Senior Manager - CRM Innovation & Experimentation

Job Description Summary

Novartis is on a mission to transform medicine and improve lives worldwide. As a global leader in healthcare, we leverage advanced technology, data, and digital capabilities to deliver patient-centric solutions, enhance customer engagement, and drive innovation. Within this context, the US CRM organization plays a critical role in shaping the transformation to next-generation CRM Innovation Labs that identifies and tests opportunities that can improve customer engagement, user experience, productivity, and CRM capabilities. Its work combines structured discovery, rapid experimentation, and evidence-based recommendations.

The Senior Manager, CRM Innovation & Experimentation leads defined innovation opportunities and experiments within the Hyderabad Labs extension. Reporting to the Director, CRM Enablement, Hyderabad, the role partners with the Associate Director, CRM Innovation Labs, US Labs leadership, Product Owners, business teams, technology partners, and control functions to scout emerging possibilities, run prototypes and proofs of concept, coordinate internal and external contributors, and convert learning into decision-ready recommendations.

Job Description

• Senior Manager - CRM Innovation & Experimentation
• Location – Hyderabad #LI Hybrid

Major Accountabilities

• Explore business challenges, user needs, product gaps, market trends, and emerging technologies to identify relevant CRM opportunities.
• Scout and assess startups, technology providers, specialist partners, and external capabilities against defined business needs and experiment objectives.
• Triage opportunities to determine whether they require experimentation, can reuse existing CRM capabilities, or should be redirected to another accountable team.
• Shape selected opportunities into clear problem statements, hypotheses, expected benefits, success measures, assumptions, risks, and decision criteria.
• Lead timeboxed discovery, prototyping, proof-of-concept, user validation, and technical feasibility activities, ensuring required data, environments, integrations, access, and specialist support are in place.
• Coordinate cross-functional contributors, including Product Owners, business SMEs, UX, architecture, engineering, data, analytics, privacy, security, legal, compliance, procurement, delivery teams, contractors, and external partners.
• Synthesize user, business, technical, operational, and market evidence into recommendations to advance, pivot, pause, stop, or transition opportunities, including reuse, configuration, process change, or existing-product enhancement options.
• Maintain strong execution discipline and governance through experiment plans, backlogs, decision records, risks, dependencies, stakeholder updates, transition-ready documentation, reusable insights, and compliance with responsible-use, data, privacy, security, legal, procurement, and documentation requirements.

Essential Requirements

• Quality and timeliness of opportunity briefs, experiment plans, prototypes, evidence packs, and recommendations.
• Clarity of hypotheses, benefit measures, assumptions, risks, dependencies, and decision records.
• Speed of learning and reduction of business, user, technical, operational, or compliance uncertainty.
• Relevance and quality of external capabilities assessed or translated into experiments.
• Effectiveness of stakeholder and contractor coordination, deliverables, documentation, and knowledge transfer.
• Quality and readiness of handovers into product roadmaps, operational capabilities, or other agreed adoption pathways.

Educational Requirement

Bachelor’s degree in business, technology, life sciences, engineering, or a related field is required; MBA or relevant master’s degree preferred

Minimum Experience

• 9+ years of experience in digital innovation, product management, consulting, technology scouting, prototyping, CRM, or related disciplines.
• Hands-on experience shaping ambiguous opportunities and leading experiments from hypothesis through evidence-based recommendation.
• Experience evaluating startups, technology providers, vendors, or external capabilities.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional workstreams, contractors, or specialist partners.
• Strong analytical, communication, stakeholder-management, and execution capabilities.
• Experience working in agile, product-oriented, global, or distributed environments.
• Experience in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, life sciences, or another regulated industry is desirable.

Desirable Requirement

• Navigate Complexity - Convert ambiguous opportunities into focused experiments and clear decisions.
• Deliver Collective Impact - Coordinate internal teams, contractors, external partners, and control functions toward shared outcomes.
• Influence Without Authority - Build credibility through evidence, demonstrations, user input, and clear recommendations.
• Drive Ownership & Execution - Manage scope, milestones, dependencies, quality, documentation, and escalation.
• Continuous Learning - Translate emerging trends and experiment lessons into relevant CRM opportunities and reusable practices.

Skills Desired

Analytical Thinking, Brand Awareness, Business Analytics, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Digital Marketing, Media Campaigns, Project Management, Project Planning, Sales, Stakeholder Engagement, Stakeholder Management, Waterfall Model