Division/Department: Product Development
Type of Position: Full-time
Location: Kitchener, Ontario
Main Duties
The candidate will be required to provide both low level technical advice, and also to be able to use this detailed competitive knowledge and experience to articulate higher level comparative competitive advantages and disadvantages of enterprise learning systems. The candidate must also be able to develop and present well-reasoned projections of vendor and technology directions. Specifically, the candidate will:
- Document and communicate feature/function analysis for competitive offerings
- Setup and manage systems and process for competitive input to be gathered and assembled throughout the company
- Provide tactical evaluations of potential new features for Desire2Learn offerings for input to and consideration during the product planning process
- Based on current, publicly available information, vendor actions, and known business transactions, provide insight into possible future competitor technology offerings
- Assist account teams to understand the competitive positioning of Desire2Learn versus their competitors in tactical account planning situations
- Assist senior management to understand the competitive positioning of Desire2Learn versus its competitors to assist in tactical and strategic product planning situations
- Provide customer education, presentation, and discussion in a pre-sales, competitor environments
- Setup and maintain installations of competitor products
- Assist in creation and execution of processes to ensure competitor sandbox environments are kept up to date
- Ensure that confidential and protected information on competitors is placed behind an ethical wall insulated from the rest of the organization
- Configure and populate competitor products to facilitate feature bake-offs and apples to apples comparisons of product functionality
- Documenting and maintaining competitor capabilities in organizational knowledge repositories
- Reviewing, analyzing, and documenting market facing materials relating to future directions from competitors
- Creating a clear communication channel internally to ensure accurate and up to date information on our competitors at all times
- Inform our IP Strategy based on trends seen with competitors
- Support sales on specific engagements where positioning relative to competitor strengths and weaknesses is critical
- Meet routinely with Product Managers to collaboratively monitor and evaluate recent changes in the market
Essential Skills and Qualifications
Required professional skills:
- Business Skills (planning & organizing, analysis, decision-making, process orientation, and quality focus)
- Communication Skills (well-developed verbal, written, listening, and presentation skills, high computer and internet literacy)
- Personal Characteristics (positive attitude, energy, enthusiasm, strong work ethic, common sense, teamwork, flexibility, initiative, maturity, proactive, solution-oriented, collaborative, flexible and creative
Other Requirements:
- Experience installing, configuring and setting up complex enterprise systems
- Ability to perform product bake-offs comparing and translating similar concepts and functionality to inform product prioritization and positioning
- Strong technical writing and communication skills
- Ability to handle multiple projects simultaneously and work effectively in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment with rapidly changing priorities
- Strong analytical and research skills
- Attention to detail
- Understanding of business operations and processes
- Advanced level usage of Microsoft Office and Sharepoint
- Experience with enterprise Learning Management Systems and related technology an asset
Education Recommendations:
- BS degree in computer science, engineering or related discipline
- MBA a plus
- Or extensive industry experience
This is your opportunity to make a big impact in the area of next-generation eLearning applications! Candidates that have the combination of skills and abilities as outlined are invited to submit their qualifications in confidence today.
We thank all applicants in advance for their interest. To make the best use of your time and ours, only those applicants whose profiles closely match our requirements will be contacted directly.
