Director, CRM Strategy & Operations

Capital District Physicians Health Plan Inc; Buffalo (NY); Hybrid; USD 138,000 - 248,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health and dental insurance

Retirement plan

Wellness program

Paid time off

Paid holidays

Job summary

Capital District Physicians' Health Plan, Inc. (CDPHP) seeks a Director of CRM Strategy & Operations to lead governance, strategy, and transformation for the CRM platform across the enterprise.

You will own the CRM roadmap, manage enhancements, and drive user adoption, while partnering with business leaders to align CRM with growth objectives. You will oversee vendor relationships, release management, and governance standards, ensuring secure, scalable CRM operations and measurable business

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field; Master's degree preferred.
• 10+ years CRM administration, CRM operations, sales operations, or related experience.
• 5+ years of leadership experience managing teams, enterprise platforms, or transformation initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience leading CRM platform strategy, administration, governance, and adoption programs.
• Experience with one or more enterprise CRM platforms: Salesforce, MS Dynamics 365, SAP CRM, Oracle CX, or similar.

Responsibilities

• Develops and executes the enterprise CRM vision, strategy, governance framework, and multi-year transformation roadmap.
• Leads CRM modernization and adoption programs to improve user experience and business value.
• Oversees vendor relationships, contracts, and investment planning for CRM enhancements and upgrades.
• Partners with enterprise teams to align CRM capabilities with sales, marketing, and operations needs.
• Ensures CRM governance, data quality, security, and compliance across the organization.

Skills

CRM governance

Platform administration

User adoption

Release management

Vendor management

Strategic leadership

Change management

Data governance

Roadmap management

Stakeholder coordination

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree preferred

Tools

Salesforce

Microsoft Dynamics 365

SAP CRM

Oracle CX

Job description

Job Description:

Summary:

The Director, CRM Strategy & Operations is responsible for providing strategic leadership, governance, operational oversight, and continuous improvement for the Marketing & Growth division's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform and associated sales enablement capabilities. This role serves as the product owner and operational leader for CRM strategy, administration, business process enablement, release management, user adoption, platform governance, and ongoing transformation initiatives.

The Director is accountable for developing the CRM roadmap, establishing governance standards, overseeing platform enhancements, driving adoption, managing vendor relationships, and ensuring CRM capabilities evolve in alignment with organizational goals and customer engagement strategies. This position partners closely with teams across the enterprise and business leaders across Lines of Business (LOBs) and regional markets to ensure the CRM platform enables efficient customer engagement, sales effectiveness, relationship management, operational visibility, and business growth.

Essential Accountabilities:

