Openings at Pula

Duties And Responsibilities: 

Client Management

• Attending all recurring meetings internally and with the client’s support team to enhance cordial relationships and customer satisfaction. Hence, a high and smooth Renewal rate.
• Specifically ensuring that Crop Development Reports, mid-season and end season reports are generated timely and in the formats that the client required and presented to them. This enhances customer satisfaction and ensures a smooth payout process.
• Maintain a proper client data sheet that includes critical client details- like when the budget is drawn and approved, to enhance timeliness in pitching to them, especially on the Collating all complaints from the client during the season and ensuring that all are captured while payout reporting is made.
• Train the client’s and the stakeholders regional and the district team.
• Manage the customer accounts while the CM/CD is away on leave.
• Managing and improving sales tools and processes e.g the CRM.
• Assisting with administrative tasks such as requisitions, workshop preparation 

Administration Support

• Support the line manager in writing meeting notes on the proper tool, recording the meeting, and filing the notes/recordings in the client folder.
• Liaising with relevant teams internally to ensure that clients and commercial managers have accurate and reliable information.
• Coordinating with the team carrying out farmer registration (whether it is client or PULA) to ensure we get farmers’ lists on time, and is correct.
• Cooperate with internal department to update tools like click -up

Market Research & Pipeline Development

• Provide research support on the new markets and new clients by performing research and analysis to identify business and client opportunities.

Sales

• Pursuing leads, reaching out through calls and correspondence and arranging appointments

What you need to have to be successful:

• You have a strong interest in a sales career.
• You are open working in a sales target environment.
• You have a passion for working with the public sector and NGO environment .
• Critical Thinking Skills. You must have the ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions
• You have at least 3 years experience working in an environment requiring people skills, relationship development and management
• Behavioral Skills. You must be self-directed, work well alone or in a team structure, highly results oriented, and willing to learn and expand his/her technical and product knowledge base through formal education, professional training, and self-study.
• Transferable skills from a customer relations role.
• You have excellent communication and presentation skills, integrity and impeccable professionalism.
• Experience and knowledge in the insurance industry will place you at an advantage.
• You have the ability to use data and KPIs to make management decisions.
• You are fully comfortable with Google Drive applications such as Google Sheets, Google Docs, as well as MS office applications such as powerpoint, excel etc.

go to method of application »

The Commercial Director at Pula is far from the typical sales leader. You must be passionate about having meaning in your work. Willing to go the extra mile to evangelize the importance of agriculture insurance in transforming the lives of millions of smallholder farmers across multiple stakeholders from the political elites, to the Government systems, development agencies all the way down to the farmer. For you to be successful at the role, one must consider it their mission - “how you will be remembered”. Whilst at it, you will be rewarded very well as we believe in “doing good and doing well”. Whilst impacting hundreds of millions of farmers, our mantra is that those who are successful in the mission must be dollar millionaires in the end. At Pula, good deeds are rewarded. 

Everyday, you role will involve;

Expanding your networks, influence and Pula’s positioning in the region

• Constantly building deeply entrenched relationships that will enable one to understand client needs, gather market intelligence and build a credible pipeline of opportunities. To succeed in the role, one must incredible enjoy building new relationships and leveraging on relationships to achieve your goals.
• Effectively communicate value propositions through presentations and proposals
• Act as the Pula spokesperson in the region.
• Using knowledge of the market and competitors in the regions, identify and develop the company’s unique selling propositions and differentiators.

Business Development

• Defining Commercial OKRs in your region and ownership of the results.
• Research, prepare and execute a sales plan focused on delivering new and recurring revenues through partnerships with agro-input companies and the public sector.
• Develop pipeline and continuously mature & qualify opportunities in order to increase Pula’’s market share and to enable achievement of sales target.
• Generating and qualifying new leads and using different approaches to penetrate prospective clients in your region. You are expected to qualify opportunities, know which deals to work on, and which ones to pass on.
• Progress prospects through a defined sales process to eventual contracting and implementation.

Customer Relationship Management

• Manage and nurture existing client relationships across a wide range of stakeholders including commodity associations, farmers’ aggregators, insurers, government and private companies.
• Manage the handover of new customers to the operations team for the implementation of the solution.

Team Leadership:

• Build and / or manage a high performing sales team to execute end to end sales including outreach, pitching, getting alignment, negotiation, closing deals and implementation.
• Analyze data and use it to make key strategic decisions for the business. 

What you need to have to be successful: 

• You have experience in strong demonstrable sales to development agencies, governments and / or financial institutions.
• You have demonstrable success working against a sales quota target.
• You have experience working with Development Agencies and / or Government officials at all levels and navigating government structures.
• Critical Thinking Skills. You must have the ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions
• Behavioural Skills. You must be self-directed, work well alone or in a team structure, highly results oriented, and willing to learn and expand his/her technical and product knowledge base through formal education, professional training, and self-study.
• You have knowledge and understanding of dealing with C-suite executives with excellent communication and presentation skills, integrity and impeccable professionalism.
• Sales and or consulting experience in the area of agriculture: seed / fertilizer / agrochemical industry or related is a significant advantage.
• Experience and knowledge in the insurance industry will place you at an advantage.
• You have the ability to use data and KPIs to make management decisions.
• You are fully comfortable with sales CRM platforms, Google Drive applications such as Google Sheets, Google Docs etc.

go to method of application »

The CPO at Pula is far from the typical manager of the People Ops function. We believe our employees give us a competitive advantage and this role will aim to create innovative human resources services and programs that enable our people to develop, grow, and succeed. You must fulfil the role of a modern CPO within an innovative and dynamic InsureTech environment. 

