Product Specialist - Freddy Connect

Dentsu is an integrated growth and transformation partner to the world's leading organizations. Founded in 1901 in Tokyo, Japan, and now present in approximately 120 countries and regions, it has a proven track record of nurturing and developing innovations, combining the talents of its global network of leadership brands to develop impactful and integrated growth solutions for clients. Dentsu delivers end-to-end experience transformation (EX) by integrating its services across Media, CXM and Creative, while its business transformation (BX) mindset pushes the boundaries of transformation and sustainable growth for brands, people and society.

The purpose of this role is to drive and oversee the delivery of the assigned projects to ensure that the objectives are clearly defined and achieved within the agreed time, cost and quality constraints. This role could be based in Amsterdam or London.

• Project Leadership: Creates and leads the project team to deliver the agreed outputs/outcomes within scope, time, cost and quality constraints. Promotes the wider good in all actions, acting in a morally, legally and socially appropriate manner in dealings across project stakeholders and team.
• Project Team Management: Manages the project team on a day to day basis, appropriate to context and project stage. Clearly defines, agrees and delegates team and key stakeholder roles and responsibilities; develops capability and fosters innovation; empowers and inspires others to deliver successful projects.
• Project Business Case and Benefits Management: Where applicable, supports the project sponsor to prepare, gain approval of, refine and update business cases that justify projects in terms of benefits, costs and risks; tracking and reporting forecast and actuals against them. Works with project sponsor, programme managers and business benefit owners to support identification, tracking and delivery of benefits set out in business case. Ensures realisation of benefits for business through planning and designing project outputs meet business/programme requirements and desired outcomes.
• Project Budget and Cost Management: Manages budgets for projects. Controls and reports on forecasts, changes, and actual costs against the budgets.
• Governance: Establishes and maintains effective governance and decision making for the delivery of projects; defines clear roles, responsibilities and accountabilities, that align with programme and/or organisational practice and requirements.
• Project Plans and Controls: Designs, consolidates and documents the fundamental components of projects (scope, schedule, approach, resource requirements, budgets, risks, opportunities and issues, and quality requirements). Establishes, and implements where necessary, protocols to change the scope of projects and update of configuration documents as required.
• Scheduling and Dependency Management: Develops, produces and maintains schedules for project activities that take account of dependencies, resource requirements and constraints in order to enable the efficient realisation of project outputs and associated benefits. Maps project dependencies and identifies owners, builds dependency management into the project's governance cycle. Works with programme/project managers and business leads to ensure dependencies are actively managed, acts as an arbiter and enforcer and resolves issues between the various elements of the project.
• Project Resource Management: Develops, implements and updates resource allocations plans (other than finance) needed for projects (incl. external required resources), taking account of availabilities and scheduling variances.
• Stakeholder and Communications Management: Identifies and manages pertinent project stakeholder relationships (taking account of their levels of influence and particular interests), communications and need for senior level support. Ensures continual alignment with programme (if applicable), wider portfolio management and organisation communications. Manages internal and external relationships as appropriate. Proactively identifies, addresses and seeks to resolve differences between individuals and/or interest groups.
• Project Risks and Issues Management: Identifies and monitors project risks (threats and opportunities) and issues. Develops mitigating actions and escalates as appropriate. Identifies and works with related projects to manage interdependencies.

• 5+ years (typically) delivering complex projects from initiation through to implementation.
• Experience managing projects with multiple workstreams and dependencies.
• Track record of delivering projects on time, within budget, and to agreed quality standards.
• Experience working within formal project governance frameworks.
• Managing project budgets and financial forecasts.
• Tracking actual versus planned spend.
• Financial reporting and cost control.
• Business case development and benefit realisation tracking.