WHAT DOES A GLOBAL PRODUCT MANAGER DO?
Published: Apr 22, 2025 – The Global Product Manager drives revenue and margin growth in the global TSO market through strategic product ownership, compelling value propositions, and competitive differentiation. This position defines and executes the TSO product roadmap based on deep customer insight, market trends, and regulatory landscapes while ensuring successful cross-functional alignment. This role develops and nurtures global partnerships, builds strong business cases, and leads product initiatives to deliver impactful solutions that support energy transition challenges.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Global Product Manager
1. Global Product Manager Duties
- Product Strategy: Drive the strategy of the category for which the Product Manager is in charge.
- Product Concept Development: Recommend new product concepts based on category knowledge, market intelligence, and input from markets.
- Product Proposition: Define the product proposition (attributes & requirements, concept, claims, pricing, and positioning in market) to optimize product reach, sales, and profit by gathering and assessing input and information from key stakeholders (Consumers & Stylists, Insights, R&D, Exec, etc.).
- Brief Development: Develop product and packaging briefs when appropriate for internal and external suppliers.
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Work across the multi-functional team (with a specific focus on R&D, Supply Chain, and Insights) to manage the development of new products from initial idea through to commercialization using a stage-gate process.
- Packaging Leadership: Lead all packaging artwork development related to the category of product.
- NPD Collaboration: Responsible for product areas and will collaborate with other members of the team in driving NPD projects.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Work closely with Clinical and Scientific Affairs, R&D, Quality, and Regulatory Affairs, etc., as well as subsidiaries and distributors around the world.
- Portfolio Management: Define, prioritize, optimize, and manage the product portfolio throughout the entire life cycle in a global setting.
- Stakeholder Collaboration: Collaborate with all stakeholders from product initiation to delivery.
- Sales Support: Support colleagues in Global Sales with tools to drive sales further and help with product-related questions in specific customer conversations (pre- and post-sales).
- Product Launch: Introduce new products, from the start of sales, product launch, to the first customer shipment.
- Strategic Execution: Provide multi-functional leadership and execution of the strategic direction set for 3D Bag consumables, namely ReadyToProcess & Xcellerex Consumables within Fluid Management.
- Profit Maximization: Manage and provide tactical support for Fluid Management product lines with a focus on maximizing profitability across all aspects of the products' lifecycle.
- Business Expertise Development: Develop product/business expertise in Fluid Management, as well as practical leadership and influence through participation in key business decision-making forums such as R&D portfolio reviews, Product care, Product Quality, and Sales & Operations planning.
2. Global Product Manager Details
- Product Lifecycle: Own all aspects of the product lifecycle from defining requirements and development through end-of-life.
- NPI Management: Responsible for the New Product Introduction business plan, internal approval process, technical specifications, and revenue and profitability along the lifetime.
- Roadmap Definition: Define product roadmaps in cooperation with Product Marketing, after analyzing market trends and listening to customer needs.
- Technology Evaluation: Looking at new technologies, evaluate make or buy strategies in the scope to enlarge and improve the Itron portfolio in solving customer problems.
- Revenue Accountability: Accountable for the Revenue and Profitability of the product range.
- Pricing Strategy: Define price lists and ensure the right positioning compared to competitors.
- Sales Collaboration: Collaborate on a daily basis with the sales teams including training, technical support, responses to calls for tenders, market prices, manufacturing times, and competitive advantages.
- Business Culture: Instill a Business Culture in the technical teams by supporting them in reflections of "design to cost" and profitability.
- Core Team Leadership: Drive the Product Core Team in cooperation with Quality, Operations, and Sustaining.
- Portfolio Communication: Take ownership of the communication about the portfolio (internal & external), give product presentations and training to partners and customers.
- Documentation Creation: Creation of technical documentation (product description, brochure) and update internal systems (create articles, update price lists).
- Process Support: Support the execution and/or refinement of routine product management processes, including annual road-mapping, quality, and pricing reviews with Sr. Product Managers and Platform Leader.
- Customer Focus: Maintain customer focus on the value of consumable products.
- Customer Advocacy: Represent the voice of the customer internally to advocate for customer needs.
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Develop strong cross-functional relationships with supply chain, R&D, and quality to successfully drive both short-term and long-term projects to strengthen product offerings.
3. Global Product Manager Responsibilities
- CPQ Adoption: Ensure full adoption to new CPQ system.
- Quotation Support: Ensure that the quotation tool and processes continuously support changing business requirements.
- Process Improvement: Identify improvement areas and enhance current tools and processes to fullest capacity.
