Project Manager

Role: Project Manager - Retail

Purpose of role: The Retail Project Manager will be responsible for understanding business processes and applications, overseeing and managing various projects within our retail environment, analysing the business needs of internal clients and stakeholders to help identify business problems and propose application solutions. It requires an ability to understand business processes (as is and to be) and ensure they are understood and fully documented to allow the organisation to achieve its goals.

The role also requires project management capabilities that will enable them to manage a project from initiation through sign off.

 The role requires strong analytical and communication skills to ensure effective engagement with a diverse stakeholder group.

Reports to: Projects & Improvements Manager

Location: Dublin

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop a strong understanding of our existing store system and applications landscape as a building block for future solutions.
• Work with the Continuous Improvement Manager in identifying opportunities, project tracking & meeting deadlines
• Work with internal and external teams to help research, plan and deliver detailed business requirement documentation to ensure project requirements are met.
• Work with and challenge business units on their assumptions to help deliver solutions for their current and future needs.
• Maintain accurate and up-to-date project documentation, including project plans, schedules, budgets, and status reports.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for project stakeholders, providing regular updates on project progress, milestones, and potential issues
• Key stakeholder between Retail & Technology
• Project manage the process from initiation through to sign off, adhering to all PMO requirements.
• Working with information gathered from multiple sources, be able to evaluate true business requirement from user request, ensuring that proposed solution is reconciled with all business inputs, resolving business conflicts as required.
• Be able to draw requirements together into Business Requirements Documents using existing templates, making use of plain English, diagrams, process flows and scenarios so that the resulting document will be meaningful to the intended users.
• Have the ability to work in a team collaborating on different aspects of a large project, ensuring that the objectives of all components are aligned, and that delivered solution will work as an end-to-end process.
• Be able to take responsibility for managing aspects of project, managing resources, timelines, 3rd parties and delivering status reports, feeding into the overall project.
• Successfully engage in multiple initiatives in parallel.
• Use the knowledge gained in the analysis and design of the solutions to become one of the subject matter experts for solution being delivered.

Competencies, knowledge, skills & experience:

• Educated to degree level (or equivalent).
• Minimum 2 years’ experience in related field.
• Demonstrate experience of gathering requirements and converting them into a product vision.
• Show experience of Project Management role and an understanding of PMO requirements.
• Knowledge of how our stores operate from end to end (favourable but not essential)

Essential knowledge, skills and experience:

• Three years’ experience with business transformation – leading projects from concept to execution.
• Have strong analytical skills to interpret customer needs and translate into operational requirements.
• Possess the ability to work alongside senior management at all levels within Retail, the business and external service providers / business partners.
• Two years’ experience leading a high performing team.
• Demonstrate strong planning and organisation skills, ability to plan and prioritise work schedule and work within agreed timescales.
• Have strong communications skills (written and verbal) – need to communicate at all levels within Retail, the business and external service providers / business partners.
• Show flexibility in working location; travel within Europe may be required; and the role may also require occasional travel further afield
• Ability to work flexible hours to support the business and the Retail Operations team.

Personal Attributes:

• Highly organised, detail-oriented, possessing the ability to effectively prioritise projects and deliverables whilst meeting deadlines set by management.
• Open minded & willing to dive into detail on how our stores operate & identify areas of improvement
• Excellent planning and organisation skills, ability to multi-task, plan and prioritise work schedule for self and team and work within agreed timescales.
• Excellent attention to detail and an ability to analyse and interrogate high volumes of data as well as demonstrating an ability to focus on higher level overview.
• Proven ability in managing sensitive matters whilst ensuring all Primark information remains confidential to the business.
• Be a collaborative team player with excellent interpersonal/communication skills, while demonstrating high levels of emotional intelligence and possess the ability to push back with professionalism. Proven ability in developing effective working relationships across all levels of the organisation.
• Operates with a high level of integrity, diplomacy, tact and professionalism.
• Effective and persuasive presentation skills, including the ability to present complex information in an understandable manner to all areas of the business.
• Ability to lead, influence and coach others
• Sound judgement, unquestionable ethics and integrity with high degree of transparency and trust

Additional Information:

• This position may require occasional travel to project sites or vendor locations
• Flexibility to work non-traditional hours when necessary to accommodate project deadlines or stakeholder meetings.

Performance Matrix

Customer Focus

• Develops and implements strategies and processes to improve customer service across the business
• Focused on long term customer satisfaction and works to align all actions, processes and decisions so that they deliver long term, sustainable customer satisfaction, as well as supporting the long-term interests of the business

Team Work

• Promotes decisions that benefit Primark even if they are unpopular or controversial and probes others’ decision making to ensure the interests of Primark are always protected.
• Acts as an ambassador for Primark both internally and externally and takes responsibility for all aspects of the business

Communication & Influence

• Provides a professional and credible view when representing the team and department
• Builds and maintains effective communication channels internally and externally
• Considers the impact of communication and prepares the ground in advance when planning to convey important or difficult messages
• Delivers messages which influence the way in which staff see Primark and/or their jobs

Quality Focus

• Is highly focused on the delivery of quality outputs
• Consistently demonstrating and role modelling a concern for quality and maintaining an awareness of what is going on around them, in order to take action to correct others’ quality issues
• Establishes, communicates and monitors quality standards whilst ensuring that work quality is of the highest order

Commercial Acumen

• Systematically examines the market to identify trends and the potential impact on Primark in order to build up a market understanding over a sustained period
• Builds up a network of key external information sources including managers from other leading retailers
• Regularly gathers internal and external information to enable business decisions to be made in the context of economic, social and business trends
• Uses personal judgement to make key commercial decisions that have a significant impact on the success of the business

Analytical Thinking & Problem-Solving Skills

• Uses a range of analytical techniques to break apart complex problems and identify solutions whilst evaluating whether arguments are sound
• Cuts through complexity to create simple frameworks, models and strategies that others can easily understand and helps colleagues change their perspective

Planning & Organisation

• Balances time of the team appropriately between the day-to-day, tactical tasks and the longer term strategic priorities ensuring both are achieved
• Keeps all priorities in clear perspective and ensures resources are appropriately aligned to meet delivery requirements

Focus & Drive

• Creates a goal focused culture by encouraging innovative thinking to achieve goals more effectively
• Encourages others to exceed goals and monitors long term goals for teams and individuals
• Consistently look for ways of doing things more efficiently and ensures changes are captured and disseminated, so that they bring long term business benefits

Leadership & Motivation

• Establishes, presents and communicates a clear strategic direction which inspires ownership across the business
• Generates excitement, enthusiasm and commitment to the Primark vision whilst encouraging managers to think about resources as a means to create value

Developing Self & Others

• Establishes long term skills needs of the business. Identifies ways of fulfilling staff development needs
• Builds a high-performance learning culture

Our fashion isn’t one-size-fits-all and neither is our culture. Primark promotes equal employment opportunity, we strive to create an inclusive workplace where people can be themselves, access opportunities and thrive together.