Back to Home

Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Business Solutions Manager

💰 $ - $

BusinessManagementProductSolutionsOperations

🎯 Role Definition

The Business Solutions Manager leads end-to-end solution design and delivery for business initiatives, aligning technology, process, and people to drive measurable business outcomes. This role partners with product, sales, operations, IT and finance teams to define requirements, prioritize features, manage vendor relationships, and ensure successful implementation of CRM/ERP integrations, automation programs, and continuous process improvement. The ideal candidate combines technical acumen (CRM/ERP, data analytics, integration patterns) with strong stakeholder management, project leadership and commercial awareness to translate strategy into scalable operational solutions.


📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Business Analyst with domain or product experience
  • Project Manager or Program Manager experienced in cross-functional delivery
  • Solutions Consultant / Pre-Sales Engineer transitioning to delivery

Advancement To:

  • Senior Business Solutions Manager / Lead Solutions Manager
  • Director of Solutions / Director of Business Operations
  • Head of Product Operations, VP of Business Transformation

Lateral Moves:

  • Product Manager
  • Customer Success / Client Services Director
  • Sales Engineering Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead end-to-end discovery, requirements definition, and solution design for business initiatives by conducting stakeholder interviews, process mapping, gap analysis, and feasibility assessments to ensure alignment with strategic goals and measurable KPIs.
  • Own the roadmap for assigned solutions and programs, prioritize features and enhancements with product owners and business stakeholders, and translate strategic objectives into clear epics, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
  • Manage full project lifecycle for CRM, ERP, automation, and integration projects, including planning, resourcing, vendor selection, risk mitigation, scheduling, budget tracking, and successful go-live coordination.
  • Serve as the primary liaison between business stakeholders, IT engineering teams, data analysts, and external vendors to ensure technical solutions meet business requirements and comply with architecture and security standards.
  • Design and document complex business processes, system flows, configuration guides and solution blueprints that enable engineering and third-party vendors to build to specification with minimal rework.
  • Lead Requirements Gathering and Business Analysis activities, facilitating workshops, writing functional and technical specifications, and maintaining a prioritized backlog to drive iterative delivery.
  • Drive cross-functional change management activities including communication plans, stakeholder engagement, training coordination, and post-implementation support to maximize adoption and ROI.
  • Build and maintain strong relationships with senior business leaders and key stakeholders, providing regular status updates, executive-level dashboards, and data-driven recommendations to influence strategic decisions.
  • Define success metrics, develop measurement frameworks and dashboards (Power BI, Tableau) to track adoption, operational efficiency, revenue impact, and cost savings from delivered solutions.
  • Conduct vendor evaluations, manage third-party contracts and SLAs, coordinate integrations with external platforms (SaaS, payments, logistics), and ensure vendor deliverables meet contractual expectations.
  • Lead testing activities including test plan creation, UAT coordination, defect tracking, and sign-off processes with business owners to ensure high-quality releases and minimize disruption to operations.
  • Identify process inefficiencies and lead continuous improvement initiatives using Lean, Six Sigma, or other process improvement methodologies to reduce cycle time and improve accuracy.
  • Create business cases, ROI analyses, and cost-benefit models to secure funding and executive buy-in for strategic solution investments and transformation programs.
  • Translate regulatory and compliance requirements into system and process controls, partnering with legal and security teams to ensure solutions meet data protection and audit standards.
  • Coach and mentor junior business analysts and project leads, establish best practices for requirements management, and evangelize a customer-centric mindset across delivery teams.
  • Coordinate go-to-market readiness for new features or integrations, working with sales, marketing and customer success teams to ensure messaging, enablement materials, and support processes are in place.
  • Manage data migration strategies, data mapping, cleansing and reconciliation activities for system implementations to preserve data integrity and continuity of business operations.
  • Oversee pricing, billing and monetization configuration for product and service offerings, collaborating with finance to ensure correct revenue recognition and billing flows.
  • Act as a subject matter expert on solution capabilities and limitations, advising on trade-offs between off-the-shelf configurations and custom development to optimize cost, time-to-market and maintainability.
  • Lead incident response and post-implementation stabilization efforts, coordinating cross-functional resources to resolve production issues, implement hotfixes and capture lessons learned.
  • Facilitate post-implementation reviews and continuous feedback loops with customers and internal users to prioritize enhancements and reduce technical debt.
  • Ensure documentation, runbooks, and knowledge bases are maintained for operational teams to support ongoing solution maintenance and scaling.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis to answer business questions and validate solution performance.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap by identifying analytics needs uncovered during solution delivery and recommending instrumentation improvements.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements, ensuring analytics and reporting capabilities are delivered alongside operational features.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Provide mentorship and knowledge transfer to operations and support teams to ensure smooth handover of solutions and sustainable operations.
  • Assist sales and pre-sales teams with solution scoping, proposals and technical demonstrations when needed.
  • Maintain awareness of industry trends, competitive solutions, and best practices to inform product strategy and continuous improvement initiatives.
  • Support procurement and vendor onboarding processes by providing technical and business requirements documentation.
  • Contribute to budget forecasting and resource planning for ongoing platform and solution maintenance efforts.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • CRM configuration and implementation experience (Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot) with proven ability to map business processes to platform capabilities.
  • ERP familiarity (NetSuite, SAP S/4HANA, Oracle) and integration experience across finance, inventory, and order-to-cash processes.
  • Strong SQL skills for querying transactional datasets, performing data validation, and supporting analytics and reporting needs.
  • Hands-on experience with BI and dashboarding tools (Tableau, Power BI, Looker) to create executive-level and operational reports.
  • Practical knowledge of integration patterns and middleware (Mulesoft, Dell Boomi, APIs, RESTful services) to design reliable system-to-system communications.
  • Proven project and program management skills, including Agile/Scrum and traditional Waterfall methodologies, with tools like Jira, Confluence, and MS Project.
  • Experience with requirements engineering: user stories, use cases, acceptance criteria, process flows and functional specifications.
  • Familiarity with testing frameworks and UAT coordination, defect lifecycle management and automated testing basics.
  • Data migration and data mapping expertise, including ETL concepts and tools for cleansing and reconciling data across systems.
  • Financial acumen: P&L understanding, ROI modeling, pricing configuration and contract/billing system knowledge.
  • Knowledge of security, privacy and regulatory requirements (GDPR, SOC2) and ability to translate them into operational controls.
  • Proficiency with collaboration and documentation platforms (Confluence, SharePoint, Google Workspace, MS Office) for clear stakeholder communication.

