Principal Specialist: Customer Insights & Research at Vodafone Global Enterprise

Role purpose:

• Deliver actionable customer insights, which inform product development, customer experience and commercial growth opportunities, through qualitative and quantitative customer research. As a Centre of Excellence, the Customer Insights & Research team, are a key business partner throughout Vodacom SA, providing in-depth customer understanding, knowledge, analytical-interpretation of test results and narrative-building to guide commercial outcomes. Thus, the role includes building strategic relationships to be an insights interface into all aspects of the Vodacom South Africa. In addition, the role involves collaborating with several market research agencies – making, sound planning and project management skills are essential.

Your responsibilities will include:
Be our Customers’ research expert:

• Act as a customer insight research expert and partner in growth to our internal stakeholders, ensuring the strategic and commercial objectives of research are met
• Discuss and review internal stakeholder needs, provide support in crafting the research brief, help draw hypotheses, discuss test methodologies to generate the most actionable insights to our internal stakeholders
• To develop a deep understanding of all customer insights, propositions and commercial processes that impact on the customer journey in order to ensure that all components are considered and represented in the integration of insights and proposition design.
• To ensure efficient end to end proposition and product design aligned to overall strategy and guidelines for implementation

Project Management of market research projects:

• Identification of methodology for consumer market research studies and projects.
• Commissioning and set up.
• Cost Management
• Management and quality control of the field.
• Management of data analysis.
• Ensure that we store the data and research on our Hyperbook to be accessible for future reference.

Collaborate with internal stakeholders to find future growth opportunities:

• Collaborate with teams across Vodacom SA to provide strategic, commercial customer insights to identify future growth opportunities in telco and techco.
• Identify opportunities and gaps in knowledge, and translate insights from consumer behaviours to potential proposition and business challenges, anticipating future customer needs.

Leadership & Stakeholder management:

• To manage a high degree of complexity. VSA strategy, commercial priorities, numerous data sources in order generate actionable insights.
• To manage an extensive matrix of senior stakeholders and other managers in the business to ensure that the insights are identified, accepted and integrated.
• To develop effective relationships to be a key influencer, main interface and trusted source with regards to customer insights
• To manage and direct initiatives to integrate insights across multiple segments, product and functional teams.

The ideal candidate for this role will have:
Must have technical / professional qualifications:

• Matric or Equivalent
• A Bachelor's or University degree in Marketing, business management, statistics, or a relevant discipline.
• 8 years of relevant and progressive work experience in market research, ideally with a good mix of industry and market research agency environments
• Minimum of 4 years’ leadership experience managing cross-functional teams across a matrix organisation and reporting to senior management /Exco
• Has hands-on experience with consumer testing techniques (both quantitative and qualitative), methodologies, design, statistical approaches, and modelling is preferred.
• A good understanding of inferential and multivariate statistics, and experimental design will be advantageous.
• Strong project management skills and excellent presentations skills
• Comfortable in working and collaborating with diverse teams and cultures.
• Excellent oral and written proficiency in the English language.
• Experience in consumer insights FMCG industry ideal

Core competencies, knowledge and experience:

• Goal focussed with track record in insights integration and storytelling
• Proven ability to align teams across the business without necessarily having direct management control
• Capable of working in a complex organisation and able to build strong relationships and credibility with multiple levels internally and externally
• Solid of research methodologies

Closing date for Applications: 13 June 2023.