Our client a Global Tech firm is seeking a Digital Product Specialist: Internal and External Products to join their team in Cape town on a Contract basis for 12 months. Our client offers great benefits, stability, growth and an attractive salary.

Job Purpose

• To manage digital and innovation initiatives through the innovation life cycle of ideation, incubation and acceleration.
• To create a vibrant network of digital activists and encourage the use of entrepreneurial management practices to deliver disruptive business solutions that are commercially viable and technically feasible and that can be sustained in the business context to deliver against well-defined business outcomes.

Key Responsibilities/Accountabilities

Tactical planning

• Cascade the strategy into plans to scout and filter digital innovation ideas, experiment with appropriate new emerging technologies and approaches and deliver enhanced solutions. Ensure solutions align to the Retail Digital and Innovations strategy and customer needs as well as other interfacing strategies.

Squad formation

• Work with the Digital and Innovations Manager and other Chapter Leads to assemble diverse squads to execute the innovation lifecycle. Oversee the squads to keep work and activities efficient, creative, collaborative and engaged while adhering to applicable standards, operating procedures and policy.

Solutions design

• For each new venture, lead the development of the solution vision, strategy, business case and value proposition in line with the customers objectives, business needs and external developments. Convey the vision to the squad to translate the customer’s objectives and needs into user stories. Define the MVP to create valuable incremental solutions to customers. technically feasible digital solutions that provide seamless customer experience and that can be sustained in the business context.

Customer engagement and backlog management

• Develop and maintain the product backlog, including the hierarchy of epics / features and user stories. Keep in close contact with the customer / business and manage the stakeholders, represent them in the scrum team and report back on agreed approaches. Lead the gathering and translation of customer needs into product features, requirements, and user stories for the backlog. Manage and prioritise solution backlog based on value to the customer and impact to the business.

Keep it moving

• Coach the teams to identify and improve areas in the lifecycle with bottlenecks, inhibitors and/or obstacles to change and success, to reduce the time to market for initiatives, improve accuracy, consistency and scalability. Use various problem discovery methods to identify gaps and recommend the appropriate technology and digital design for a seamless client experience.

Process improvements

• Initiate and coordinate process improvement in the squads regarding overall design articulation, tooling, progress reporting, and documentation.

Continuous improvement

• Proactively keep up to date with local and global digital innovations. Analyse digital solution capabilities in the market to identify opportunities to disrupt current business solutions and industry best-practice, develop new and enhance existing solutions to meet customers’ expectations, maximise the return of investment and position Retail Digital and Innovations as thought leaders.

Stakeholder engagement

• Build and maintain collaborative, cross-functional partnerships with internal and external stakeholders to promote understanding and awareness of digital initiatives and to influence and gain support / sponsorship for the digitalisation rollout. Lead alignment and approvals from relevant stakeholders for new products / product enhancements in line with Retail digital and innovations strategy and regulatory standards.

Ongoing management of digital solutions

• Manage the ongoing maintenance and execution of digital solution(s) or hand mature and sustainable solutions over to the identified area to run. Support business preparedness / readiness across people, process, data and content to incorporate the digital solution into their operating models in a timeous manner to enable successful launch of digital solutions and the realisation of economic benefits.

Financial management

• Partner with key stakeholders to prepare the solution / product budget. Monitor actual expenditure against the approved budget to ensure alignment and that return is generated in the form of customer, shareholder and business value.

Solution performance management and measurement

• Identify and track key metrics to measure solution success. Monitor the utilization of the solution against the product performance indicators, in order to identify areas for improvement and suggest measures that will increase return-on-investment.

Leadership

• Manage the effective achievement of assigned objectives through the leadership of the assigned team by setting of individual objectives, managing performance, developing and motivating teams to maximise performance.

Preferred Qualification and Experience

Minimum qualification

• Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce or Information Technology

Knowledge/Technical Skills/Expertise

Optimisation and continuous improvement

• The ability to identify and measure the right customer experience and business performance metrics and then use this to build value and improve outcomes

IT Planning and Management

• Defining and managing the process of deploying and integrating IT capabilities into the business in a way that is sensitive to, and fully compatible with, business operations.

Process Analysis & Redesign

• Fundamental rethinking and redesign of business processes, to obtain sustained improvements in quality, cost, service, lead time, flexibility and innovation.

Evaluation of Internal Controls

• The ability to analyse process controls for effectiveness from a design and implementation perspective.

Change Management

• The ability to ensure that isolated and independent organisational change actions are integrated and sustained through a disciplined change process. Ability to apply change management principles and techniques for planning and implementing change in an organisation.

Contact information

Ashley Singh