Associate Director - Launch Excellence (multiple positions)

About the Department 

Our Commercial Strategy and Marketing group creates and delivers human-centered experiences, where innovation meets customer-centricity, driving the ultimate experience for our patients. Our focus extends beyond transactions to craft experiences as one fully integrated, aligned and connected organization that puts empathy at the center, powered by insight and foresight.

We develop an end-to-end approach to strategy, focusing on every touchpoint that impacts our customers. We leverage data and insights to inform our decision-making processes, ensuring that our strategies are rooted in a deep understanding of customer needs and behaviors. Our 'test and learn’ mindset and approach enables us to iterate rapidly and refine our strategies based on real-world results.

We are building an intentional team culture that is made up of diverse skillsets, united by the shared belief that reinvention and learning is what fuels continuous growth. Do you get excited about exploring the unknown? Does the idea of driving value through human-centered design pull you in? Are you ready to experiment with us?

5 Associate Director - Launch Excellence positions open in the following TA: Obesity, CV/Renal, Diabetes, Emerging, and Rare Disease. 

 

The Position

The Associate Director - Launch Excellence will play a pivotal role in guiding the therapeutic areas leads to ensure alignment with organizational objectives and industry best practices. This role will foster innovative approaches and processes to enhance business performance and drive sustainable growth across the organization. This role involves developing and implementing enterprise capabilities, best practices, processes, and governance across the portfolio. The focus of this role will be in support of the diabetes or obesity or cardiovascular / renal or emerging therapies or rare disease therapeutic areas, specifically the upcoming launches to guide the strategic planning and execution of the launch to ensure market readiness and optimize commercial success through the coordination of cross-functional teams. This individual will have a proven track record in program management, coupled with expertise in launch excellence methodologies and practices. This role is critical in ensuring that new initiatives are executed flawlessly and contribute positively to business growth and success.

Relationship

Reports to Launch Excellence Lead and dotted line to TA Integrated Lead / Brand Lead. Collaborates with cross-functional teams, including finance, HR, market access, marketing, and sales to ensure projects align with overall business goals and operational needs. Works closely with operational teams to understand challenges, gather insights for process improvements, and implement new procedures. Works closely with analytics to collaborate on operational analytics initiatives, establishing governance and consistency across projects. Establishes, oversees implementation, and monitors adherence to administrative policies and procedures. The role may have an external or internal project manager as a dotted line.

Essential Functions

• Strategic Launch Planning: Develop and manage holistic, strategic launch plans, including supporting processes and a governance structure. Collaborate closely with the therapeutic area/brand leads and teams to provide connectivity across functions, provide guidance on commercial optimization strategies and market readiness
• Market Readiness Planning: Develop a consistent and robust approach to market readiness in collaboration with the therapeutic area/brand leads. Oversee and ensure the readiness of launches by monitoring key indicators and success factors within the market. Take proactive measures to address any challenges or roadblocks in the launch process
• Enterprise Capability Development: Establish processes and governance structure to support new launches and market readiness
• Program Management: Oversee program management for special projects, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and objectives. Define project scope, objectives, and deliverables, and establish project plans, timelines, milestones, and measurement to drive successful execution
• Budget Management: Work closely with finance and brand strategy to define the budget allocated for TA and brand activities. Secure global funding and assess progress during pre-launch
• Risk Management: Proactively raises risks within the brand/launch plan to brand and marketing leads. Uses business and launch expertise to inform risk mitigation strategies and assesses potential resourcing needs
• Process and Operations Management: Work with internal launch collaborators to ensure successful and timely launch process management. Oversee completion of launch readiness tasks, ensuring a standardized approach across brands and that resourcing is in place to support launch strategy initiatives. Owns launch roadmap to support launch success
• Process Optimization: Drive initiatives focused on continuous improvement of launch execution and marketing processes. Identify areas for enhancement and implementing processes to optimize TA/brand performance and launch outcomes based on marketing activities. Leverage innovative tools and approaches to streamline workflows and enhance ROI and performance
• Best Practice Integration: Capture lessons learned and best practices to apply to future brands and launches. Collaborate with internal cross functional stakeholders to incorporate these into marketing strategies and execution across the portfolio
• Continuous Improvement: Analyzing the outcomes of each launch to identify lessons learned and opportunities for improvement in future projects

Physical Requirements

Hybrid Policy: 3 days in the office and 2 days remote.

Approximately 10-20% overnight travel.
 

Development of People

Supervisory

Verbiage below applies only to Supervisory roles; it is removed for individual contributors - DO NOT EDIT

Ensure that reporting personnel have individual development plans (IDP), with annual goals and measurements that are consistent with the priorities of the business, and that interim reviews are held so that their work is focused on those priorities, and they understand their level of accountability for results and the measurement process.

Ensure that the IDP forms include completed learning and aspiration plans and are in place for all reporting personnel to enable the achievement of goals and capability to assume increased levels of responsibility.

Manage the application and communication of all Novo Nordisk policies, procedures, and Novo Nordisk Way.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or Equivalent in business administration /medicine / sciences / engineering / related field or equivalent experience. 10+ years of experience, including demonstrated history in business excellence, launch excellence, project management, program management, project launch, or related roles preferably within the pharmaceutical industry. Master’s degree, MD or Ph.D. degree a plus
• Management Consulting experience from consulting firms or in a company’s internal consulting organization within the pharmaceutical industry preferred
• Experience in launching new brands to market is a plus
• Lean Six Sigma Certification is a plus
• Must be able to be on-site at Plainsboro Township, New Jersey campus 3 - 4 days a week, remaining 1 – 2 days can be virtual
• Experience with local and global operations within life sciences preferred
• Strong knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry, including competitive market dynamics, and trends, especially within diabetes preferred
• Demonstrated success in commercial planning and launching products, including driving effective launch strategy, and identifying and implementing best practices
• Strategic Launch Planning, Analytical skills, Execution and follow-through skills required
• Experience managing competing priorities and ensuring timely delivery of project tasks, preferably within a product launch
• Experience with US operations within life sciences preferred
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with ability to influence senior leaders
• Outstanding planning and organizational skills with exceptionally high attention to quality of detail and proven track record of results and follow up
• Demonstrated collaboration skills in leading cross-functional teams required
• Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence and align cross-functional teams towards common goals
• Embodies leadership behaviors, including authenticity, will, empathy, decisiveness, and driving focus and simplicity

We commit to an inclusive recruitment process and equality of opportunity for all our job applicants.

At Novo Nordisk we recognize that it is no longer good enough to aspire to be the best company in the world. We need to aspire to be the best company for the world and we know that this is only possible with talented employees with diverse perspectives, backgrounds and cultures. We are therefore committed to creating an inclusive culture that celebrates the diversity of our employees, the patients we serve and communities we operate in. Together, we’re life changing.

Novo Nordisk is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by local, state or federal laws, rules or regulations.

If you are interested in applying to Novo Nordisk and need special assistance or an accommodation to apply, please call us at 1-855-411-5290. This contact is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.