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We are working with Bio-Rad Laboratories in their search for a Global eBusiness Leader based in Hercules, CA — just 10 miles north of Berkeley.
Bio-Rad Laboratories has played a leading role in the advancement of scientific discovery for over 50 years by providing a broad range of innovative tools and services to the life science research and clinical diagnostics markets. Founded in 1952, Bio-Rad has a global team of more than 6,800 employees and serves more than 85,000 research and industry labs worldwide through its global network of operations.
Throughout its existence, Bio-Rad has built strong customer relationships that advance scientific research and development efforts and support the introduction of new technology used in the growing fields of genomics, proteomics, drug discovery, food safety, medical diagnostics, and more.
Oddly enough, these folks are really funny, and they approach their work with a ton of energy, drive, and enthusiasm. And their customers love them for it, too. This little number has been viewed on YouTube 284,075 times …
The Global eBusiness Leader will lead and manage Global eBusiness Sales, Marketing and Operations. This position will be responsible for overseeing Bio-Rad’s eCommerce capabilities across all online channels and business units. The role will also oversee the company’s strategic transition to on-line selling and merchandising. This role will serve as a strategic leader and be responsible for driving the change needed within Bio-Rad.
HARRY’S COMMENTS: When I look back over my last 12 months of eCommerce recruiting, one of the coolest things I notice is that until they reached out to me, I had never heard of most of the clients whom we now represent. And these are world-class firms, too!
2013 will go down as the year B2B firms got serious about eCommerce. There are several reasons for this trend:
- The consumerization of IT: 5 years ago, the average CIO could have cared less about how user-friendly his company’s applications were. If his software portfolio had multiple clunky user interfaces, that wasn’t his problem. It was the users’. Now, with Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook presenting users with simple, intuitive user interfaces, people everywhere know what a great UI looks like – and they’re demanding cleaner UI’s from CIOs.
- SaaS and integrated supply chains: Nowadays, companies can sell directly to their customers online, and clean UI’s facilitate greater usage of online catalogs. In addition to selling online, value-added services are becoming the norm: Transportation management; contract management; product lifecycle collaboration; planning, scheduling, and forecasting; reverse logistics; scrap processing; payment processing; and more are widely available to align the interests of buyers and sellers.
- AmazonSupply: Nearly all consumers appreciate the ease and simplicity of Amazon.com’s retail offering, what with MAP pricing, one-click ordering, Amazon Prime, and 2-day delivery now serving as the benchmark against which all online retailers are compared. Now, Jeff Bezos is bringing that standard to B2B with AmazonSupply.
Against this backdrop, Bio-Rad Laboratories, one of the world’s foremost Life Science companies, seeks to take its online business to the next level. Bio-Rad already has a $200+ million online business marketing tens of thousands of SKU’s to more than 2 million government, university, and private sector customers in two primary product groups:
- Life Sciences (in product categories like Amplification / PCR; Flow Cytometry; Cell Counting; Chromatography; and Protein Interaction) and
- Clinical Diagnostics (in product categories like Diabetes Testing, Microbiology; Instrumentation; and Quality Control)
While Bio-Rad competes in industries like Pharmaceuticals and Scientific R&D, it is a major supplier to the Biotechnology industry – one of the hottest industries on earth.
About the Biotech Industry:
Biotech companies develop and manufacture drugs used to treat various disease states. The global biotechnology industry includes about 7,000 companies with total revenue of about $140 billion. The US biotechnology product manufacturing industry includes about 1,800 companies with combined annual revenue of more than $80 billion.
The industry is forecast to grow at a high rate through 2016, along with the entire pharmaceuticals, medicines, and biological products manufacturing sector. Demand drivers include the need for new medical solutions to solve complex illnesses such as cancer, and the global need to increase food production. The willingness of insurance companies to pay for new drugs and treatments is also driving demand. Because many drugs are now developed using biotechnology, the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries overlap considerably.
Bio-Rad’s strong R&D focus helps to develop a steady stream of leading-edge tools for the biotech industry. Worldwide, the firm employs approximately 850 R&D specialists to develop new products as well as new applications for existing products. Today, the firm launches more than 100 new products per year.
About Bio-Rad’s online customer:
Our kickoff call with this client lasted 2 sessions and totaled 150 (!!) minutes. We have an extraordinary amount of information on the current state of Bio-Rad’s eCommerce business as well as its eCommerce goals, objectives, and potential obstacles to growth (we all have them!). For brevity’s sake, I will simplify a bit as to how Bio-Rad’s typical customer buys online …
Bio-Rad’s typical life sciences customer is an academic researcher who has completed their doctorate or is pursuing a post-doctorate degree and is working on a dissertation. Evidently, when scientists do an experiment, the results get published in a database of experiments which becomes part of each scientist’s permanent record.
It’s like my dad used to say: “In life, you grow a tail, and that tale follows you around everywhere you go.” The existence of this database encourages research scientists to do work of the highest quality. Naturally, great research is performed on first-rate machinery.
So, if researchers are in the early phases of their research and they don’t know what products are available to support their needs, they’ll Google a scientific term like “digital pcr systems.” From there, they’ll usually peruse content around that topic with the ultimate goal of buying something. From there, they’ll develop a short list of vendors, after which they will talk to other scientists about the companies and products on the shortlist. Once a researcher shortlists their vendors through peer influence and search engines, they may begin to do very specific product research and perhaps even reach out to Bio-Rad technical support.
