Product Specialist at Discovery Limited

Key Outputs
The successful applicant will be responsible for but not limited to the following job functions:

• Be involved in executing the Vitality strategy in particular and Discovery strategy as a whole by introducing and enhancing various products and features in line with said strategy
• Be product lead of cross functional development teams for new products or features, including large projects and launch items
• Be able to successfully take a new product or feature from conceptualization through to implementation.
• Be aware of customer experience, digital and gamification trends and innovations in this field to act as an expert in guiding Vitality’s new product or feature experience and enhancing Vitality’s current product or feature suite to achieve strategic outcomes
• Maintain awareness of trends and innovations in health and wellness
• Work with various stakeholders including marketing, systems, graphics and usability experts to ensure great member experience in new and current product enhancements
• Manage the priority of work and ensure delivery of work within each product’s stream as well as where it fits in with the bigger picture of Vitality’s strategic outcomes according to greatest ROI and value.
• Ensure all products are designed to optimize self-servicing and are operationally efficient
• Hold strategic relationships with certain Vitality partners and suppliers.
• Ensure the system’s solution is efficient in achieving ROI and prudent from a cost and time perspective
• Develop a broad knowledge of Vitality’s product and feature offering and assess the impact of new products/feature and product/feature enhancements to the greater Vitality business.
• Identify critical elements of each product that must contribute to the product’s success in particular and Vitality’s strategic success as a whole
• Identify key failure points in products and ensure that appropriate mitigations are in place either in product design or efficient operational processes
• Contribute to formal and informal research to assist in product design and refinement
• Develop presentation decks for meetings both internal and external
• Develop product/feature specifications for product/feature launches and enhancements as well as medium to large projects
• Provide insights on the performance of products against strategic objectives, targets and expected outcomes and propose interventions where required to ensure that these are met.
• Encouraging members to remain engaged with Vitality and realize the value in participating in Vitality Benefits.
• Ensuring the Vitality Benefits achieve Vitality’s strategic objectives.
• Ensure that every Vitality member has the opportunity to engage with Vitality and experience its value. This spans across each touch point in their journey from onboarding onwards, where we have the ability to continuously drive engagement.
• Identifying barriers to engagement and remove hurdles for members.
• Ensuring the member involves a simple journey that ends up rewarding members for what they do daily to take care of their health and a journey that makes members want to do more for themselves.

Responsibilities
The successful candidate will assume overall responsibility for:

• Liaising with other areas of the business such as marketing and systems on an ongoing basis.
• Compile business cases to motivate for the implementation of a new or enhancement to existing product/feature
• Present information to an audience to gain buy-in and approval for a project or feature
• Approve business specifications and system’ user specifications
• Approve marketing content and UX / member journeys that they are in line with the strategic outcomes of the product
• Approve testing plans to ensure all scenarios are catered for when new features and products are introduced.
• Ensure operational efficiency is built into new and existing products.
• Liaise and manage other business leads from other departments such as marketing, systems, operations, servicing, project office and finance to ensure their specifications fulfill the strategic and functional objectives of the products as well as implementation of the project is successful.
• Contribute to formal and informal research to aid in the design and improvement of engagement, growth, customer experience, products, and features.
• Ensure the relevant benefits have engagement targets defined
• Be responsible for driving member engagement to ensure the stated targets are achieved. This involves creating engagement strategies and coordinating with relevant business areas to execute on these strategies.

Support the head of Vitality Product management to:

• Plan and drive the delivery of new Vitality products/feature and existing product/feature enhancements.
• Define and execute the Vitality strategy and ensuring projects further the business strategic objectives.
• Perform other functionally related duties as assigned.
• Maintain operational processes where strategic input determines the direction of product developments

Qualifications and experience

• Minimum of a bachelors degree.
• Post graduate degree or business diploma is preferable but not essential
• 3 - 5 years’ experience in product development / management and/or digital marketing and strategy.
• Experience at managerial level is preferred
• Exposure to digital trends and strategies
• Experience in agile product ownership is preferred.
• Proven track record of leading projects and people.
• Proven track record of project implementation
• Relationship building experience
• Track record of working well across various departments in a large organization is preferable
• A proven understanding of digital trends, customer experience, growth and engagement activities, and strategy formulation.

Key personality traits and competencies
Personality traits and culture fit:

• Resilience and persistence
• Optimism and creativity
• Self-confidence to thrive in dynamic, changing and fast-paced environment.
• Strong leadership ability
• Self-motivated and driver of initiatives, with a strong sense of ownership
• Excellent and well-structured written and verbal communication
• Well organized
• Eye for detail and big picture simultaneously
• Able to context switch effectively, and to juggle multiple hats and multiple initiatives concurrently