Associate - Centralized Congress Team

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Organization Overview:

The Centralized Congress Team (CCT) is part of the Global Business Solutions (GBS) organization.

The CCT Associate is responsible for coordinating, planning, and executing congress related activities and exhibits with Lilly business areas and Lilly's congress vendor. The associate will work very closely with all business partners and vendors to ensure tactical alignment, consistency, timely and flawless execution across all congress activities. The associate will be responsible for executing the business-identified congress strategy and provide recommendations to Business Unit and GBS leadership for improvements to maintaining a consistent customer experience and maximizing cost savings and efficiencies.

Responsibilities:

• Establish and maintain strategic partnerships with defined Business Units/Therapeutic Area
• Attend key strategic meetings with the Business Units/Brands to ensure congress strategy is aligned with overarching BU/brand strategy
• Partner closely with Business Units/Therapeutic Areas to build annual congress plan, including full congress list and budget
• Work closely with Business Unit/Therapeutic areas to pull-through business strategy and meet business objectives in the congress channel while minimizing overall congress spend and identifying opportunities for improving efficiency
• Responsible for understanding the Business Unit/Therapeutic Area forecast for congresses including full budget oversight
• Provide guidance to Business Units to determine most appropriate congresses to attend by considering brand lifecycle, attendee data, Thought Leader attendance, meeting content, and brand and medical needs.
• Consider alliances when appropriate
• Work with business to understand their congress objectives, expectations, and needs and provide subject matter expertise to help them meet their goals
• Help Business Units determine optimal mix of activities within congress channel
• Work with business units to set appropriate annual budgets based on volume and type of congresses within plan, desired presence at congresses, and planned activities at all meetings
• Work closely with Advocacy and Professional Relations to ensure alignment with professional organizations
• Work with congress vendor partner to ensure exhibit assets are available to cover annual show calendar

Congress Specific Planning

• Work cross-functionally to ensure successful congress presence and execution
• Work closely with all brand, medical, and other internal teams to determine strategy, content, and ancillary tactics associated with each congress
• Coordinate planning with business partners to ensure congress activities are conveying a consistent strategy and brand messaging to customers
• Provide subject matter expertise to create consistencies across brands and reduce inefficiencies and/or duplication of effort among vendor partners
• Schedule and lead all congress kick-off and wrap-up meetings and planning status calls that include relevant cross-functional internal business partners and vendor partners
• Identify roles and responsibilities for the execution of ancillary events, as needed, such as product theaters, symposia, speaker programs, and other congress-associated activities
• Accountable for annual budget management; Includes:
  • Holding business accountable to planned annual spend
  • Setting and monitoring exhibit vendor budgets
  • Coordinating and executing sponsorship payments via the appropriate Lilly payment method, including PCard, WebDR, and Purchase Orders
  • Quarterly forecasting and accrual/pre-pay reconciliation
  • May include managing the intercompany billing process as needed
• Active participant in meeting planning activities associated with congress execution.
• Ensure appropriate congresses are registered in Cvent
• Work closely with Customer Meeting Services (CMS) teams to ensure all congress-related needs are met
• Implement Lilly attendee management process to ensure internal travel savings
• Coordinate with Meeting Planning Companies to oversee hotel sourcing, development of all registration and confirmation websites, manage attendee lists, and secure badges
• Work closely with each external association as the main point of contact from Lilly for their congress(es)
• Drive timelines across all tactics and ancillary events to ensure deliverables are completed on time and extra cost is minimized (e.g. rush charges, etc.)
• Responsible for the successful creation and execution of all exhibits
• Partner with congress vendor, brand, medical, and compliance to design exhibits meeting business needs and compliance requirements in the most efficient and cost-effective way, including aesthetic and structural consistency where possible
• In collaboration with exhibit vendor partner, ensure design elements created by the agencies can be implemented effectively and are cost efficient
• Liaise between brands, medical teams and agencies on content creation, production, exhibit booth specifications and timelines
• Determine exhibit booth staffing needs, staff appropriately, and create staffing schedule for each congress
• Work with internal business to create and implement measurement plan to quantify success and ROI at congresses
• Responsible for satisfying all documentation and compliance requirements, including gaining approval for booth layouts, Sr. Director Approval Forms, and other requirement documentation is completed and uploaded to the appropriate source system

On-Site Execution

• Travel on-site, as necessary, to oversee the congress and to ensure successful execution of all congress activities
• Create, approve and provide on-site training to exhibit booth staff, including compliance required information and booth walkthrough
• Lead walk-through of exhibit booth with compliance, legal and regulatory
• Conduct debriefs to address questions, concerns and provide feedback mechanism for improvement
• Serve as point of contact for issue management for all congress activities
• Engage with association as applicable (participate in Industry Feedback sessions with congress organizers, participate in next year's sponsorship and exhibit selection, etc.)

Compliance/Customer Information Quality (CIQ)

• Work across Lilly to ensure all brand/medical teams know and understand all relevant processes, procedures and requirements to minimize company risk
• Comply with the Global Standards on Meetings and Events, Ethical Interactions with External Parties, US Policy on Exhibits, and all other relevant Lilly policies, standards and procedures
• Demonstrated knowledge of corporate policies and procedures including Anti-Corruption and Transparency reporting requirements.
• Help teams ensure any necessary Transfer of Value (ToV) is monitored and reported
• Proactively identify risks and issues and escalate as appropriate

Basic Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree with minimum of 3 years of strategic project management, meeting or convention planning experience
• OR
• High School Diploma/GED with minimum of 5 years of pharmaceutical industry experience
• Qualified candidates must be legally authorized to be employed in the United States. Lilly does not anticipate providing sponsorship for employment visa status (e.g., H-1B or TN status) for this employment position

Additional Preferences:

• Demonstrated knowledge of corporate policies and procedures including the US CIQ, Ethical Interactions with External Parties, Anti-Corruption, and Transparency reporting requirements.
• Working knowledge of compliance issues and regulatory requirements.
• Ability to create and maintain internal and external business partnerships
• Ability to make judgement-based decisions when dealing with complex situations
• Drive and implement solutions using critical thinking skills, expertise, and judgement with key business partners
• Strong collaboration skills and demonstrated ability to work across functions
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Ability to communicate effectively at all levels, outstanding written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to work in a fast paced, cross-functional environment
• Experience in event or congress planning
• Experience executing tactics or messages for brand or medical functions
• Working knowledge of Lilly Privacy Program
• Strong background in various forms of engaging with customers
• Experience with business planning process and budgeting
• Understanding of patient journeys, moments of truth, and/or customer engagement

Additional Information

• Ability to travel up to 30%.

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