Decision Services Team Manager at FICO

Decision Services Team Manager

FICO professional services are responsible for delivering FICO’s state of the art applications into an enviable client portfolio which includes most of the world’s leading banking institutions. Our consultants are highly regarded industry professionals who can add significant value to our clients due to their depth of product and business knowledge. If you are excited by innovation and driven to succeed, you will find working for our technology consulting group an invigorating and rewarding journey.

This position is for an experienced Team Manager with Decision Services experience, with responsibility for the management of the South African Decision Services team. The position is a senior leadership role in Technical Consulting EMEA (TCE) team, overseeing a growing team of highly skilled functional and technical consultants who are engaged in active projects across our client base.

You should have solid leadership and people management skills along with previous experience growing and developing an Operations function, i.e. defining operational procedures, setting service standards, and defining SLA’s. It goes without saying that you will also be passionate about delivering exceptional service.

What You’ll Do

Team Management & Development

• Manage a team of highly skilled functional and technical consultants who are actively engaged in client-facing projects.
• Work with the team and clients to ensure the most optimal allocation of resource assignments and skills to the correct portfolio of work.
• Act as the senior point of escalation for any team, skills or allocation issues that may arise.
• Take personal accountability for the team’s billability percentage while also monitoring and tracking the team’s utilisation and billability.
• Working with the SA Professional Services Director and the TCE Decision Services Practice Lead to develop and execute a regional resourcing plan, building a pool of highly capable consultants.
• Working with the various TCE Practice Leads to accurately plan and forecast the required workloads, revenue, and capacity requirements.
• Plan, recruit, develop and retain high calibre consultants for the Decision Service steam with the requisite skills and experience to provide a well-balanced and cost-effective consulting team.

Client and Project Interaction

• Create a collaborative working environment to deliver solutions with the client, while also building trusted client relationships.
• Requirements gathering and preparing of functional specification documents for projects through facilitation and onsite work with our clients
• Facilitation of workshops, taking ownership of issue resolution, business process design and documentation and facilitating knowledge transfer to our clients
• Assist with technical product support for new or existing products/services; this includes, but is not limited to, production of sales collateral or ad-hoc investigations initiated by internal or external clients. Works simultaneously on multiple projects of moderate size and complexity.
• Plan effectively to set priorities and manage projects, identifies roadblocks, and works to get them removed, and understands the importance of meeting deadlines.
• Handles communication with internal and external clients as needed.

Sales/Presales Support

• Support the sales function in the identification and securing of new business, while also engaging with new clients to advise and influence optimum delivery options and plans.
• Working with Sales and the TCE Practice Leads to assist with professional services estimations in the pre-sales phase.

What We’re Seeking

Skills and Experience

• The candidate should have an excellent business analysis, solution architecture and consulting background, as well as sound communications skills.
• Excellent technical writing and business communications skills
• The candidate should also demonstrate excellent team working skills, being professional and personable at all times, and show that they are self-motivated, can work independently of others and take responsibility themselves for any technical issues that occur during the project.
• Demonstrated ability to meet critical time-sensitive objectives, with an emphasis on planning skills
• Proven functional expertise in a lead software implementation role. A good technical grounding would be an advantage
• Expertise in Blaze Advisor (or any other Decisioning software) would be an advantage.
• Exposure to other Business Rules Management Systems (BRMS) or Amazon Web Services (AWS) an advantage but not essential.
• Expertise in credit risk management processes, organisation and risk policies
• Exposure to the full lifecycle for application development
• Understanding and communicating both business and technical objectives from multiple perspectives including client view, internal development view, and operational and support view.
• Good level of commercial acumen.
• Experience in mobilising virtual teams and building / improving delivery capability to ensure delivery against challenging timelines.
• Experience in software implementation in banking or other financial services clients, ideally in one or more of the following areas: Originations; Customer Management; Decision Systems; Fraud; Collections and Recoveries.
• Have a strong ability to lead and motivate others.

Personal Characteristics

• Excellent inter-personal skills, comfortable and successful establishing professional relationships especially remotely (electronic, phone, written…)
• The ability to build relationships with a broad spectrum of stakeholders from senior executive to support desk, and leveraging these relationships effectively to validate assumptions, acquire useful information, negotiate among competing objectives, resolve issues, manage change, agree to direction and achieve consensus.
• Able to work independently with minimal supervision.
• Comfortable working in a matrix structure across multiple geographies (global team with global culture / language appreciation).
• Intelligent, with a proficiency for independent learning and the ability to quickly understand complex concepts.
• Disciplined with good time management
• Ability to balance long-term projects with short term demands and deliver under pressure.
• Willingness to work outside of regular office hours to meet release deadlines and communicate with off-site team members and clients.
• Desire to participate in projects outside of South Africa (mainly Europe)
• Strong teamwork ethic and customer support focus.
• Experience in - and comfortable with - facilitation and conflict management.

Our Offer to You

• Flexible working practices, a lucrative base salary and bonus package, enhanced family leave policies.
• A culture and work environment strongly reflecting our core values: Act Like an Owner, Delight Our Customers and Earn the Respect of Others.
• The opportunity to make a difference by leveraging your unique strengths.
• Opportunities to give back to your community, social events with colleagues.