Product Manager (MSME Products) at African Management Institute (AMI)

Job Description

• The Product Manager – MSME will focus on managing the strategic roadmap for all business growth products in our MSME segment. This includes building a deep understanding of the customer and the market needs, defining solutions that build on AMI’s unique capabilities to meet those needs and prioritising requests to deliver those solutions. You will be responsible for clear documentation, communication and training around core MSME learning products across AMI. The PM-MSME will lead learning product ‘squads’ to ensure results are maintained from core MSME learning products over time, and will be responsible for developing and maintaining feedback loops, and product analytics to facilitate strategic decision-making.
• In this role, you will ensure that core MSME products are closely aligned to customer and market needs, engage with business development and learning teams to define solutions, assess outcomes, and develop and assess new product ideas - including support to costing and business models. You will be a product expert and the go-to person for all things MSME.

Core:

• Understand the customer - What value are we adding to the customer?
• Support sales and marketing team on business line, input into proposals early in the process, checking inputs in pricing, competitive (price to value)
• Lead the MSME segment squad, directly managing learning and content designers lead, and the Facilitation / Face-to-Face Training Lead. Coordinating closely across product (M&E, Ops, Product-tech) and with the impact unit.
• Strategic roadmap, vision, product market fit for core mobile-first MSME products
• New product project management  – runs ideation workshops, manages stage-gate support
• Product Evaluation: Keeping an eye on current products and how they are adapting to market, solid understanding of feature sets that need to change
• Communication, documentation, stakeholder comms/training
• Feedback management

Scope of Work:

• Strategically drives the development, market launch, ongoing support and improvement of core MSME learning products
• Management of the MSME product portfolio – including management and development of MSME mobile learning products designed for scale
• Define the vision and roadmap for the product - core focus, product mix (inc. languages, specializations, modes of delivery
• Deep understanding of the customer and the market - conducting user personas for the end-learner and the client/customer
• Establish competitive positioning including conducting regular competition analysis and product differentiation (in collaboration with partnerships/leadership) to inform product pricing models
• Work across the business line to support new product market opportunities including input to proposals, papers, presentations.
• Establish strong feedback loops i.e gather, analyze and prioritize product feedback.
• Use data to understand product performance and shape future of product. i.e establish and monitor core product success metrics 
• Deliver new products in collaboration with the product ops/dev team and existing learning team
• Manage ‘end-of-life’ i.e offboarding of obsolete learning products (including programmes, languages, modes of delivery)
• MSME portfolio would include:
  • Core AMI Programmes: MEA, SYB, Gig (Uber), Bootcamps for MSME
  • Products under development including: AMI GROW mobile MEA

Requirements
Skills & attributes

• Experience in processes of Product Management – including using customer insights, data and feedback to make strategic product decisions
• Deep knowledge of MSME ecosystem in Africa (East Africa core focus)
• Knowledge of agile content development processes – agile methodology and ability to handle multiple priorities in a very fluid working environment 
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• High proficiency and productivity in G Suite tools, including Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, etc.
• Ability to work on your own and manage diverse teams – fostering collaborative work flows across teams
• Work well with people. Culturally adept. Ability to communicate effectively across different levels, with local and international teams and stakeholders
• Willingness to engage in robust debate alongside deep respect for others
• Absolutely rock-solid integrity

Qualifications & Experience

• 5+ years of related mobile content and learning design experience or MSME growth consultation and product development
• Experience working in learning development / content development role for entrepreneurship
• Strong people management skills – managing diverse teams of specialists
• Masters degree or equivalent experience
• AMI will consider candidates from any country, but preference will be given to African nationals. Candidates must be willing to live in Africa, Nairobi preferred, and free to travel across Africa.