Job Summary: The Vice President of Business Operations reports directly to the Chief Operating Officer and is responsible for translating iHerb's strategic priorities into coordinated, measurable execution. This leader will establish and lead the enterprise transformation initiatives, including the Project Management Office (PMO), and provide the governance, visibility, discipline, and cross-functional leadership required to deliver the company's most important transformation initiatives.
As a global e-commerce retailer of vitamins, minerals, supplements, and other health and wellness products, iHerb operates through interconnected commercial, technology, fulfillment, corporate, and regulatory functions. The Vice President of Business Operations will work across all six business units: Human Resources, Finance, Operations, Information Technology, Legal, and the Revenue Office ensuring enterprise initiatives are appropriately prioritized, sequenced, resourced, governed, and delivered.
The Vice President of Business Operations will oversee the enterprise portfolio of strategic programs from evaluation and prioritization through implementation, business adoption, benefits realization, and transition to ongoing business ownership. This role will partner closely with executive leaders, business teams, and external partners to establish clear outcomes, resolve barriers, manage interdependencies, and ensure initiatives produce sustainable business results.
This role will have significant exposure to the Chief Operating Officer, other C-suite executives, senior business leaders, and, as appropriate, the Board of Directors. The successful candidate must be comfortable operating in a highly visible environment, receiving direct feedback, navigating competing executive perspectives, constructively challenging assumptions, and maintaining credibility when communicating difficult information or identifying gaps in execution.
The Vice President of Business Operations will serve as the enterprise integrator for strategic execution. The role does not replace functional leadership or assume ongoing accountability for business operations. Instead, this leader ensures the company's business units collectively execute enterprise priorities through clear governance, coordinated planning, transparent reporting, timely decisions, and accountability for measurable results.
This role requires a leader who can operate at both the enterprise and execution levels-bringing structure to ambiguity, understanding how decisions affect the complete e-commerce value chain, and maintaining momentum in a fast-paced and rapidly changing global business.
Job Expectations:- Establish and lead the enterprise transformation initiatives, including the company's PMO, transformation governance, portfolio management, business solution architecture and requirements governance capabilities, and other functions assigned to the office.
- Partner with the Chief Operating Officer and executive leadership team to translate company strategy into a focused, prioritized, and executable portfolio of enterprise initiatives.
- Serve as the primary enterprise integration point across Human Resources, Finance, Operations, Information Technology, Legal, and the Revenue Office for company-wide transformation initiatives.
- Develop and maintain an enterprise roadmap that identifies priorities, sequencing, owners, milestones, dependencies, resource requirements, expected benefits, organizational impacts, and material risks.
- Establish a consistent process for evaluating, prioritizing, approving, funding, initiating, monitoring, and closing strategic initiatives and major programs.
- Ensure each strategic initiative has a clearly defined business problem or opportunity, accountable executive sponsor, business owner, scope, success measures, resource plan, timeline, budget, risks, and expected business value.
- Establish and maintain a single, validated source of truth for the transformation portfolio, including initiative status, milestones, investments, financial performance, resource capacity, risks, dependencies, decisions, adoption, and benefits realization.
- Shape and manage the executive operating rhythm for transformation, including portfolio reviews, steering committees, decision forums, escalation processes, action tracking, and preparation of concise, decision-oriented executive and Board materials.
- Lead governance of the enterprise transformation portfolio and ensure executive leaders have timely, accurate, and actionable information regarding progress, risks, dependencies, resource constraints, financial performance, and decisions required.
- Oversee the delivery of complex, cross-functional transformation programs, including business process redesign, enterprise technology implementation, operational improvement, automation, organizational change, and other company priorities.
- Build and lead a high-performing PMO capable of managing programs from initiation through design, implementation, stabilization, formal closeout, and transition to business ownership.
- Establish enterprise project and program management standards, methodologies, tools, templates, controls, decision rights, escalation paths, and definitions of successful delivery.
- Develop a practical delivery model that applies agile, waterfall, hybrid, and other methodologies based on the scope, complexity, urgency, and risk of each initiative.
- Establish clear accountability between executive sponsors, business owners, program leaders, Technology, the PMO, and external partners.
- Identify portfolio-level conflicts, competing priorities, duplication, capacity limitations, and interdependencies and bring forward fact-based recommendations for executive decisions.
- Facilitate executive tradeoff decisions involving priorities, funding, scope, timing, resources, organizational capacity, risk, and expected business value.
- Navigate competing business-unit priorities and maintain an enterprise perspective when evaluating sequencing, resource allocation, risk, and organizational impact.
- Partner with Finance, executive sponsors, and initiative owners to develop business cases, establish baseline performance measures, validate investment assumptions, manage program budgets, and track financial and operational benefits.
- Establish and oversee a benefits-realization process to confirm that completed initiatives deliver their intended financial, operational, customer, compliance, workforce, and organizational outcomes.
- Recommend whether initiatives should be started, accelerated, redirected, paused, or stopped based on performance, capacity, risk, strategic alignment, and expected value.
