Associate Director - Digital Transformation & Business Excellence

Job Description Summary

Lead strategic business initiatives for Novartis Group and Executive Committee to maximize business value and long-term competitive advantage. Responsible for planning and delivering high-impact projects around key products in major markets, building organization-wide leadership capabilities, and managing external consultants for capability development programs.

Job Description

Major Accountabilities

• Lead Business Process Excellence and Transformation Projects: Independently lead AI-enabled and process improvement initiatives, ensuring successful delivery, governance, risk management, and value realization

• Drive Process Intelligence Initiatives: Lead process mining and intelligence engagements using Celonis to identify opportunities, generate insights, and enable measurable business improvements

• Enable AI Adoption Across Business Processes: Identify, frame, and promote AI, GenAI, and Agentic AI opportunities throughout the process excellence lifecycle

• Advise Global Process Owners and Business Leaders: Partner with GPOs and business stakeholders to develop transformation roadmaps aligned to process performance objectives and value drivers.

• Facilitate Value Discovery and Business Case Development: Define problem statements, value hypotheses, success measures, and adoption considerations for AI-enabled initiatives.

• Bridge Business and Technology Teams: Act as the key interface between process teams and DDIT/technology partners to ensure alignment on scope, governance, and expected outcomes.

• Build Organizational AI Capability: Strengthen the BPE AI Community of Practice through knowledge sharing, workshops, demonstrations, and reusable guidance materials.

• Advance Standards and Thought Leadership: Incorporate external best practices and contribute to enterprise governance, standards, and AI-enabled process excellence capabilities.

Minimum Requirements

• Experience in Process Excellence or Transformation: Proven experience driving end-to-end process improvement and business transformation in complex, global organizations.

• Strong Project Leadership Skills: Demonstrated ability to independently manage projects, stakeholders, risks, governance, and delivery outcomes.

• Process Intelligence Expertise: Strong working knowledge of Process Mining/Process Intelligence, preferably with Celonis, and the ability to convert insights into business actions.

• AI and GenAI Business Acumen: Solid understanding of AI, Generative AI, and Agentic AI from a business process and transformation perspective.

• Process Improvement Methodology Knowledge: Strong grounding in Process Excellence, Continuous Improvement, Lean, and Six Sigma principles

• Stakeholder Management and Influencing Skills: Ability to educate, coach, and influence business leaders and process owners across organizational levels.

• Design Thinking and Problem-Solving Capability: Experience facilitating workshops, framing business problems, prioritizing opportunities, and driving solution alignment.

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline, with Lean Six Sigma certification preferred and exposure to AI-related initiatives or change enablement.

Why consider Novartis?
Our purpose is to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives and our vision is to become the most valued and trusted medicines company in the world. How can we achieve this? With our people. It is our associates that drive us each day to reach our ambitions. Be a part of this mission and join us!
Learn more here:

https://www.novartis.com/about/strategy/people-and-culture

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion:
Novartis is committed to building an outstanding, inclusive work environment and diverse teams' representative of the patients and communities we serve.
Join our Novartis Network: If this role is not suitable to your experience or career goals but you wish to stay connected to hear more about Novartis and our career opportunities, join the Novartis Network here:
https://talentnetwork.novartis.com/network

Skills Desired

Business Transformation, Process Excellence, Process Improvements