Chief Product Officer (CPO)

• Salary:£170,000 + plus Executive Benefits
• Working Policy: Flexible hybrid-working policy, with a minimum of two days a week from our Chester head office.
• Team: Product
• Reports to: Chief Executive Officer

About Us

The Forge Holiday Group encompasses Sykes Holiday Cottages, Forest Holidays, UKcaravans4hire and Bachcare in New Zealand. We unite under four core company values that serve as the foundation of everything we do:Being One Team, Owning It, Communicating Honestly, Learning, Growing, and Innovating.These values ensure we remain true to our original ethos and ensure we stay true to our Customers, Owners and colleagues alike.

About the Chief Product Officer Role

Reporting directly to the Group CEO, the Chief Product Officer will play a pivotal role in creating and executing the companys ambitious product strategy. The CPO will drive the organisation forward in its next phase of growth, serving as the key evangelist for the product vision. They will be responsible for crafting and implementing a winning product strategy that aligns with the companys overall business objectives.

Responsibilities:

The Chief Product Officer will possess executive gravitas and lead a highly capable product team. Drawing upon previous experience in owning the product function within a rapidly growing business, the CPO will bring expertise in platform strategies and leveraging network effects.

Key responsibilities include:

• Collaborate with the Group CEO and divisional CEOs to:
• Distil the medium-term vision, leveraging market research, customer surveys, and user testing to gain deep market and stakeholder insights.
• Set the product vision, goals, and define success metrics. Foster a culture of innovation, creativity, and experimentation within the organisation.
• Develop high-quality product roadmaps that:
• Supports the strategic vision and both short-term and long-term goals.
• Incorporate innovative solutions and address market and stakeholder needs.
• Implement best practices in reporting, product instrumentation, and dashboards to:
• Monitor roadmap execution and assess product costs and quality.
• Make data-driven decisions.
• Create detailed stakeholder profiles to:
• Inform future product features and drive growth and retention, leveraging market and customer insights.
• Monitor global competition to:
• Research market leaders, potential threats, and opportunities.
• Identify emerging product, technology, and research trends, as well as competitive pricing and feature strategies.
• Provide forward-thinking insights and recommendations for experimentation and learning.
• Maintain and enhance competitive advantage and product differentiation, leveraging partner relationships when necessary.
• Drive seamless integration of product components with technology and engineering teams.
• Prioritise impactful problems and opportunities, establishing a consistent process for feature triage.
• Foster collaboration between product, marketing, and engineering teams.
• Lead end-to-end product development to:
• Ensure high standards of quality, timely delivery, and effective product lifecycle management.
• Gather and prioritise product requirements, oversee development, launch strategies, and monitor post-launch performance and customer feedback.
• Build a world class Product Management team through:
• Mentorship and strategic hiring to meet the needs of a business three times larger than the current scale.
• Adapt the organisational structure to:
• Accommodate various growth stages and product complexity.
• Incorporate supporting functions and tools for scalability (e.g., product operations, product tech stack, data analytics, KPIs, and metrics)
• Establish streamlined processes for idea evaluation to:
• Spark innovation and value creation.
• Leverage data and metrics for data-driven analytics, decision-making, and measuring success.
• Exemplify executive conduct and contribute to the company culture by:
• Embodying strong leadership qualities.
• Fostering collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Understand the product landscape across the sector ensuring the Forge Holiday Group is aware of product trends and specific competitive threats.

Essential Experience

The ideal Chief Product Officer will possess the following qualifications and experience:

• Track record of serving on an executive team, with exceptional communication skills, both written and oral, and excellent presentation, persuasion, and negotiation abilities. Critically important role is telling the story and bringing the Product vision to life.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams at all levels of management, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Experience in a rapidly scaling company, coupled with an understanding of multi-divisional dynamics, leveraging market and customer insights for product development.
• Desirable experience in building teams and developing market-leading solutions in an app-first environment.
• Familiarity with platform strategies and leveraging network effects to drive product success.
• Proficiency in integrating products with multiple components, seamlessly connecting with other systems and partners to create a holistic and strategically compelling proposition.
• Exposure to a design-centric approach to product development, focusing on delivering exceptional user experiences.
• Proven ability to establish scalable and consistent processes in an organisational context similar to the current stage of the Forge Holiday Group.
• Experience with software that enables end users to provide feedback and supports data analytics through product instrumentation.
• Strong analytical orientation, relying on data-driven insights and decision-making, with the ability to measure success.

In return for your hard-work, we can ensure you join a vibrant, inclusive work culture with fantastic career progression opportunities and impressive company benefits

Diversity and Inclusion:

We encourage and welcome our people to bring their authentic and best selves to work every day. We know the power that comes from different ideas, backgrounds and perspectives. We recognise the role diversity plays in achieving our goals as a business. We actively welcome applications from as wide a range of backgrounds as possible. If you need any particular support or accommodations as part of your application process, please get in touch - our recruitment team are happy to help.

J-18808-Ljbffr