General Manager Africa at SAS

Job description

Summary

Manages the Consulting and delivery business within the whole of Africa, this logically is split into 3 units: (1) South Africa, (2) French Speaking Africa and (3) Rest of Africa. The role is responsible for defining, developing and aligning internal and external resources to help accomplish the overall business objectives of the consulting unit. In a Nut-shell, the consulting manager is required to:

• Drive Consulting Revenue growth
• Drive Consulting Business profitability
• Enable competitive SAS solution sales [Software + Services] in conjunction with the Software Sales team
• Enable the Partner delivery channel as an extension of consulting arm particularly in developing regions

Primary Responsibilities

The consulting manager is expected to:

• Develop, align, and implement business plans specific to the Consulting and Delivery Business unit. The plan should cascade to the various consulting practices within the unit.
• Direct several consulting practices (each with their own delivery manager) to ensure: readiness, capacity, business development and pipeline health, consulting and system delivery capabilities, resource utilization within practice, revenue target attainment and profitability.

The above is achieved by:

• Defining the consulting practice objectives, resource requirements, business and execution plans in alignment with overall consulting plan.
• Providing staff with clear communication on the responsibilities and expectations.
• Assisting staff in delivering to expectations by continuous staff coaching and development, and performance management frequent discussions.
• Alleviating internal and external barriers to plan execution.
• Monitoring progress to plan and taking corrective actions where necessary
• Provide reliable and quality service delivery through leadership of the various consulting groups / practices, communicating and enforcing accountabilities of staff, accountable for results of customer satisfaction surveys and for the portfolio of projects chartered out of their group or practice, including project financials.
• Ensure staff compliance with established policies and procedures including, but not limited to, skills inventory, staff profiles, methodologies, quality assurance and project closeout and project closures.
• Professionally Represent SAS
• Externally with customers when needed for business development, issue resolution and escalations.
• Internally and externally in professional conferences and forums when required
• Align with the Channel and Alliances Function to ensure sufficient and quality delivery capabilities within SAS partner community as an extension of the SAS Delivery capabilities.
• Collaborate with local country leadership and local functional management to ensure progress toward joint SAS goals pertinent to their group or practice.
• Continuously seek opportunities for development and harnessing skills
• Seek opportunities to learn about New technology hardware/software trends
• Become familiar, and Stay up-to-date on overall SAS business/product trends and potential use of SAS products and how it drives value at customers
• Seek 360 degree feedback and strive continuously to improve own function performance, and its ties with other business functions within the organization
• Perform any other activity as deemed necessary by direct manager
• Experience and Qualifications Required

The ideal candidate has:

• A minimum of a Bachelor's degree in quantitative field or IT Management.
• Coursework or postgrad degree in Marketing, Business, or Management preferred
• A minimum of twelve years (12) of experience in managing the technical implementation:
• Data Marts / Data warehouses and related BI / Dashboard / performance management reporting
• Quantitative analytics related projects
• Large scale system integration projects
• A minimum of five years (5) of direct customer management experience.
• A minimum of 5 years (5) of people management experience.

The ideal candidate has:

• Customer and relationship focus
• Financial Results Focus
• Ability to innovate and drive innovation within the organization
• Ability to deal with ambiguity
• Structured decision making process
• Self-Confidence
• Strategic thinking
• Ability to operationalize Strategy, and drive change within the organization