Lead, Enterprise Operations at Safaricom Kenya

Responsibilities
Key accountabilities and decision ownership:

Order-to-Cash Orchestration

• Lead end-to-end order management from post-sale handover through provisioning, activation, billing readiness, and service handover.
• Establish structured order governance frameworks to ensure completeness and accuracy of contract-to-delivery transitions.
• Monitor activation turnaround times and eliminate bottlenecks across provisioning workflows.
• Ensure seamless coordination between Sales, Solutions, Technology, and Finance during delivery.
• Track order fallout, rejection rates, and rework drivers to improve first time-right activation.
• Drive continuous improvement of order-to-cash cycle time to accelerate revenue realization.

Service Activation & Delivery Governance

• Coordinate cross-functional delivery of complex ICT, cloud, cybersecurity, IoT, and managed service solutions.
• Oversee implementation timelines for enterprise and public sector contracts.
• Ensure deployment readiness through structured project and delivery alignment forums.
• Validate solution scope adherence before go-live.
• Monitor delivery performance against contracted milestones.
• Escalate risks proactively where delivery timelines or scope are at risk.

SLA Management & Service Reliability

• Own SLA governance across enterprise portfolio, ensuring uptime, availability, and performance compliance.
• Track service reliability metrics across connectivity, cloud, and managed services.
• Drive structured performance reviews with Technology and support teams.
• Identify recurring failure patterns and lead root cause elimination initiatives.
• Implement preventive maintenance and reliability enhancement programs.
• Protect enterprise revenue by minimizing SLA penalties and service credits.

Escalation & Incident Governance

• Establish tiered escalation frameworks for high-severity enterprise incidents.
• Lead crisis response coordination across technical and support teams.
• Ensure transparent and timely communication with enterprise and public sector clients during outages.
• Oversee post-incident reviews and corrective action tracking.
• Maintain incident trend dashboards to identify systemic issues.
• Reduce mean time to resolve (MTTR) across enterprise support channels.

Risk Control

• Own the Enterprise Operational Risk Framework: Define, implement, and continuously improve policies, control standards, and risk appetite; ensure robust RCSA, KRIs/KCIs, and control testing across all operational domains. 
• Strengthen First Line Controls & Assurance by embedding preventive/detective controls in core processes and control remediation with clear owners and timelines. 
• Oversee incident reporting, root cause analysis, and loss event capture; close the loop with corrective/preventive actions and governance that reduces repeat incidents and operational losses. 
• Implement due diligence and ongoing monitoring for vendors/partners; integrate risk sign offs into projects, system changes, and product launches (e.g., change risk, data/privacy, cyber adjacent operational controls). 
• Maintain tested business continuity and disaster recovery plans; ensure adherence to regulatory/ISO standards; provide clear risk dashboards to EXCO/Board and drive culture of control excellence.

Business Continuity

• Own and govern the Enterprise Business Continuity Framework, ensuring policies, standards, and resilience requirements are embedded across all operational units and critical enterprise processes. 
• Lead Business Impact Analyses (BIA) to identify critical functions, recovery priorities, resource dependencies, and acceptable downtime thresholds across the enterprise value chain. 
• Ensure robust and tested Business Continuity Plans (BCP) for all high risk functions, including crisis management protocols, communication plans, recovery strategies, and alternate site readiness. 
• Drive end to end resilience testing, including simulation exercises, disaster recovery drills, and post exercise remediation with measurable improvements in readiness and recovery time. 
• Provide reporting and assurance, using resilience dashboards, risk indicators, and compliance scorecards to inform leadership and ensure regulatory/ISO adherence.

Retention Care

• Own the end to end retention strategy for enterprise clients, ensuring proactive engagement, contract management and value based interventions to minimise churn. 
• Establish proactive risk management mechanisms, using insights, early warning indicators, usage trends, and sentiment analytics to identify at risk accounts and trigger timely retention actions. 
• Drive high touch account lifecycle management, ensuring seamless onboarding, service quality, issue resolution, and continuous value extraction to strengthen loyalty. 
• Coordinate cross functional retention squads (Sales, Service Operations, Networks, Billing, Finance) to resolve systemic pain points, service failures, or commercial blockers impacting customer experience. 
• Improve retention performance and NPS, using structured governance, dashboards, root cause elimination, and customer back initiatives to secure long term relationships and revenue continuity.

Process Simplification & Automation

• Define Enterprise Automation roadmap that will guide future investment
• Identify manual and fragmented enterprise processes and drive simplification initiatives.
• Lead automation programs across provisioning, ticketing, and service assurance workflows.
• Embed digital tools for order tracking, customer visibility, and operational reporting.
• Reduce operational cycle times through workflow redesign.
• Improve cost-to-serve metrics through structured operational efficiencies.
• Drive adoption of enterprise self-service portals and automation-enabled support.