From this point, products can be either purchased online from Bio-Rad.com, or researchers can request a demonstration in the lab. All of these interactions are tracked in Bio-Rad’s sales force automation system.
About the Role:
As you can imagine, the organic and paid search components of this role are extremely important. Without disclosing Bio-Rad’s paid search spend, the firm uses one contractor and 3 full-time employees, and paid search represents a massive growth opportunity. Additionally, the new hire must have highly developed skills in CRM, CMS, site search, online catalog management, and web analytics. Moreover, Bio-Rad is in the throes of a very large ERP project and you will be expected to lead the e-business integration.
More than anything, Bio-Rad needs a seasoned eCommerce general manager to manage the technology piece of its business while driving its eCommerce business from 10 to 20% of sales and 50% of transactions. At some point, the company may have to re-platform Bio-Rad.com, which may result in a reevaluation of how enterprise IT supports its online business. Additionally, Bio-Rad’s entire online user experience must be reevaluated to improve its consumer friendliness – and its major ecom KPI’s should be enhanced.
All the while, you must be an evangelist, change agent, and educator – constantly working the building to help everyone understand the benefits of “pie enlarging” (as opposed to “pie rearranging”) multichannel eCommerce.
Along with everything else, you will also develop a viable mobile marketing strategy and a cloud computing solution.
We need a seasoned eCommerce leader.
It’s really that simple. We need a high energy, magnetic, highly motivated self-starter to steward a $200+ million online business to nearly $1 billion. For a business like Bio-Rad’s, that’s not crazy. Bio-Rad does billions of dollars in sales globally, and its business model cries out for greater web enablement.
Indeed, the world is already headed in that direction. All of Bio-Rad’s internal and external stakeholders expect Bio-Rad to take its eCommerce game to the next level.
The successful candidate will be a true Online Sales and Marketing leader with a passion, talent, and proven track record of building teams, managing and motivating people, and helping companies develop and execute strategic plans to increase revenue and create value for our customers and organization.
Strategy:
Develop Bio-Rad’s eBusiness strategy & execute plans to grow online sales and digital presence in the US and throughout the globe
- Responsible for the P&L (top & bottom line) and total budget control – online sales should reach 50% of total global revenue within 5 years
- Define & build the best organization to support eBusiness growth
- Select & Manage the 3rd party vendors and service providers
- Gain the buy-in of Senior Management as well as their appointed business leads
- Evaluate continuously market opportunities for eBusiness & maintain market knowledge of the latest eBusiness solutions & techniques
Operations:
- Lead a Global eBusiness Steering Committee to build and prioritize and eBusiness roadmap
- Define targeted and prioritized IT & eBusiness projects and communicate and manage roadmap with the global eBusiness community
- Lead a team of operations managers, analysts and online product owners (Search, CMS, Cart, etc)
- Build and improve professional KPI’s for the eBusiness Operations team
- Partnering with IT, Negotiate and manage the relationships of all 3rd party vendors and service providers
Online Store Management: Collaborating with Marketing, User Experience, and Cross Channel Leaders, the eBusiness leader will be responsible for:
- Daily site management : online marketing & commercial calendar
- Customer Engagement: identifying and implementing best practices in form of functionality, user experience, and best in class eBusiness tools to meet critical user expectations
- Analytics : define and follow dashboards
- Product information management: Work along side of the User Experience team to create a best in class PIM strategy – product description, photos, cross & up selling, videos, product reviews.
Digital Marketing: collaborating with Marketing & design, the eBusiness leader will develop and manage online marketing strategy:
- Define and implement performance marketing strategies to drive qualified traffic and sales: SEM, SEO, retargeting etc.
- Develop CRM and cross channeling strategies
- Analytics to measure the success of the campaigns
- Define & implement Mobile & Social strategies
- Merchandising: define and buy the online assortment
- Content strategy: Including video, community management etc.
International & Business development:
- Define and implement an international strategy, working with regional teams and respecting local specificities.
Experience
- BA/BS Degree from a 4 year program, MBA highly preferred
- Degree in business or marketing-related major preferred, experience in technical marketing preferred
- Min. 5 + years online marketing strategy and program management / implementation experience including partnering with online marketing, sales, product, IT, and operations leadership.
- 5-8 years marketing experience including experience with channel marketing, consumer or business marketing program development and execution.
- Strong ability to develop business cases and communicate succinctly its value propositions to a broad group of leaders including C Suite.
- Project Management experience managing large global campaigns
- Strong interpersonal skills, with ability to build successful relationships within a team and cross-functionally.
- Ability to exercise good judgment and effectively use decision making skills, confidently handling ambiguous situations and/or issues that may arise.
- Ability to effectively present information to an individual or group, both written and verbally.
- Ability to work independently (particularly in the absence of supervisor) and be a solution-based thinker.
- Ability to work well in a team environment in any capacity.
- A solid understanding of eCommerce and high volume online retail business
- A passion for Science and an interest in the biotech industry is a plus
Qualifications
- 5+ years eCommerce experience developing and cultivating channels
- 5+ years managing a digital marketing and eCommerce team
- Experience in managing a P&L
- Knowledge of enterprise web analytics software including Omniture SiteCatalyst, Test&Target and SearchCenter
- 2+ years push and pull marketing experience with marketing 2.0 and web marketing knowledge
- Advanced understanding of online consumer buying behaviors
- Advanced knowledge of current B2B and B2C online marketing techniques
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