Product Owner at NCBA Group

JOB PURPOSE STATEMENT

The role holder is in charge of a product throughout its product lifecycle. That includes working out what customers want, helping the business to build the right product, and then supporting the business to sell it. They also provide the product vision and leadership for the many other roles involved in developing, supporting, marketing, and selling the product. That includes ensuring the product supports the company’s strategy and goals.

The Product Manager role is responsible for designing, developing, promoting and maintaining products and delivery channels that meet the needs of target customers/markets, at profit.

The role is central to innovation in Loop DFS and is thus the steward to the department’s innovation management process. The role holder is responsible for product management for the allocated portfolio/markets in the countries that the we operate in.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES)

Product Acceleration (35%)

• Manage feature development end-to-end; provide guidance and feedback to Product Analysts, Engineers and ensure everyone is aligned.
• Take ownership of products to drive the product and business-planning process across cross-functional teams of the company.
• Be the voice of the customer in the product development process.
• Develop use cases documentation, Mock-ups for proposed customer journeys.
• Collaborate with other Managers in Customer Management, Operations, Portfolio Management, Data science and Engineers in cross-area features to build products.
• Drive teams to acquire necessary data in order to back assumptions, show value, and drive prioritization

Product Strategy (30%)

• Develop product positioning and messaging that differentiates our products and features across primary market segments
• Define initial product proposition and go-to-market strategies for new expansion markets
• Aligning stakeholders around the vision for the product and prioritize product features and capabilities
• Define initial product proposition and go-to-market strategies for new expansion markets
• Meeting with the C-suite to discuss financial data and ways to improve business operations

Customer (30%)

• Develop understanding of our users at a deep level and gauge customer needs to propose prospective solutions
• Drive the execution of all product lifecycle processes for products, including product research, market research, competitive analysis, planning, positioning, roadmap development, requirements development, and product launch
• To work with the Senior Product manager to identify potential opportunity areas, determine how much impact we can have for our customers, evaluate and implement the most effective course of action.
• Develop product positioning and messaging that differentiates our products and features across primary market segments
• To run experiments to improve signup conversion ratios.
• To run experiments to improve lead-to-customer conversion ratios.
• To run experiments to improve time-to-value for new customers.
• To run experiments to send quality messages and notifications to customers at the right time.
• To run experiments to remove bad friction from the user experience.
• To run experiments to increase the adoption of new features being built.

Learning & Growth (20%)

• Drive the Employee Engagement initiatives within Product department.
• Maintain own high performance and personal growth.
• Help the other team members to achieve their career growth plans.
• Own up-to-date and actioned competency assessments and development plans.
• Drive close collaboration amongst the staff with other members of the Department, and with other relevant stakeholders across the all operating business entities for the purpose of cultivating collective responsibility to achieve business goals.

JOB SPECIFICATIONS

Academic:

• At least an undergraduate degree Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related quantitative subject area; or equivalent experience.

Desired work experience:

• Over 5 years of product management experience shipping world-class products at fast growing companies and have had demonstrable engagement with Design, Engineering and Leadership teams.

Technical Competencies

• Knowledge of multiple functional areas, including product management, engineering, UX/UI, sales, customer support, finance or marketing.
• Understanding of go-to-market commerce enablers (e.g., payments, loyalty, subscriptions, etc.).
• Exceptional communicator, with the ability to generate stakeholder buy-in and influence cross-functionally to a high standard
• Extensive experience building intuitive UI and premium UX for large feature sets on small screens
• Extremely data driven with the understanding that perfect data is not available but knows the importance of what pragmatic assumptions can be made to drive reasonable decisions
• Proven experience shipping a breadth of high-quality product features at a Fintech company
• Ability to achieve strategic goals and evolve product strategy based on research, data and industry trends in an innovative and fast-paced environment.
• Excellent problem-solving, organizational and analytical skills.
• Strong empathy for customers and an unwillingness to compromise on user-centered design
• Experience in working with third parties, whether it’s evaluating APIs and capabilities, mapping out integration plans or evaluating different technology options
• Ability to influence multiple stakeholders without direct authority.
• Experience with using A/B testing as tool to inform product improvements
• Proven capabilities in leading design thinking/co-creation engagements with leaders at senior levels.
• Proven experience in managing medium size & diverse teams; ideally experience managing creative teams of designers and developers.

Behavioral Competencies

• Interpersonal Skills: Ability to lead, build and influence motivated teams
• Emotional Intelligence  : Knows own strengths and limits; aware of own emotions and the effect they have on others and has the self-control to keep disruptive emotions and impulses in check.
• Social and Cross-cultural Awareness: Interacts with colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders in different social and cultural environments, showing respect and positive regard for them in an ethical and appropriate that are consistently with the values of the organization.
• Agile: Able to change plans, methods, opinions or goals in light of new information, with the readiness to act on opportunities. Highly effective in adapting to differing environments. Inculcates a digital mind-set in the organization, institutionalizing cross-functional collaboration, flattening hierarchies, devolving decision making to smaller teams, and building environments that creatively partnering with external companies to extend necessary capabilities to encourage the generation of new ideas and developing more iterative and rapid ways of doing things. Implements incentives and metrics to support such agility.
• Leadership Skills: Team Building and ability to train, develop and mentor staff; Presents new challenges and opportunities to the team to enable them to demonstrate and achieve their full potential; encourages and inspires team learning
• Negotiation Skills: Must be a good negotiator, particularly in changing behaviour and work practices but always achieve a Win/Win outcome
• Innovative: Creative and adaptive to change. A team player who is supportive of other’s ideas and innovations, collaborates in a culture of knowledge-sharing and team learning to strengthen the organization’s work