• Develops and executes the enterprise CRM vision, strategy, governance framework, and multi-year transformation roadmap to ensure CRM capabilities align with organizational objectives, customer engagement strategies, sales processes, and operational priorities.
• Serves as the business owner and strategic advisor for CRM administration, operations, lifecycle management, and continuous improvement, establishing policies, procedures, controls, and standards that ensure platform integrity, reliability, scalability, security, and compliance.
• Leads CRM modernization and transformation initiatives that improve user experience, customer intelligence, workflow efficiency, operational effectiveness, sales productivity, and measurable business value.
• Partners with teams across the enterprise and business leaders to optimize customer-facing processes, standardize relationship management practices, and align business requirements with CRM capabilities.
• Ensures CRM workflows effectively support lead management, opportunity management, account and contact management, customer engagement, pipeline visibility, forecasting, relationship management, and other critical business processes while promoting organizational consistency and adoption.
• Develops and manages CRM roadmaps, enhancement portfolios, backlogs, release schedules, and investment priorities, ensuring platform enhancements and technology investments deliver strategic and operational value.
• Oversees enhancement planning, requirements evaluation, prioritization, development, testing, deployment, upgrades, change management, and technical debt management, ensuring solutions are thoroughly tested, documented, and successfully adopted.
• Establishes and maintains governance and operating standards for testing environments, sandbox administration, user acceptance testing, functional testing, regression testing, release validation, deployment readiness reviews, and quality assurance processes.
• Develops and implements strategies that drive CRM adoption, utilization, user satisfaction, and organizational effectiveness through training programs, documentation, communications, enablement resources, and change management initiatives.
• Monitors platform performance, utilization, adoption, service delivery, user engagement, operational effectiveness, release outcomes, and value realization metrics, identifying opportunities for continuous improvement.
• Establishes CRM support models and operational service frameworks, overseeing user support, incident management, issue resolution, escalation processes, troubleshooting activities, and service-level performance.
• Leads relationships with CRM vendors, implementation partners, consultants, and service providers, managing vendor performance, contract obligations, investment planning, implementations, upgrades, and innovation opportunities.
• Partners with Data Governance, Analytics, Information Technology, and business partners to maintain CRM data quality, data integrity, customer data management standards, account hierarchy management, access controls, business rules, and system governance practices.
• Ensures CRM operations comply with enterprise architecture standards, information security requirements, privacy regulations, data governance policies, audit requirements, and organizational governance expectations.
• Builds, leads, and develops a high-performing team by establishing objectives, performance expectations, governance practices, operating procedures, staffing strategies, and professional development opportunities while fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, innovation, customer focus, and operational excellence.
• Confidentially manage sensitive information, maintain compliance with corporate policies and regulatory requirements, uphold organizational values and privacy standards, and perform other duties as assigned.
• Consistently demonstrates high standards of integrity by supporting the Lifetime Healthcare Companies' mission and values, adhering to the Corporate Code of Conduct, and leading to the Lifetime Way values and beliefs.
• Maintains high regard for member privacy in accordance with the corporate privacy policies and procedures.
• Maintains knowledge of all relevant legislative and regulatory mandates and ensures that all activities are compliant with these requirements.
• Conducts periodic staff meetings to include timely distribution and education related to departmental and Ethics/Compliance information.
• Regular and reliable attendance is expected and required.
• Performs other functions as assigned by management.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Information Technology, Marketing, Customer Experience, Analytics, Operations Management, or related field. Master's degree preferred. A combination of education and experience may be considered.
• Ten (10) or more years of progressive experience in CRM administration, CRM operations, sales operations, customer engagement technologies, business systems management, or related disciplines.
• Healthcare or other highly regulated industry experience preferred.
• Five (5) or more years of leadership experience managing teams, enterprise platforms, business applications, or transformation initiatives.
• Demonstrated experience leading CRM platform strategy, administration, governance, enhancement management, and adoption programs.
• Experience with one or more enterprise CRM platforms, including Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP CRM, Oracle CX, or similar enterprise CRM solutions.
• Experience supporting sales process optimization, customer engagement workflows, business process transformation, and user enablement initiatives.
• Strong understanding of:
  • CRM governance
  • Platform administration
  • User adoption
  • Release management
  • Business process design
  • Change management
  • Data governance
  • Vendor management
  • Experience managing platform roadmaps, enhancement portfolios, testing programs, and deployment processes.
  • Strong leadership, communication, relationship-building, facilitation, and organizational change management skills.

Physical Requirements:

• Ability to work prolonged periods sitting and/or standing at a workstation and working on a computer.
• Ability to travel across the Health Plan service region for meetings and/or trainings as needed.

In support of the Americans with Disabilities Act, this job description lists only those responsibilities and qualifications deemed essential to the position.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Compensation Range(s):

Minimum: $137,857 - Maximum: $248,143

The salary range indicated in this posting represents the minimum and maximum of the salary range for this position. Actual salary will vary depending on factors including, but not limited to, budget available, prior experience, knowledge, skill and education as they relate to the position's minimum qualifications, in addition to internal equity. The posted salary range reflects just one component of our total rewards package.

• participation in group health and/or dental insurance
• retirement plan
• wellness program
• paid time away from work
• paid holidays

Please note: There may be opportunity for remote work within all jobs posted by the CDPHP Talent Acquisition team. This decision is made on a case-by-case basis.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.