Executive Delivery Director

Company Description

Merkle Denmark is one of the country’s most acclaimed digital agencies, delivering exceptional customer experiences through creativity, strategy, and data. With offices in Copenhagen and Aarhus, we specialize in strategic and creative work across various industries, helping clients develop, maintain, and grow valuable relationships with both B2B and B2C customers.

Job Description

The Executive Delivery Director is responsible for managing and leading the craft of project, product, and program delivery management across the agency. Leading the strategic delivery approach and plan for all projects, you’ll also be driving change within the business to promote an environment where teams are empowered and focused on delivering the best solutions for their clients.

As part of the executive leadership, the Executive Delivery Director has agency-wide responsibilities as the ambassador for all delivery processes and practices. Your role is to improve delivery methodologies, reporting, knowledge sharing, to provide guidance and support to account and project teams, and to empower teams to deliver the best solutions.

Day to Day tasks:

• Delivery Team Leadership: Provide leadership and guidance to the delivery team, ensuring that team members are motivated, engaged, and working effectively towards project goals. Direct reports will include senior delivery, program, and project managers.
• Quality Assurance and Risk Management: Set measures to oversee the quality of deliverables and ensure that they meet the client’s expectations. Accountable for identifying and mitigating risks associated with project delivery across the Merkle NE client portfolio (staffing challenges, changes in project scopes, etc).
• Commercial Focus: Responsible for project profitability and growth through partnership and process on existing clients and pitching for new ones. Track projects to ensure they meet their expected budget, time, and scope.
• Client Sponsorship: Act as client sponsor on key accounts. Act as a senior advisor to clients on the design and implementation of effective delivery models that align with the client’s business objectives, as well as providing insights on optimizing delivery processes to improve speed, quality, and cost-efficiency.
• Client Escalation: Successfully negotiate delivery escalations together with the client partners. Establish day-to-day relationships with key clients’ senior stakeholders and be a point of client escalation and issue management.
• Evolve solid practices for reviewing project progress: Identify and mitigate risks and issues throughout the project lifecycle.
• Mentoring Delivery Management:
  • Help delivery management team with technically challenging work through to completion.
  • Review documentation prepared by the team and provide feedback.
  • Successfully negotiate timelines, scope, and budget across the account portfolio with clients, including changes throughout projects. Coach other project managers on their techniques.
  • Help teams define and scope creative solutions that achieve the clients’ goals.
  • Manage individuals’ performance by supporting and challenging them towards achieving their goals.
• Oversee our portfolio of projects, programs, and managed services: Workflows to ensure a clear pipeline of work. Work with the Traffic Manager to ensure all projects for your team have sufficient resources and forward planning.

Strategical tasks:

• (Re)Shape the Delivery Organization: Trial new methods of working and lead the shaping of the agency’s methodology.
• Knowledge Sharing: Encourage knowledge sharing across Merkle NE and educate on best practices.
• Proactive Improvements: Suggest and implement improvements across all tools and systems.
• Recruitment and Training: Lead the recruitment, induction, and review process across the delivery management team. Identify learning and training needs for the team. Provide training and support on various project management techniques and tools.
• Diversity and Inclusion: Implement initiatives to create an inclusive work environment and ensure diverse perspectives are considered in project planning and execution.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work with other departments such as Business Teams, Client Services, Growth, Operations, and Finance to ensure alignment and support for project delivery.
• Innovation and Continuous Improvement: Foster innovation by encouraging the exploration of new technologies, methodologies, and best practices to enhance project delivery.

Our KPIs to Measure Success:

• Project delivery timelines and margins
• Client delivery satisfaction scores
• Team performance metrics

Qualifications

Personal traits needed for the role:

• Actively promote, pursue, and live the company’s vision.
• Expert at reading beyond the communication for both client and team, and coach other project managers on their techniques.
• Proactive for clients with ideas, thoughts, and suggestions related to the account and their industry.

Experience and Skills:

• 10+ years’ experience in a digital agency/consultancy
• 10+ years client-facing experience
• Experienced leader within project management
• Certified in agile, lives the agile principles and values (The preferred candidate is experienced in Agile Coaching)
• Experienced in various project management methodologies
• Successfully delivered large and complex digital projects
• Strong leadership skills
• Advanced problem-solving skills
• Strategic thinker
• Excellent communication skills
• Experience managing developers and creative teams
• Strong scope and change management skills
• Excellent documentation skills
• Excellent time management skills
• Takes ownership and responsibility for work, is proactive not reactive
• Positive can-do attitude

Additional Information:

Please send us your CV or an updated LinkedIn profile via the recruitment system. There is no application deadline; finding the right candidate is more important to us than a speedy process. We remove the job ad when filling the position.

For any questions, contact TA Lead dentsu Northern Europe, Suzana Petersson, on mail: suzana.petersson@dentsu.com.

Merkle does not discriminate against job applicants based on age, disability, gender reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, race, color, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.

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