Job Description

The Company

At Biogen, our mission is clear: we are pioneers in neuroscience. Biogen discovers, develops, and delivers worldwide innovative therapies for people living with serious neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. One of the world’s first global biotechnology companies, Biogen was founded in 1978 and today has the leading portfolio of medicines to treat multiple sclerosis, has introduced the first and only approved treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, and is focused on advancing neuroscience research programs in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, MS and neuroimmunology, movement disorders, neuromuscular disorders, acute neurology, neurocognitive disorders, pain, and ophthalmology. Biogen also manufactures and commercializes biosimilars of advanced biologics.

Global Business Services and Business Optimization

The Global Business Services (GBS) and Business Optimization team is a newly formed organization established to transform Biogen’s business processes with a vision of “Lean and Simple” operations to fuel commercial growth and the innovation pipeline.  Further, GBS will provide further value by developing and delivering a suite of business solutions and support services that are valued by internal customers.   GBS will deliver services by leveraging a global delivery model, operational transparency and metrics, leveraging global best practices, and a service-oriented process improvement culture.   All solutions will be supported by strong business cases and ultimately monitored for the effectiveness and efficiency against benchmarks and service level agreements.

The vision of GBS at Biogen is to be recognized as a world-class Global Business Services organization driven by the desire for excellence in its people, business solutions, execution and partnerships with internal customers to develop “Lean and Simple” business solutions.

The Position

The GBS Sponsorship team is a group that is being established to manage Biogen’s sponsorship portfolio.  The Sr. Manager, Sponsorship role is critical as this role is the primary contact for many internal and external stakeholders.  In addition to providing exceptional customer service, responsibilities include conducting due diligence, managing the communications and approving or rejecting a request based on many different factors.  The candidate would be an integral part of the GBS team and will lead the existing sponsorship process and lead the continuous improvement initiatives, including the globalization of the sponsorship process world-wide. 

Specific responsibilities will include:

·         Build out the new GBS service line by defining and implementing the Service Agreement, KPI’s and Key Metrics with key customers

·         Manage the sponsorship’s portfolio including organization qualification, due diligence, request review, decision making communications, contracting, payments, reconciliations and close out

·         Interact regularly with internal senior and executive level sponsors.  Collaborate and build strategic relationships with each business unit stakeholder that is aligned with the agreed upon service level agreement

·         Lead a global team of up to 4 – 6 people with employees based between US and EU

·         Partner with Business Units, Finance, Compliance and Audit as applicable per policy, laws and government regulations

·         Provide “thought” leadership in the strategic implementation to establish a centralized sponsorship operating model and process that enables better cross-training and leveraging of expertise, which will be the foundation to expand the future scope of the team within GBS

·         Accountable to ensure the team is performing with quality expectations and results of the due diligence process and to ensure alignment with the Biogen policies and Pharma regulations and codes

·         Responsible for the awarding or declining, on behalf of Biogen, a sponsorship and funding request

·         Accountable to ensure the team is providing optimum service delivery when managing the phone line, sponsorship mailbox and other team repositories, following up on outstanding items and ensuring a timely completion of tickets and requests

·         Responsible for maintaining electronic records to support internal audits, following up on outstanding items and ensuring a timely completion of requests

·         Lead and identify system enhancements/improvements and partner with IT Support to enhance the FoundationConnect platform to meet evolving business and customer needs

·         Lead the continuous improvement initiatives

·         Manage the sponsorship budget for project initiatives and continuous improvement

·         Conduct routine operational review meetings with internal stakeholders at various levels

·         Become the Subject Matter Expert (SME) in sponsorships to identify business requirements

Qualifications

The ideal candidate will demonstrate strong leadership qualities; excellent oral and written communication skills, ability to communicate across all levels of the organization, exceptional judgement and problem-solving skills and must have the ability to manage competing priorities

• 8 - 10 years work related experience in Grants, Operations, Finance, Account Management, Project Management or related field

• 5 - 7 years of management experience with leading, managing and growing people

• 1 - 2 years of experience in the Pharmaceutical or Biotech industry preferred

• Strong understanding of compliance, applying judgement and critical thinking to daily operations

• Demonstrates a strong ability to identify, analyze and solve problems

• Strong oral, presentation and written communications and the ability to build productive working relationships with various levels, functions and teams

• Strong knowledge of and ability to apply PhRMA and OIG guidelines

• Ability to navigate and influence in a matrixed organizational structure

• High degree of self-motivation, enthusiasm and detail-orientation

• Strong organization and project management skills

• Proficient in Microsoft Office tools, understanding of Salesforce, Oracle and grant management systems a plus

• High sense of urgency with the ability to meet deadlines while maintaining the flexibility to adapt to changing priorities

• Proven leadership and interpersonal skills – the ability to collaborate well with others and work cross-functionally across the organization

• Ability to work well in teams and to build organizational relationships across all levels of the organization

Education:

BS/BA or University degree in Accounting, Finance, Compliance, Audit, Business, or other relevant background.

Additional Information

The GBS Sponsorship team is a group that is being established to manage Biogen’s sponsorship portfolio.  The Sr. Manager, Sponsorship role is critical as this role is the primary contact for many internal and external stakeholders.  In addition to providing exceptional customer service, responsibilities include conducting due diligence, managing the communications and approving or rejecting a request based on many different factors.