Head of Advisor Enablement / Product Manager for Advisor Enablement at Old Mutual South Africa

Job Description

As the Product Manager of the Advisor Enablement Capability you will be responsible for defining, planning, and executing on features relating to the financial business processes within our platform. You will need to develop a solid understanding of our advisor domain and be able to define an appropriate strategy to best suit the requirements of our business lines and our financial systems. This role requires a candidate to deeply connect and understand the customer/advisor and business needs as well as to partner closely with stakeholders to develop the strategic direction of the product and build out the coinciding roadmap. A key part of your role will be to shift the focus from output to outcomes, measuring success based on the value delivered to our users and the business. You will establish clear goals and metrics for each product initiative, monitor progress, and adjust course as needed to ensure we stay on track to achieve our desired outcomes. You will be responsible for influencing stakeholders and cross-organizational action by telling the customer’s story and substantiating recommendations for change.

Responsibilities:

• Work directly with both internal and external customers to discover and prioritize use cases and requirements
• Drive alignment across multiple business lines and stakeholders, Engineering, Product, Design, Data Analytics to deliver on the vision and strategy
• Strategize and prioritize across the advisor journey for opportunities to accelerate reach and drive funnel metrics
• Oversee building of prototypes and MVP products, measuring successful delivery to our customers and being accountable for KPI’s and OKR targets
• Analyze data and feedback to identify both problem areas and opportunities
• Collaborate with research, design and engineering to create simple and innovative solutions
• Prioritize product roadmaps and effectively manage product delivery plans
• Ensure products and releases are launched on schedule with high attention to detail and quality
• Ensure that the design of the platform, can be leveraged across the group and has the ability for reuse
• Ensure that the platform capability is aligned to best practices and that the advisor interests are seen to
• Responsible for the innovation of product and solution, doing some activities like customer communication, customer research, painpoint identification, etc.;
• Build product competitiveness, continuously improve product market competitiveness through new technology supply, application and competition analysis, etc.;
• Maintain strategic customers and make technical interactions with leading customers in the industry;

Does this sound like you?

• Ability to use Product Management frameworks to align stakeholders and leadership on product direction/key decisions. Effectively influences for best outcomes
• Build feedback and data loops into products and feature-sets to enable continuous systematic improvement at scale
• Exhibit storytelling and persuasive influencing techniques that build trust with team and partners and establishes long-term relationships
• Strong interpersonal skills, ability to communicate effectively through various methods
• Self-starter who has a problem-solving aptitude and inventive thinking skills
• Data informed with an aptitude for tackling and distilling data into salient insights to drive timely decisions
• Action-oriented with a demonstrated ability to solve complex problems by creating customer-first solutions and iterating quickly to get results
• Ability to think strategically and implement tactically
• Proven history and track record of setting goals/OKR’s and achieving success in taking platforms to market or generating growth
• A strong understanding of product design, user experience, and product testing
• Ability to prioritize tasks effectively and handle multiple projects simultaneously
• Expertise in agile development, defining product requirements and user stories
• Working with engineering and design to ensure successful product delivery

Qualifications:

• Requires at least 4 years of experience as a product manager, with significant relevant experience in successfully managing, growing, and commercializing software products, SaaS by preference.
• Have a keen sense of the products and be good at solving problems creatively. Ability to do market research and product research analysis in the industry. With capabilities of requirements analysis and identification as well as insight to customers to build user models.
• Ability to analyze competitiveness, refine product demands to complete definition and give the commercial model of products.
• Ability to operate products and be able to propose solutions and continually improve products.
• Ability to develop new capabilities and new opportunities insight grasp. Love to learn, eager to change and have rich knowledge. Relevant experience in the Insurance industry is preferred.