Manager Product Innovation & Partnership

Role Purpose

• Develop and execute the mobile money product innovation roadmap and partners integration; design new financial products and digital services, lead product feasibility assessments, implementation and testing, recommend enhancements to existing products and customer journeys, bring new initiatives to DRC market and manage end to end M-Pesa new product and service lifecycle management.
• Manage the new product development team and coordinate assessment, validate eproduct specifications, follow up other key stakeholders such as technology, risk, compliance, regulatory, all business units,
• Customer Care, Revenue Asurance when developing new product or integrating new partners.
• Drive integration opportinuties through APIs and digital platforms by handling partners and reducing significantly the Go To Market time.
• Design and build solutions for potential M-Pesa partners and support them to the onboarding process and deliver innovative services.

The role will be responsible for bringing product innovation and increasing the number of partnership integration by :

• Translating innovation strategy into new products roadmap
• Developing new products and services that improve customer experience and market competitiveness
• Ensuring quick new partneship integration
• Increasing the number of partners integrated to M-Pesa
• Put in place and document new processes to improve on roadmap delivery and business support, and configuration guide when implementing new products.
• Following-Up new product and service lifecycle management

The role will be dealing with different teams to develop and deliver M-Pesa roadmap by assessing new requests and bringing new initiatives , designing new solutions, implementing and testing them. Working with other stakeholders and ensuring that all required stages are followed during the process of brining innovation to the market.

• Write all projects related documentation (business requirement specification, change request, product description, data privacy assessment, testing pack….).
• Drive innovation by executing new partnership impacting positively the M-Pesa business; by identifying, analyzing and implementing new opportinuties that technology is offering through the M-.Pesa ecosystem.

Key accountabilities and decision ownership

Impact on the business

• Manage and deliver M-Pesa roadmap for DRC market;
• Assess all new M-Pesa initiatives and drive development by dealing with Technology team and all other required stakeholers
• Drive M-Pesa projects from initiation until delivery where the involvement of M-Pesa system is required;
• Write required documentation to deliver new M-Pesa product or service to cover the gates of Initiation, Analysis, Development / Configuration, Testing, Go To Market and Post-launch review.
• Identify all cases in M-Pesa system where change requests are needed and raise them to Technology for development;
• Manage innovation for DRC market by integrating new partners and implementing new products in M-Pesa ecosystem,
• Manage documentation to comply with M-Pesa product and project development methodology;
• Manage third-parties connectivity and integration to the M-Pesa system;
• Actively consult the Head of Division on key issues that need to be escalated;
• Prepare and schedule regular meetings with Technology team to follow up on M-Pesa initiatives under development

Customers, supplier and third parties

• Manage the onboarding of new suppliers
• Support all third-parties to connect to the M-Pesa system;
• Strong and proactive support to partner for any issue/complain to ensure good relationship.

Leadership and teamwork

• Deliver a ‘service mentality’ and ‘collaboration approach’ in relationships all internal and external stakeholders.

Innovation and change

• Influence existing market standards, processes and procedures and facilitate the generation of ideas to improve day-to-day working;
• Bring innovation products and services not only in local market but also within the M-Pesa family

Communication

• Proactive escalation of issues and Risks to the management to support the resolution of issues in a timely manner.
• Good communicationskills

Core competencies, knowledge and experience

Required Qualification:

• Degree in Engineering, Information Technology, Telecommunications or equivalent
• Minimum 5 years experience in Mobile Money, Fintech, Digital Financial Services, Banking or Payment systems
• 2 years experience in product or project management or partnership management
• Experience in card management systems, card processing or POS management would be a plus.

Required Skills:

• Agile product development
• Customer journey design
• Stakeholders management
• Knowledge of digital wallets, APIs and integration systems
• Knowledge of Banking or fintech ecosystem
• IT background
• Skills and experience in mobile money technologies;
• Product lifecycle
• Project Management background;
• Product Development background
• Relationship building
• Knowledge of payment systems
• Report and presentation skills;
• Sufficient understanding and ability to manage multiple tasks and projects.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills;
• Experience in working with different stakeholders during projects;
• Skills in building team spirit in a groupReliable, confident, independent and able to work without surpervision.
• Self-starter and qualitative result oriented;
• Skills to push a team to deliver results and reach goals within a define period of time;
• Skills and experience in support to internal and external stakeholders;
• Skills and experience in support to suppliers and third-parties;
• Must speak and write both French and Englis
• Presentations skills