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Amazon Pay, strategic onboarding initiative

Turning Strategy into Execution

An inherited initiative with no roadmap, limited documentation, and no implementation plan. Success came from turning strategy into an executable program.

Program ManagementOperationsProcess Improvement

The Problem

I inherited a strategic onboarding initiative for Amazon Pay after the previous Program Manager left the team. The goal was to improve business verification for enterprise customers using LexisNexis.

The challenge was that there was almost nothing to inherit. Beyond a short document summarizing a few vendor conversations, there were no requirements, workflows, stakeholder maps, implementation plans, or operational processes. Before anyone could build a solution, the program itself needed to be defined.

Approach

Start with discovery

Rather than immediately building the solution, I focused on understanding the business problem. I met with the Product Manager, partnered with LexisNexis to understand what was technically possible under our existing agreement, and identified every team that would contribute to or be impacted by the program.

Design the operational model

As discovery progressed, I realized the primary challenge wasn’t engineering. It was designing an operational process that balanced customer experience, compliance, and investigator workload. I created separate workflows for enterprise customers and smaller businesses, ensuring each received an experience appropriate to their verification needs.

Build the program foundation

Once the direction was clear, I created the project charter, workflow diagrams, stakeholder map, risk assessments, success metrics, rollout strategy, and capacity planning. With a complete program foundation in place, the team successfully launched a pilot before I transitioned to my next role.

Results

Turned an idea into an executable program

  • Built the operational framework needed to move from concept to implementation.
  • Successfully launched the pilot one week before transitioning to my new role.
  • Reduced manual effort while improving the customer experience for both enterprise customers and smaller businesses.
  • Completed a full handoff so the program continued successfully after my departure.

Each one is written the same way: the problem as it appeared, the approach I took, what resulted, and what I would carry forward.

  • Every case study is based on a real business challenge and walks through how I approached the problem, aligned teams, made decisions, and delivered results.
  • The biggest lesson wasn’t about building faster. It was about creating clarity first. Once the problem, stakeholders, and operational model were understood, the implementation became much more straightforward. Ambiguity isn’t something to work around. It’s something to resolve.

Summary

Role
Program Manager
Business
Amazon Pay
Duration
Approximately 3 months
Focus
Program Discovery • Stakeholder Management • Operational Design
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Laura Barry — Operations & Program Management