- Requirements Alignment: Identify and align requirements from group and regions, business case building, budget follow-up, and roll-out and adoption.
- VOC Analysis: Gather voice of customer (VOC), market trends, and competitive dynamics to drive product development, create products and features pipeline, and plan individual products/features development.
- Requirements Documentation: Generate market and user requirements documents, presentations, and supporting materials to align all functional groups behind a VOC-driven product development plan.
- Program Leadership: Part of NPI program core team to lead cross-functional program teams (Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Regulatory, Quality, Sourcing, Integrated Supply Chain, etc.) to create proposals for new product developments, finalize product specifications, and drive the product development to the commercial launch.
- Launch Execution: Work with global product marketing team to develop and execute new product launch cadence and launch plans, including product positioning/messaging, sales and applications specialist training, and marketing campaigns.
- Service Management: Work with global service team to manage GE ultra-premium CT installed-base by creating and executing lifecycle strategies for legacy products.
- Sales Support: Support global sales activities on an ongoing basis.
- Portfolio Management: Responsible for the management and development of a portfolio aimed at serving the BioPharma/Pharma QC customers with a focus on workflow transformation.
- Innovation Drive: Drive innovation in the franchise product lines through execution of ongoing new product developments according to market and identified customer needs.
- Customer Fulfillment: In collaboration with R&D, Marketing, Quality, Manufacturing, and Commercial across all regions, ensure that customer needs are being fulfilled and support sales growth targets.
- Launch Plans: Develop and execute launch plans for new products in close collaboration with R&D and Marketing partners to finalize the product positioning as well.
4. Global Product Manager Job Summary
- Revenue Growth: Driving revenue and margin growth across the global TSO market, promoting the company to this customer segment.
- Product Roadmap: Owning the TSO product roadmap with insightful customer feedback and requirements.
- Partner Ecosystem: Building an ecosystem of partners to drive commercial traction.
- Sales Support: Supporting sales with creating commercial concepts/technical proposals, pricing strategy and plans in response to customer opportunities and maintaining a close and detailed knowledge of market regulation/policy and competitor offerings and initiatives.
- Market Positioning: Ensuring the company maintains a clearly differentiated and compelling market position.
- Product ROI: Ownership and accountable for product ROI for the TSO product segment, and ownership of product P&L.
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Work cross-functionally to ensure marketing, partner, product, and sales strategy are implemented and delivered efficiently and on target to meet/exceed business plan targets for TSO sales/margin growth globally.
- Product Development: Working with other product managers and the product lead to drive tactical as well as strategic product development.
- Business Opportunities: Identify compelling business case/market opportunities, set pricing/margin requirements, define features which delight customers and help them achieve goals.
- Roadmap Management: Driving product release and roadmap.
- Feature Ownership: Clear ownership of product proposition, business case, features, and working alongside R&D by clearly communicating feature requirements and prioritizing features per release.
- Technical Understanding: Possesses a deep technical understanding of the wide-ranging operational challenges faced by DNO customers globally as a result of the renewable energy transition.
- Solution Promotion: Identify issues and promote solutions for helping address these by developing comprehensive, mutually beneficial offerings, partnerships, and strategies working closely with sales.
- Strategic Partnerships: Build and maintain strategic partnerships to drive product opportunities globally.
5. Global Product Manager Accountabilities
- Market Positioning: Ensure benchmarking & product positioning in the markets and develop necessary sales tools for commercial teams.
- External Partnerships: Develop external partnerships to expand BioMonitoring solutions for industrial microbiology testing.
- Business Opportunities: Identify and develop new business opportunities outside the core segments of release testing applications and develop long-term strategy and annual marketing plans.
- Global Strategy: Global product strategy development aligned to the Building Envelope pillar of the Shelter Strategy.
- Lifecycle Planning: Product lifecycle planning and execution.
- Product Development: Product development and product line renewal.
- Innovation Bridge: Clear bridge from the current value center portfolio to future innovation portfolio.
- Profit Analysis: Product line profit analysis and profit improvement actions.
- Asset Strategy: Product line asset strategy and input to supply network design and optimization.
- Quality Alignment: Alignment of quality program priorities with product strategy.
- Custom Products: Managing process for custom products and product development requests.
- Talent Development: Talent management & development within the Exteriors Product team.
- Business Improvement: Improvement of end-to-end business management processes/Integrated Business Planning with direct accountability for Exteriors portfolio Product Step.
- Portfolio Planning: Create and maintain the business portfolio plan for certain product families within the sterile filtration portfolio.
- Cross-functional Engagement: Engage heavily with research and development, engineering, marketing, quality, and regulatory departments.