- Ensure transformation efforts address business readiness, including stakeholder impacts, process ownership, requirements quality, testing, controls, training, communications, adoption, and post-implementation support.
- Partner with business and Technology leaders to ensure functional requirements, solution design, technical architecture, data, integrations, controls, and operating processes are aligned.
- Establish and oversee standards for business requirements, functional solution design, user acceptance testing, training readiness, process documentation, decision logs, and knowledge management.
- Reduce reliance on tribal knowledge by requiring repeatable processes, clearly documented decisions, defined ownership, current documentation, and sustainable handoffs to the business.
- Ensure ownership for each completed initiative is formally transitioned to the appropriate business leader, with defined performance measures, controls, documentation, support requirements, and a process for confirming sustained results.
- Evaluate opportunities to improve company performance through process redesign, operating-model changes, automation, artificial intelligence, analytics, technology enablement, and organizational simplification.
- Understand and evaluate how transformation decisions affect iHerb's end-to-end business, including customer experience, digital commerce, revenue, product assortment, merchandising, marketing, global operations, regulatory compliance, technology, supply chain, fulfillment, workforce, and financial performance.
- Serve as an objective challenge partner to executive sponsors and initiative leaders by identifying gaps, testing assumptions, surfacing risks, distinguishing activity from business impact, and ensuring decisions are made at the appropriate level and time.
- Intervene in programs that are at risk, clarify accountability, facilitate decisions, remove barriers, and establish recovery plans when necessary.
- Build trusted relationships with C-suite executives while maintaining the independence necessary to identify delivery gaps, communicate unfavorable information, and recommend corrective action.
- Receive, evaluate, and incorporate direct executive feedback while maintaining composure, objectivity, and focus on enterprise outcomes.
- Facilitate productive disagreement among senior leaders and help the organization reach clear, timely decisions when priorities, perspectives, or functional interests conflict.
- Tailor communications to the needs of different executive and functional audiences while maintaining one consistent and factually accurate view of portfolio performance.
- Ensure third-party implementation partners, consultants, and vendors are governed against defined deliverables, performance expectations, timelines, budgets, controls, and business outcomes.
- Recruit, develop, coach, and retain a high-performing team of program management, business solution, requirements governance, and transformation professionals.
- Establish clear performance expectations, capability standards, resource deployment processes, and development plans for members of the Transformation Office.
- Define and track performance measures for the Transformation Office, including delivery predictability, milestone attainment, budget performance, decision cycle time, risk resolution, business adoption, reduction in rework, and benefits achieved.
- Continuously improve the company's transformation and execution capabilities based on program outcomes, lessons learned, changing business needs, external practices, and organizational maturity.
The duties and responsibilities described above may provide only a partial description of this position. This is not an exhaustive list of all aspects of the job. Other duties and responsibilities not outlined in this document may be added as necessary or desirable, with or without notice.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:Required:
- Strong understanding of enterprise transformation, portfolio management, program governance, business process improvement, organizational change, and benefits realization.
- Demonstrated ability to translate enterprise strategy into prioritized initiatives, executable plans, clear ownership, and measurable outcomes.
- Proven success establishing or leading a PMO, Transformation Office, enterprise program portfolio, or comparable function.
- Demonstrated experience leading complex, cross-functional programs involving business operations, technology, process, data, financial investments, and organizational change.
- Strong understanding of an end-to-end e-commerce operating model, including the relationships among revenue generation, customer experience, technology, supply chain, fulfillment, corporate functions, and regulatory requirements.
- Ability to understand and evaluate transformation priorities across Human Resources, Finance, Operations, Information Technology, Legal, and commercial or revenue-generating functions.
- Ability to evaluate enterprise priorities from multiple perspectives rather than approaching transformation exclusively through a technology, operations, finance, or project-management lens.
- Ability to operate effectively at both strategic and tactical levels and move between executive decisions and detailed execution requirements.
- Strong business and financial acumen, including experience developing business cases, managing significant program budgets, evaluating investments, and measuring realized value.
- Strong knowledge of project, program, and portfolio management methodologies, including agile, waterfall, and hybrid delivery models.
- Demonstrated ability to establish governance, operating models, standards, controls, decision rights, and accountability across a matrixed organization.
- Ability to bring structure, clarity, and momentum to ambiguous, complex, or rapidly changing business situations.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving capability, with the ability to use data and business judgment to identify root causes, evaluate tradeoffs, and recommend decisions.
- Strong executive presence and demonstrated ability to work effectively with multiple C-suite leaders who may have different priorities, perspectives, and expectations.
- Exceptional emotional maturity, professional resilience, and ability to receive candid feedback and criticism in a highly visible environment.
- Ability to challenge senior leaders constructively, maintain composure under pressure, and communicate difficult information with clarity, sound judgment, and diplomacy.
- Proven ability to build alignment across functions without minimizing legitimate differences in business needs, risks, or accountabilities.
- Excellent written, verbal, facilitation, negotiation, and presentation skills, including the ability to develop executive- and Board-level materials.
