Senior Manager: Customer Research and Insights at Old Mutual

Job Description

At Old Mutual Corporate, our target market are businesses and institutions in South Africa. This role requires you to obsess about our customers, to be deeply curious about businesses and the people behind the businesses to understand customers better than anyone else – including themselves! This role represent the Voice of the Customer and manage the newly formed Voice of the Customer capability. You will manage and oversee the research process within the Customer Team, from inception to reporting of results, in order to develop customer insights to inform Customer Jobs to be done and customer opportunities for the business. You will supervise a research team including a Voice of Customer Expert and two Customer Researchers. You will manage and plan deliveries and resources for the team, selecting the appropriate research technique for the various projects and make recommendations to the Directors of Small to Medium Enterprises (SME), and Large Enterprises (LE) and the Customer Officer, respectively, on customer opportunities to direct new solutions and/or processes or enhancements to existing solutions and/or processes. This role falls into the senior management category.

Manage the research process per project for the Customer team

• In partnership with Customer team create and manage mechanisms that connect leaders to the voice of our customers.

• Scale existing customer insight processes within to create a cycle of continuous improvement for products and services.

• Apply strong business analytics skills to synthesize the voice of the customer, business goals, industry trends into goals and objectives for the Customer Research team.

• Incorporate market and competitor research to develop key insights that provide inputs to jobs to be done design decisions.

• Sets the framework and drives execution of continuous customer insight generation and customer opportunity recommendation for our key customer segments being small, medium and large

• Makes recommendations to optimize customer value and identify new markets and customer segments that the business should tap into

• Identify the research question, paradigm and select the appropriate research methodology and techniques, including the nature of data required, in order to arrive at the required customer insights, for each research project within the Customer Team

• Collaborate with the Customer Team data and analytics function in order to establish the nature of data available for analysis

• Ensure that data results of new research projects are available to the Data and Analytics function to be loaded onto the data management system

• Ensure ethical and legal research practices are followed at all times

• Create, implement and manage a research project matrix for the research and development function, to see each project through to timeous and accurate resolution

• Manage research demand from various teams

• Oversee the translation of research outcomes and analyses into Customer jobs to be done and customer opportunities, and their timeous communication to the Directors of Large Enterprises and Small to Medium Enterprises and Customer Officer, as required

Manage team resources to facilitate best practice research outcomes

• Ensure research team has the necessary research tools (access to qualitative and statistical analysis programs, technology and other software) in place to meet research objectives

• Give input into Customer Team budget formulation based on anticipated research needs, and manage costs and waste reduction within this budget once implemented

• Manage budget and finances relating to research activity

Leadership of a cross-functional research and development team

• Collaborate with specialists in diverse OM functions in order to optimise research outcomes within the Customer team

• Set team research priorities based on business needs

• Define performance parameters and measurements for area under supervision

• Manage performance and service delivery of direct reports

• Ensure direct reports receive necessary training and development to be a high-performing team

• Prioritise development of direct reports through actively compiling and revisiting a personal development plan per report, in line with team and organisational priorities.

• Lead by example by supporting organisational change and culture shift initiatives

Provide quantitative and qualitative research expertise into market trend, customer experience and product development discussions

• Observe key customer facing processes to proactively identify research needs within OM

• Continuously investigate and recommend new research methodologies in order to gain a deeper understanding of OM’s target market

• Engage the services of external research agencies where required, in accordance with research budget

Job Requirements

• Matric

• Master’s degree with publishable research output or formal qualitative research education (Anthropology, behavioural economics, ethnography) or quantitative research education

• PhD advantageous

• 5-8 years relevant experience

• Effective leadership and communication skills

• Ability to work across multiple teams influencing to align and deliver

• Experience in the following techniques: desktop research, interviewing, surveys, prototyping (UX skill), experimentation, customer immersion using anthropology/behavioural economics/ethnography, customer journey mapping, jobs to be done framework– highly advantageous

• Experience within a regulated industry, with banking or finance

• Experience in B2B and B2B2C business models - advantageous