Lead Digital Portfolio Manager (CVM Digital) at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

• Reporting to Head: Digital Channels, this role assumes overall accountability and ownership for development, implementation and lifecycle management of digital product strategies, across designated portfolios. These product strategies must be aligned to the Group and / or business unit requirements, contribute to the overall achievement of the bank’s strategy.

For the designated portfolio of digital products, lead the strategic execution of the relevant business plans with respect to customer and colleague digital adoption, consequently driving business value and business performance in digital channels.

Job Description

Strategic Leadership and Planning

• Leads and takes accountability for multiple business units and product streams by evaluating both market and technology opportunities for improvement of Digital products and features on offer.
• Takes core ownership of the portfolio and crafts the leadership vision for the product.
• Formulate product strategies by defining product vision, roadmaps and growth opportunities to penetrate possible market opportunities in line with the larger digital business strategy.
• Assess value, develop cases, and prioritize stories, epics and themes, across multiple business units and product streams to ensure work focuses on those channels and products with maximum value that are aligned with overall Digital product strategy
• Ensure that the strategy includes conducting on-going local and international market analysis for new and innovative offerings for consideration in the different portfolios, while driving continuous strategic alignment internally.
• Provides thought leadership on latest trends and best practice in respect to digital adoption. Drives internal benchmarks and establishes key outcomes.
• Remain abreast of current industry standards locally and internationally to identify opportunities for improvement of Product sets.
• Engage effectively and build relationships with business and technology stakeholders. Ensure that all impacted stakeholders (RBB, Change, IT, Segment etc.) across the Group understand and support the agreed strategies for the area.
• Oversee the planning for product release plans and set expectation for delivery of new functionalities. Track progress of work and addresses risk and interdependencies which impact on business units and product streams within the portfolio.
• Accountable for providing digital thought leadership, trends and market sites to influence and optimise the formulation of the business digital transformational strategy
• Accountable for the multiyear (3-5) roadmaps that will drive out the strategy.  Must provide the expertise and thought leadership to creating prioritisation and investment decisions across multiple channels
• Accountable to contribute thought leadership and continuous improvement of the chapter seeking to drive new ways of working, culture new operating models and innovative tooling

Product Development

• Drive and deliver on mobile feature development and guide teams on crafting a mobile first transformation agenda with their aligned businesses.
• Guide and advise a cross-functional team through the entire strategic and tactical product lifecycle, from ideation and roadmap to development, refinement, ongoing optimization, growth and finally product retirement. 
• Implement and nurture a product development culture within business units.
• Evaluate, implement and leverage product management technology and tools to increase productivity, and accelerate team learning and skills development.
• Guide the Product team to strategically manage product planning / design / management / development in the context of a product roadmap based on the product lifecycle with its associated price, promotion, distribution and customer needs objectives.
• Monitor the continuous Product performance analysis in terms of all product parameters (including market share, customer take up, utilisation / activity, financial performance etc.) and create a focus on market activity to gain traction and market share in the industry.
• Entrench governance and ensure that the Product Development team works with Group Legal, Group Compliance and Group Operations to review product features, processes and procedures to ensure that they are compliant with legal and regulatory requirements (e.g. CPA, Competition Commission etc.) and incorporate best practices and efficiencies.
• Provide direction, guidance and input to the product managers and extended team on the development and management of processes to ensure the effective delivery of products.
• Accountable for the end to end achievement of the digital strategy of the portfolio.  In so doing must create appropriate plans and interlocks with multiple functional areas (disciplines) to achieve these objectives.  Takes accountability to establish metrics and data points to measure the effective monitoring of the strategy execution
• Provide thought leadership and contributes towards the innovation engine and drives a culture of innovation for the portfolio.  Also contributes to the overall innovation strategy for digital

Product lifecycle

• Accountable for go to market strategy and preparation of both internal and external plans before go-to market launch.
• Collaborate with marketing teams to develop scale and marketing plans. Measure ROI of marketing investment on an on-going basis.
• Drive service management and customer experience measurements by implementing and devising action plans for continuous improvement.
• Develop OKRs key results metrics that are holistic and working / interlocking with various complex teams to deliver these results.
• Create sunsetting plans for products in the portfolio that are outdated, and which are not providing a ROI.
• Drive reporting and analytics within portfolio, and analyse performance of the products

Learning and Growth / PM / Risk

• Interview and recruit direct reports and provide support to them during the recruitment of their teams.
• Develop a high performing team by embedding formal performance development and informal coaching. Encourage frequent knowledge sharing between team members.
• Ensure that a robust knowledge management and agile learning system is in place to support real- time learning.
• Drive best practice methodologies for customer and colleague digital adoption through collaborating with relevant stakeholders in respect to knowledge and Information sharing sessions.
• Create an engaging, enabling and productive work climate aligned to the employee value proposition.
• Drive talent management practices and ensure a pipeline of “ready now” talent for critical roles is in place.
• Ensure that processes, control requirements and risk management frameworks that have been designed for the area are followed.
• As the digital product specialist is accountable to bring the other key digital functional areas, namely design and technology together in achieving the digital strategic goals of the portfolio.

Commercial performance

• Contribute to the setting of functional budget per portfolio to ensure that the strategic deliverables of the business unit are adequately budgeted for.
• Continuous review of product performance against key SLA’s delivering corrections where necessary. Track commercial performance against annual targets set.
• Identify new revenue opportunities and cost reduction opportunities within the portfolio for current and future considerations.
• Proactively manage high risk and problematic financial issues in respect of accountability and governance.

Takes accountability to drive commercial decision making of digital asset throughout the Lifecyle of the digital product

Education

• Bachelor Honours Degree: BMI - Business Management and Informatics (Required)