Soft Skills

  • Strong stakeholder management and executive presence: ability to influence cross-functional leaders and navigate competing priorities.
  • Exceptional verbal and written communication skills with aptitude for translating technical concepts for non-technical audiences.
  • Analytical and problem-solving mindset with attention to detail and a bias for data-driven decision making.
  • Leadership and people management: mentoring, conflict resolution and the ability to lead distributed teams through change.
  • Customer-centric orientation with empathy for internal and external user needs, driving solutions that improve user experience.
  • Prioritization and time-management under ambiguity, delivering high-quality outcomes in fast-paced environments.
  • Negotiation skills for vendor management, contract discussions and internal resource allocation.
  • Adaptability and resilience when managing complex stakeholder landscapes and evolving project scopes.
  • Facilitation skills for workshops, requirements sessions, retrospectives and executive steering meetings.
  • Strategic thinking with the ability to align tactical delivery to broader business objectives.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Information Systems, Computer Science, Finance, Engineering, or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree (MBA, MS in Information Systems, or related) or relevant professional certifications (PMP, PMI-ACP, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Salesforce Administrator/Consultant, Lean Six Sigma).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Business Administration
  • Information Systems / Computer Science
  • Finance / Accounting
  • Industrial Engineering / Operations Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 5–10+ years delivering business systems, solution designs, or large-scale cross-functional programs; 3+ years in mid-to-senior management roles preferred.

Preferred:

  • Demonstrated track record in CRM/ERP implementations, integrations and process transformation within B2B or B2C organizations.
  • Experience leading cross-functional teams, managing vendors, and delivering commercial outcomes (revenue uplift, cost reduction, process efficiency).
  • Domain experience in industry verticals such as SaaS, retail/ecommerce, financial services, manufacturing or logistics is a plus.