Digital Business Change Manager at Santam Insurance

CAREER OPPORTUNITY
The Santam Digital & BPO team is responsible for digital interactions with clients, intermediaries, employees, and suppliers across the Santam group. In addition, this team is also responsible for CRM, automation and process optimization and simulation for the group. The Digital BCM will participate in direction-setting, coordination, and implementation of the Santam group’s digital strategy, managing the demand from the business units and be the interface between the development teams in the Digital and BPO organization and business. This will include the prioritization of initiatives, ensuring the appropriate funding is secured, acting as a trusted advisor to business and proactively recommend solutions that will support the business unit to operate more efficiently or drive growth.

JOB DESCRIPTION

This person will:

• Participate in digital strategy formulation in order to conceptualise change programmes, projects and initiatives
• Engage with stakeholders to obtain an understanding of their digital demand and aggregate Digital and BPO demand from multiple Business units
• Formulate and shape demand to be handed over to the development (build) and eventually operations (run) teams in the Digital and BPO organisation,
• Develop and maintain partnerships with stakeholders to facilitate accomplishments of digital demand and objectives 
• Become a trusted advisor to, and influence decision making of stakeholders by providing an advisory service, guidance and support on digital offerings and practices
• Facilitate collaboration between stakeholders by identifying and addressing conflict issues to ensure optimal digital solutions and supporting practices are implemented across stakeholder groups
• Stay informed and continuously improve understanding and knowledge of what the internal Digital and BPO platforms offer as well as the future roadmap and opportunities for each, in order to provide advice to stakeholders as well as identify technical enablers that may be involved when a new initiative is conceptualized
• Regularly scan the market for latest developments on digital offerings and solutions that can be applied to the group 
• Collaborate and maintain relationships internally by communicating business demand and assist in the buy-in and usage of products and services to enhance efficiencies and improve delivery to stakeholders 
• Identify opportunities to influence the improvement or enhancement of business processes and methodologies by researching and recommending improvement initiatives and effective ways to operate and add value to Santam
• Responsible for managing the business demand for a wide range of digital solutions and services to be prioritised and included in the Digital and BPO portfolio
• Be aware of the demand and priorities across the larger Santam portfolio and identify how interdependencies may impact the Digital and BPO demand list and priorities
• Identifies adoption issues, conducts root cause analysis and provides feedback to the relevant governance forums and competency centres to improve and continuously increase digital adoption 
• Be consulted for input on, and be informed of, digital solutions and applications in the business units
• Share knowledge, resources and practices with team and stakeholders during formal and informal interaction to enable up-skilling in the organization 
• Obtain buy-in for developing new and/or enhanced digital solutions (e.g., operational processes) that will improve the functioning of stakeholder’s businesses by highlighting benefits in support of the implementation of recommendations 
• Actively drive the agile way of working in the Digital team, based on the Santam scaled agile framework
• Support the business units in their adoption of agile ways of working and maintain close relationships with the product owners in the business
• Actively participate and contribute to the the community of BCM’s in BITS
• Manage conflict from time to time between Group overall position vs that of the individual Business Unit objectives and implement the BITS strategy of re-use, before buy, before build
• Comply with company policies and procedures, standards, frameworks, and methodologies. Participate in the relevant forums as identified by, and use the tools selected to supporting the procedures, frameworks, and methodologies 

PRIMARY RESPONSIBITIES

• The Santam Digital BCM will provide the following key services: 

PORTFOLIO CONSULTING:

• Support portfolio alignment and prioritisation with strategy / business objectives
• Facilitate development of future initiative roadmap in support of the business strategy/objectives
• Facilitate concept designs across individual business units and the Group 
• Support and assist in preparing business cases with product owners or other relevant stakeholders in the business units
• Initiate projects and assist contracting of appropriate resources
• Be involved and/or consulted in pre-inception and inception phases of projects to ensure business requirements are well understood by the development teams
• Support estimate formulation and securing of appropriate funding

SOLUTION DELIVERY:

• Work with build and run teams in the Digital & BPO organisation to ensure appropriateness and completeness of solutions (meeting business requirements) 
• Ensure project/scope alignment with business case / business objectives
• Support appropriate governance (appropriate Steerco and relevant forums)
• Support change management and give input to approach and strategy to ensure adoption
• Build strong partnerships with business owners, product owners, project managers, other IT development managers as well as external vendors
• Support and assist with BU Portfolio budget

BUSINESS READINESS & BENEFITS REALISATION:

• Support transition of project to operations/BAU and ensure business stakeholders are comfortable to sign-off and adopt the deliverables
• Provide support required to embed new and changed processes and solutions to become BAU
• Support benefits realisation & monitoring 

QUALIFICATIONS, KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE
QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s Degree preferred with applicable major (Management Information Systems, Computer Science, Business Management, Project Management, Process Engineering, Statistics/Applied Math,)
• Minimum 10 years’ experience in a management role 
• 5+ years consulting experience
• Experienced in dealing with external suppliers and offshore business partners will be advantageous 
• Programming background as well as solid understanding of SDLC will be advantageous
• Experience in working with multiple projects and different stages of its life cycle simultaneously, as well as large multi-year projects in a corporate environment will be advantageous
• Solid experience in dealing with customers at various levels, including C-level

KNOWLEDGE

• Knowledge of Digital solutions and digital transformation concepts 
• Strong project management skills
• Sound business acumen
• Understand the senior leaders’ agenda and provide trusted advice and suggestions to support the business strategy
• Working knowledge in portfolio/programme/project management methods and tools such as Agile.

SKILLS

• Outstanding influencing and negotiating skills. Ability to influence thinking at an executive and senior management level
• Excellent decision making & organising skills
• Persuasive with excellent oral & written communication skills: concise, impactful and appropriate with good track record
• Strategic thinker who can also work at detail level
• Ability to understand and interpret business strategy from definition into execution; (think holistically as well as at a detailed level)
• Strong analytical, interpretative, and problem-solving skills: creative analytical thinking, systems thinking, planning, challenging assumptions, turning concepts and big picture into detailed actions and targets and ability to look across the business to identify opportunities
• Behavioral characteristics: ethics, listening, trustworthiness, ability to execute, energetic, proactive, and positive thinking
• Interaction skills: facilitation, mentoring, leadership and influencing, negotiation, teamwork, and building relationships

COMPETENCIES

• Collaborative
• Client focused
• Results oriented  
• Flexible and adaptable 
• Cultivates innovation
• Decisive and initiate action
• Provide leadership
• Focused on Human Capital Development
• Build networks and good relationships
• Enterprising and thinks commercially
• Analytical and systems thinking
• Produce creative solutions to business problems
• Performs under pressure
• Self-motivator
• Challenge current assumptions and beliefs
• Communicate complex concepts in an easy-to-understand manner
• Strong conflict handling skills
• Organized and methodical