Senior AI Journey Owner

About The Role:

The AI journey owner is responsible for owning AI experience including strategy, financial measurement and management, market and user research, experience redesign and agile delivery and execution.

Responsible to develop and implement an industry-changing digital strategy for iA Private Wealth, that will enable the firm to deliver an unmatched, seamless digital experience for clients,  advisors and employees and find new ways to serve clients, integrate digital touchpoints and channels to improve operational efficiencies and attract the next generation of client, advisor and employee with flexible options for engagement.

The AI experience is centered around enhancing the capabilities of advisors through advanced AI tools and functionalities.

Key Accountabilities include:

Strategy, Business Cases & Financial Management

• Establish the AI experience vision including the integration model with advisor and head office and supporting strategy that will deliver target business outcomes and best in class digital experiences

• Decompose business goals to identify strategic opportunities and establish a roadmap centered around MVP defining short, medium and long-term objectives in collaboration with various product owners

• Develop the business case by defining and measuring OKRs.  Ultimately accountable for key results of the journey.

• Manage key metrics and revenues and costs, applying a test and learn approach to optimize performance and return on investment for experiences and feature enhancements

• Responsible for total cost of ownership of AI tools in collaboration with partners

Experience Research & Design

• Representing the voice of clients.  Engaging with advisors to understand their evolving needs to engage with clients and grow their businesses.

• Responsible for multipronged research practice, combining qualitative research data and metrics, identifying opportunities for design and orchestration and monitoring and measuring performance. 

• Lead design activities including prioritization of design work, design thinking and ideation.  Working with partners on prototyping, testing and iteration and ensuring all stakeholders are engaged throughout. 

• Actively conducts market intelligence to understand competing offers, trends in the marketplace and emerging investment solutions and related technologies delivering business value

• Defining target experiences and ensuring they are evergreen on an ongoing basis

• Evolving advisor, client and operational experience design with process efficiency including optimizing processes as needed and maintenance of process documentation across journey teams

• Provide thought leadership and identify, interpret, and capitalize on client and advisor trends and new technologies that contribute to the overall evolution of the digital platforms and omnichannel experiences with a digital-first, customer-centric mindset

• Leads regular meetings with executives, advisors and head office teams to monitor performance, identify unmet needs, emerging risks and opportunities

Agile Delivery & Execution

• Work with various partners to determine business and technology capabilities, coordinate cross functional optimization efforts required to activate the target state journeys

• As business / experience lead, responsible for leading multiple large, complex, multi-year business transformation initiatives. Heads projects of considerable risk and complexity; develops project rollout strategies

• Responsible for defining and prioritizing the EPICs and Features including business outcomes and acceptable criteria.

• Represents business throughout development stage and Leads Business/User acceptance testing (UAT)

• Participates in PI Planning, Iteration Reviews, System Demo, for each of the products and orchestrate the E2E journey

• Support teams in problem solving complex issues, proactively address key risks and serve as escalation point for key issues

• Ensure delivery addresses applicable legal, compliance regulatory and internal policy requirements

• Reports status updates to respective governance committees and directs project teams to ensure deadlines and objectives are met

Stakeholder Management & Communication

• Proactively engage senior stakeholders to understand business and advisor needs and provide transparency of roadmap and execution progress for their journey

• Effectively communicate and influence with key insights, ideas and strategies, to peers and senior management teams in iA Private Wealth and across internal partners in a clear, compelling and concise manner

• Escalate and keep executive sponsors and stakeholders informed of key issues, risks and interdependencies

• Build and manage relationships with key partners at all levels, including effectively engaging senior executives

• Build relationships with relevant external partners (e.g. technology companies, services providers) to keep abreast of innovation development, influence roadmaps to align with iA Private Wealth needs and obtain support to resolve issues

• Manages strategic partner relationships with third party product providers

• Work with corporate functions and business units to establish ethical governance, manage operational risks and share best practices.

Change Management & Adoption

• Responsible for change management strategy.  Partner with various teams including communication, training, branding, marketing and support

• Deploy change management and communication tactics that ensures the changes are understood throughout the organization and effective change leadership is deployed to the impacted iAPW stakeholders

• Tailor both written and verbal communication based on audience and situation to maximize buy-in and establish productive working relationships

• Mitigate risks associate with major changes to critical processes and platform supporting the client, advisor and employee journey

• Accountable for adoption and ongoing management of the advisor, client and employee experience

Skills & Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant digital strategy and delivery experience

• Degree in Business or Marketing, MBA preferred

• Strong understanding of the Wealth Management industry trends and regulatory environment with a strategic mindset

• Experienced in participating in agile ceremonies, managing EPIC/Features plan, tracking team level metrics, removing blockers

• P&L management experience with demonstrated history of driving profitable product/program adoption and growth

• Planning and organizational skills with a strong ability to work in a fast-paced environment and manage multiple deadlines and priorities, ability to manage functional programs independently

• Experience with working in both a technical and business context is an asset; able to translate business concepts into easy-to-understand technical language

• Strong coordination skills across multiple stakeholders and departments

• Strong interpersonal skills with ability to form strong working relationships

• Strong ability to presents complex ideas, address possible objections and persuade others, often at higher levels, to adopt a different point of view

• Ability to deal with and influence individuals at all levels of the organization, along with vendors and consultants

• Exhibits and encourages a positive and proactive approach toward change and ongoing development

• Must have the ability to change direction quickly with a strong understanding of change management

• Superior communication and facilitation skills

• Excellent English and French language skills, both oral and written due to frequent interactions with English and French-speaking colleagues or internal partners across Canada

• Robust presentation, documentation and analysis experience

• Works well with team and as a sole contributor

• Superior problem solving and critical thinking

• Solves unique and complex problems that have a significant impact on company operations

• Demonstrates conceptual and innovative thinking when formulating solutions