Merchant Operations Coordinator

Job Description:

Rakuten International oversees 7 businesses with over 4,000 employees globally. The brand is recognized for its leadership and innovation in e-commerce, digital content, advertising, entertainment and communications, bringing the joy of discovery and access to more than 1 billion members across the world. Our teams deliver on the company’s mission to delight merchants and customers through innovation, optimism, and teamwork.

Rakuten Rewards is a leading e-commerce company that enhances the way people shop by offering Cash Back, deals and rewards from more than 3,500 merchants. Founded in 1999, Rakuten has grown to become the go-to shopping destination for consumers, having paid out nearly $2 billion in Cash Back to its 15 million members. The company also operates ShopStyle, a leading fashion discovery destination, and Cartera Commerce, a top rewards platform for airlines and banks. For more information, visit www.rakuten.com.

Summary:

The Merchant Operations Coordinator will own and manage all merchant onboarding, promotion configuration, and offer creation and management tasks for our 3rd party publishers, as we look to build the most rewarding online to offline offer network. This position will rely heavily on strong process skills, as you will work with merchant partners and internal teams to ensure the efficient and accurate implementation of merchant offers, affiliate commission, and Cash Back management, contribute to projects that enhance marketing capabilities and support other team members in delivering high-quality service and results for our partners. 

The role is partially client facing and candidates should be comfortable with interactions at senior levels of an organization.  You will work with both internal Sales and Operations Teams and external constituents, including the Payment Card Networks (Visa, Mastercard and American Express) and our 3rd party Publishers.  The ideal candidate will thrive in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment and exhibit project management expertise, technical savvy, as well as an ability to interface with technical counterparts both internally and externally.
 

Day to Day

• Use existing administration tools to own and manage merchant onboarding and offer creation and configuration efforts for our 3rd party Publisher programs, working closely with internal Sales and Operations Teams, and our external Payment Card Network partners (American Express, Visa and Mastercard).
• Become proficient with all internal offer configuration and merchant onboarding tools and systems, including external systems at the Payment Card Networks which you will have access to.
• Own and manage the offer-launch and maintenance schedule for all offers running in our card linked offer network
• Manage communications to ensure that all stakeholders across sales, operations and external constituents are aware of merchant offer launch statuses.
• Serve as a main contact with our partners at American Express, Visa and Mastercard for all merchant onboarding & troubleshooting tasks, and to resolve merchant data issues and unusual transactions.
• Interact with merchants and advertising partners to obtain assets, store lists and merchant IDs.
• Perform quality assurance checks on critical site elements, including store Cash Back rates, banner deployment, and promotional landing pages.
• Maintain internal documentation for all internal merchant onboarding and operational tasks
• Interface with finance for month-close billing discrepancies/issues.
• Work with product managers to analyze, prioritize and get these features on the product roadmap.
• Identify product-related issues and areas for improvement through recurring data analysis.
• Use admin portal, Tableau and other available sources for ad-hoc analysis.

Big Picture

You will be the bridge between our Merchant Sales Team, the Payment Card Networks,  and our 3rd party publishers.  You will own all merchant onboarding and offer creation duties for new merchants sourced by our Sales Team.  You will manage the offer launch and pause schedule and configure promotions for the Rakuten Rewards InStore Cash Back module.

Skills and Capabilities

• Entrepreneurial: Demonstrated interest in learning something new and building a new business.
• Market Insight: Understanding of card linked offer network landscape and advertising services more generally.
• Results Orientation: A commitment to service clients in a way that builds commitment to, and confidence in, our platform solution. 
• Impact: A passion for successfully serving our publisher clients to build this business from scratch.
• Collaboration & Influence: Proactive cross-functional partnerships to work effectively with peers and partners in and outside of the company 
• Cultural Competency: The ability to work with a diverse group of people across stakeholder organizations.

About You

• Ability to manage a high volume of email communication, and ability to react quickly upon receiving offer-change instructions via internal messaging tools (Slack).
• Ability to manage multiple spreadsheet files from both the merchants and the payment card networks, and to consolidate into a ‘single onboarding’ file for internal system processing.
• Love managing details and understanding the interdependencies of those details.
• Competency with standard office productivity software (MS Office)
• Strong organization skills
• Have an inner drive and fierce commitment to excel in the pursuit of business goals.
• Are a skilled communicator who enjoys flexing their verbal approach to match the audience.
• Enjoy the process of new integration projects and all the surprises and challenges that can come with that experience.
• Are a natural at developing repeatable, efficient processes.
• Demonstrate a willingness to do whatever it takes to do a job well.
• You instill confidence in those around you that “you’re on top of it”.

Qualifications

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• A quick learner of processes and technical tools
• Exceptional communication, organizational and troubleshooting skills
• Strong interpersonal skills, ability to work well within a diverse team environment
• Ability to effectively conduct meetings, lead members of cross-functional teams and follow-through with action items
• Internal and external client project management experience
• Effective communicator capable of building relationships at all levels within the organization
• Strong sense of urgency
• Experience working within a compliance, technical account management or data reconciliation environment
• Experience using Microsoft Excel to manipulate and analyze data
• Jira experience a plus and analytics/reporting experience preferred
• Experience using Salesforce CRM system
• Experience using database reporting tools
• Familiarity with web basics (data entry, online graphics, URLs)

Five Principles for Success
Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.

Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen
Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best
Hypothesize - Practice - Validate – Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory
Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile
Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team

At the time of posting, Rakuten expects the base compensation for this role to be within the range shown below. Individual compensation will vary based on job-related factors, including the skills, qualifications, and experience of the successful candidate as well as business need and geographic location. The successful applicant for this role will be eligible for discretionary bonus, health, vision, dental insurance, 401k matching, PTO, Volunteer Time Off (VTO), and other employee benefits as the company implements.

USD $47,142.00 - $79,920.00 annually