Customer Support & Service Experience

• Oversee enterprise-grade support models aligned to customer tiering frameworks.
• Institutionalize proactive service management for strategic accounts.
• Monitor enterprise jNPS and customer satisfaction metrics.
• Ensure structured Quarterly Service Reviews for high-value clients.
• Partner with Sales to drive retention through superior service experience.
• Embed continuous feedback loops to improve post-sale customer engagement.

Billing Readiness & Revenue Realization

• Partner with Finance to ensure accurate billing configuration and readiness at activation.
• Monitor billing accuracy and dispute rates across enterprise portfolio.
• Reduce billing-related escalations and revenue leakage.
• Track revenue realization timelines from activation to first invoice.
• Ensure compliance with contractual pricing and billing terms.
• Improve Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) through structured dispute and billing governance.

Commercial Operation

• Deliver Enterprise Business excellence all Enterprise Sectors
• Strengthen Pricing Governance, Margin Discipline & Value Realization
• Enable Data Driven Revenue Growth Across Enterprise, SME & Public Sector
• Build Scalable, Digitized & Efficient Commercial Operations
• Strengthen Customer Centricity & Sector Specific operation Support

Enable Operational Efficiency & Scalability

• Strengthen Governance, Risk & Compliance in Commercial Practices
• Enhance Partner & Ecosystem Commercial Performance
• Elevate Customer Value Delivery Across All Segments
• Accelerate Digital Transformation of Commercial Systems & Tools

Bid Management

• Lead end to end bid governance, ensuring all enterprise bids are commercially viable, compliant, and aligned to organisational strategy, risk thresholds, and profitability expectations. 
• Oversee the development of bid responses, coordinating cross functional inputs (Sales, Finance, Legal, Technology, Supply Chain) to produce compelling and competitive proposals. 
• Establish and enforce bid management frameworks, approval matrices, pricing governance, and quality standards to improve bid consistency and reduce commercial and contractual exposure. 
• Drive rigorous opportunity qualification, bid/no bid decisions, and pursuit strategies using data driven analysis of feasibility, risk, resource requirements, and competitive positioning. 
• Ensure timely submission of bids by managing bid timelines, resources, documentation, and stakeholder engagement to meet customer and regulatory requirements. 
• Monitor bid performance, win/loss trends, pricing patterns, and customer insights to continuously improve bid strategies, enhance win rates, and strengthen commercial effectiveness.

Leadership & Talent Development

• Coach, mentor, and empower the leadership team to drive strategic excellence, collaboration, and disruptive thinking. 
• Drive diversity, inclusion, and leadership bench strength, ensuring succession readiness for pivotal roles within the function.
• Build critical capabilities through targeted hiring and continuous learning programs. 
• Institutionalize a functional Academy - develop playbooks, methodologies, and training for execution, and digital-first innovation models.
• Embed OKRs and a performance-driven culture, aligning incentives to strategic impact, and innovation. 
• Champion cross-functional collaboration across Safaricom to ensure integrated delivery of products.
• Lead change management for major shifts (new operating models, and innovation platforms) with clear narratives, stakeholder engagement, and adoption tracking. 
• Foster a culture of agility and experimentation, encouraging teams to pilot emerging technologies, new business models, and disruptive solutions.
• Model ethical leadership and values, reinforcing integrity, transparency, and responsible innovation in all strategic decisions. 
• Ensure governance and compliance in all initiatives, safeguarding organizational reputation and stakeholder trust.
• Champion adoption of emerging technologies (AI, IoT, cloud, blockchain) to enable disruptive innovation and digital transformation.

Qualifications

• Must have technical / professional qualifications:
•  Bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications Engineering, Electrical Engineering, ICT, Computer Science, Business Administration, Operations Management, or a related field from a recognized institution
• Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA), Operations Management, Telecommunications Management, or Strategic Management is required
• Minimum of 10–12 years’ progressive experience in enterprise service delivery, telecom operations, ICT operations, managed services, or large-scale customer operations within a regulated technology environment
• Demonstrated experience managing end-to-end order-to-cash processes including provisioning, activation, billing readiness, and service assurance
• Strong understanding of enterprise ICT environments including connectivity, cloud, cybersecurity, IoT, managed services, and complex multi-vendor solutions
• Proven experience in SLA governance, service management frameworks, and enterprise-grade incident management processes
• Certification in IT Service Management frameworks such as ITIL (v3 or v4) is required
• Project management certification such as PMP, PRINCE2, or equivalent is required or strongly preferred
• Demonstrated experience in operational process design, automation initiatives, and workflow optimization within large-scale organizations
• Strong knowledge of telecom network architecture and service assurance systems sufficient to coordinate effectively with Technology and Network teams
• Proven experience working in highly matrixed environments collaborating with Sales, Finance, Risk, Legal, and Technology functions
• Demonstrated capability in managing high-severity customer escalations and crisis response coordination
• Strong analytical capability with proficiency in CRM systems, order management platforms, billing systems, and operational performance dashboards
• Experience embedding operational risk controls, compliance frameworks, and audit readiness processes within enterprise operations
• Demonstrated commitment to integrity, regulatory compliance, and responsible operational governance aligned to Safaricom’s Code of Conduct