Digital Solutions Manager: Logistics, Execution and Warehousing at The Coca-Cola Company

Job Description    

Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA) presents an exciting opportunity for a Digital Solutions Manager: LEW. This is a senior position in Digital Platforms team in the Information Technology department in CCBA. Their specific focus is on route planning, finished goods warehousing and distribution and effective delivery of all digital solutions for the logistics and warehousing function in CCBA.

The successful applicant will report into the Senior Manager Digital Platforms: SCM, LEW and Procurement.

Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA) is the largest African Coca-Cola bottler, accounting for 40% of all Coca-Cola volumes on the continent. CCBA has an extensive footprint in Africa, employing over 17 000 employees, serving a combined population of over 300 million people across the continent.

The CCBA vision is to refresh Africa every day and make the continent a better place for all, growing successfully as a business and creating a better shared future for our people, customers, consumers, communities, planet and shareholders. We conduct ourselves with the utmost integrity for shared value and the greater good. We are a world class, customer-orientated, socially and environmentally conscious fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company that is driven by engaged, motivated and inspired employees.

The Digital Solutions Manager: LEW, is responsible for the recommendation, development, and deployment of all digital solutions for the logistics, execution and warehousing function in CCBA. Digital solutions include all systems and applications that are bought and configured or developed for the functions involved in logistics and warehousing in CCBA.

These employees own the process for delivering all new application capability for their functional area as new solutions or new functionality for existing applications. They oversee a team of resources and a grouping of contractors, vendors and service providers that work on a variety of projects that form the programme of projects for the functional area.

The Digital Solution Manager: LEW uncovers and receives business requirements from their stakeholders in business and they ensure that these requests are analyzed and translated into relevant designs. They mandate and contribute to the architecting of the digital solutions landscape for their focus area. When the proposed architectures have been approved, they collaborate with members of their teams to research and find the best fit solutions for business requirements. They will then take responsibility for mandating an outsourced team with the definition, building, testing and deployment of the new solutions.

As the manager for a digital solutions team, they are responsible for appointing and managing a team of architects, analysts, and solution support employees. They also perform the work of planning and management for all team activities.

They act as liaison between the IT department and the business functional area, and they keep both business stakeholders and IT colleagues and leaders up to date through various reports and meetings.

Incumbents in this position should preferably be based in South Africa, but the service they provide will cover the CCBA enterprise in its broadest definition including all locations in Africa.

Key Duties & Responsibilities    

• Continuously researching and staying up to date with new digital solutions, trends, and developments in the logistics and warehousing field
• Regularly engaging with business colleagues in logistics and warehousing to share insights in digital trends and possibilities
• Acting as the digital solutions advisor when the business is considering new processes, automations, and other solutions
• Building a network of peers in other companies and industries who will be able to share knowledge on their experiences and plans for logistics and warehousing solutions
• Collaborating closely with business stakeholders to understand the business strategy, targets and objectives for the logistics and warehousing functions
• Ensuring the development of a longer-term architectural vision for logistics and warehousing IT solutions
• Collaborating with the relevant Architect to map and record the current architectural landscape and to plan the future architecture
• Developing and annually updating the strategy to move CCBA logistics and warehousing function closer to the architectural vision for logistics and warehousing
• Compiling a capital expenditure (capex) budget for projects and license purchases for the year
• Researching and compiling the annual operational expenditure (opex) budget for the Digital Solutions team and motivating for budget increases
• Collaborating with colleagues in the relevant forums to prioritise and co-ordinate projects and initiatives through the demand management process
• Continuously adjusting and updating the strategy, plans and budgets to ensure continuous relevance to business requirements
• Identifying, collecting, and collating short- and medium-term software development business requirements for logistics and warehousing
• Estimating resource, budget, and timeline requirements for each planned project to create an annual digital solutions and software development execution plan for logistics and warehousing
• Planning the resourcing of the pipeline of projects and initiatives by allocating internal and external resources and/or vendors against projects
• Ensuring the continuous development and growth of members of the Digital Solutions (LEW) team by ensuring that training, learning, and mentoring are planned and available
• Managing team members and meeting with them regularly to contract their required performance, coaching them, and providing feedback on their progress and managing Individual Development Programmes
• Regularly engaging with business stakeholders and analysts to understand the business requirements, budgets, and timelines
• Collaborating with the relevant architects to plan and architect digital solutions
• Tasking the digital solutions analysts in the team to undertake the business analysis and requirements specification activities
• Appointing, contracting, or assigning development jobs and tasks to vendors, service providers and other outsource partners
• Ensuring the appointment of project managers and the development of internal project plans and budgets
• Monitoring the progress of the systems, application and code development and taking corrective action when work is not progressing to plan
• Ensuring that all testing, user training and implementation preparation actions are planned and executed within the timelines
• Ensuring that the workload is planned and assigned to the Solutions Support Specialists in the team or assigned to an outsource partner
• Ensuring the team have the necessary competence, tools, and information to execute the work and by supporting the team when they encounter obstacles
• Ensuring programme and project managers plan milestones for deliverables and deployment and creating a plan that visualise the timeline
• Ensuring programme and project managers tracking progress against milestone dates and reporting on progress.
• Negotiating and agreeing scopes of work (SOWs) and service level agreements (SLAs) with vendors that reflect the outcomes, performance, and deliverables that CCBA wants to achieve
• Ensuring that new vendors are onboarded with regards to CCBA internal structures, processes, IT policies, IT controls and standards
• Ensuring the correct policies and procedures are followed and that all vendor contracts meet corporate governance requirements
• Identifying opportunities for improvement and creating and presenting relevant business cases to the LEW functional leads

Skills, Experience & Education    

Qualifications:

• The minimum qualification required for this position is a first degree in Computer Science or Information Systems, but a further degree would be an advantage
• Industry certifications (Any of these certifications would be an advantage):
  • Professional in Project Management (PPM)
  • Certified Project Manager (CPM)
  • Project Management Professional (PMI)
  • Certified Business Analyst Professional (CBAP)
  • PMI Professional in Business Analysis
  • Certifications in enterprise software development.
  • Certifications in at least three relevant programming languages at expert level (Object Orientation preferred)
  • Certification in mobile application development.
  • Certificate in software testing.
  • CSSLP: Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional
  • Vendor server specific certification
  • ITIL Managing Professional (ITIL MP)

Experience:

12 to 14 years’ experience in an Information Technology environment with at least 6 years focused on managing projects in the supply chain domain

General    

The advert has minimum requirements listed.

Management reserves the right to use additional or relevant information as criteria for short-listing.