Business System Product Manager

Description:

We are looking for a Business System Product Manager to join our Strategic Projects Team on a permanent basis.

The purpose of the role is to own and continuously improve the organisation’s core business management system, ensuring it meets operational needs, regulatory requirements, and customer expectations. The role blends strategic product leadership with hands‑on delivery, working across teams to maximise value from the system and its integrations. Acting as the voice of the user, the guardian of system capability, and the bridge between business teams, IT, and suppliers.

A dedicated Product Manager ensures the core business system develops in line with Onwards’ corporate plan, service priorities, regulatory requirements and evolution objectives - rather than being driven only by technical fixes or isolated team requests. The role provides a single point of accountability for prioritising system improvements, managing competing demands, and ensuring investment is focused on the changes that deliver the greatest business and customer value. By working closely with operational teams, the Product Manager can better understand user needs, reduce workarounds, improve training and communication, and help colleagues use the system consistently and effectively. Strong product ownership supports more consistent processes, improved data quality and better reporting. This gives leaders greater confidence in performance information, regulatory assurance and service improvement decisions. The role finally helps ensure the organisation continues to realise value from its investment by identifying efficiencies, strengthening supplier and change governance, and maintaining a forward-looking improvement plan beyond implementation.

Job Responsibilities

Product Ownership
 

• Define and maintain the product vision, roadmap, and backlog for the business management system, ensuring alignment with organisational strategy.
   

Requirements Gathering
 

• Lead discovery sessions with internal teams (Property, Operations, Finance, Customer Services) to understand needs, pain points, and opportunities.
   

System Optimisation
 

• Identify improvements, configuration changes, and workflow enhancements to increase efficiency and data quality.
   

Supplier Management
 

• Own and manage relationships with system vendors, implementation partners, and third-party providers.
• Monitor supplier performance against SLAs and KPIs, ensuring timely resolution of incidents, defects, and service issues. Collaborate with suppliers on system upgrades, enhancements, and innovation opportunities.
• Ensure commercial value for money and hold suppliers accountable for quality and delivery outcomes.
   

Change Delivery & User Experience
 

• Oversee end‑to‑end delivery of system changes, from design to testing to rollout. Champion usability and accessibility, ensuring colleagues and customers can interact with the system effectively.
   

Data & Compliance
 

• Ensure the system supports all relevant legal and regulatory requirements, including housing compliance standards and data protection (e.g. GDPR). Promote strong data governance practices, ensuring data quality, consistency, security, and appropriate access controls. Work closely with data and compliance teams to support audits, reporting, and regulatory submissions. Identify and mitigate risks related to data integrity and system usage.
   

Performance Monitoring
 

• Track KPIs, system usage, and service performance to inform future improvements.
   

Cross‑Team Collaboration
 

• Work closely with IT, Data, and Operations to ensure the system integrates smoothly with other platforms. Work with L&D or create materials to support adoption of new features.
   

Skills/Experience

Essential:
 

• Product Management experience in a digital, SaaS, or business systems environment.
• Ability to translate complex business needs into clear, actionable requirements.
• Confident working with suppliers, developers, and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Knowledge of data governance, GDPR, and regulatory requirements.
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder‑management abilities.
   

Desirable
 

• Strong understanding of housing operations (repairs, tenancy support, allocations, rent & service charges, compliance).
• Experience working with housing management systems (e.g., Active H, NEC, Civica Cx, MRI Enterprise, Dynamics‑based solutions).
• Experience with API integrations or low‑code platforms (Power Apps, Power Automate).
• Understanding of structured delivery methods and tools such as Azure DevOps or Jira.
• Background in service design or user research.
• Experience delivering digital transformation in the public or social housing sector.
   

Qualifications

Essential:

Educated to A level standard or equivalent qualification/experience