One of the CPO’s main responsibilities is to build a sustainable data driven talent acquisition engine inside Pula, to take advantage of a broad pipeline of opportunities in multiple geographies. 

As the CPO, you will shape the end-to-end talent acquisition and employee retention experience by delivering best-in-class people strategies including:

• A global talent acquisition function which delivers the best candidates in the market.
• World class on-boarding and learning and development programs.
• A performance management system that drives focus, transparency, and accountability by aligning individual performance contracts with business plans to enable the success of the business.
• A culture-driven organization

Recruitment & Onboarding 40%:

• Management of global TA operation and accountable for the targeted delivery and fulfilment of recruiting activities.
• Build a sustainable data-driven talent acquisition engine inside Pula, to achieve a pipeline of prospective candidates across multiple geographies, with a focus on enterprise sales teams.
• Craft talent acquisition strategies to build strong pipelines for future hiring needs.
• Define Pula’s Employee Value Proposition to attract candidates and ensure that the organization is recognised as an employer-of-choice in a competitive market. 
• Manage key supplier relationships with a focus on delivery and operating costs.
• Build strong relationships across all levels of the business, providing trusted and credible advice to managers regarding talent acquisition.
• Coach and develop the TA team to ensure successful outcomes in securing the best talent for the organization.
• Design and deliver a seamless onboarding process for new employees that includes training materials on company culture as well as systems for both HQ and country-based staff (e.g., how to use internal technology systems such as CRM, Task Management System etc). 
• Work with the Pula team to develop and deliver learning materials that brings new employees up to speed on the organization's goals and strategy, rules, internal processes, expectations, culture, etc.
• Deliver an effective offboarding process to understand why employees are exiting the business.

Learning & Development 20%:

• Establish and manage the Pula sales academy and certification program for the sales team. 
• Identify and manage a list of company-approved training providers to ensure quality programs are delivered to employees within a predetermined and acceptable cost framework.

Performance Management 20%: 

• Review existing performance management systems and effect improvements.
• Ensure individual goals are properly formulated, measurable and linked to company goals and objectives.
• Set and enforce quality standards and benchmark with respect to the new and existing talent in the business.
• Ensure the performance management system delivers a radically transparent meritocracy with clarity of who is doing well and who is not.
• Develop and implement succession planning strategies to deepen Pula leadership and manager bench.

Driving Culture and work environment, 20%:

• Work with Pula senior management team to define a range of culture programmes focused on fostering positive interpersonal engagement within the team and outside the work context.
• Define cadence for existing internal culture activities such as the “lunch and learn” program and provide actionable suggestions for strengthening employee engagement in these.
• Conduct and review existing staff feedback surveys and suggest improvements / best approaches to synthesize and respond to feedback.

What should I have to qualify for this exciting opportunity?

Professional Attributes:

• Proven human capital leader with a minimum of 12+ years’ experience and with a firm understanding of best practices in recruitment, performance management and culture building.
• Previous experience with hiring in a start-up or fast-growth business with a focus on execution and delivery.
• Experience in an enterprise sales environment with direct involvement in recruitment and driving productivity of the sales team (preferred).
• Experience developing human capital systems and processes from scratch; from recruitment to daily activities to performance management.
•  Experience in driving strategic recruitment initiatives and contributing to continuous improvement projects and strategy.
• Previous experience with hiring in a fast-paced and volume environment across all levels, as well as managing stakeholders up to executive level
• Track record in partnering with business leaders and key stakeholders to develop and execute talent strategy.
• Demonstrated previous experience with developing and building strong diverse talent networks and channels.
• Experience designing people and culture initiatives particularly in a fast-paced
• environment.
•  Ability to translate complex and challenging HR situations into detailed action plans for immediate implementation.
• No nonsense ‘get it done attitude’, quickly diagnosing HR issues, propose and execute solutions in a short amount of time.
• Ability to plan for and manage multiple projects with competing priorities simultaneously.
• Ability to use Google Drive Apps, Task Management Systems, and other productivity technology with ease.
• Fully comfortable with GSuite applications (Google Sheets, Google Docs, G-Slides etc.) and able to adapt to new systems easily (e.g., Asana, Slack, Jira, Metabase, KOAN)

Personal Attributes:

• It is crucial that this professional is hands-on, connects the dots, and gets things done;
• High energy, assertive and must know how to influence people and get the best out of the team in a constructive manner;
• Willing to speak up independently when there is a problem to be solved.
•  Ability to professionally and respectfully dissent, and logically debate challenges;
• Excels at operating in a fast pace, with ability to work under pressure;
• Ability to effectively prioritize and manage multiple projects;
• A transparent team player who is articulate, collaborative, tactful and able to deal effectively with people, and to influence effectively.
• Good communicator with the capability to inspire others and to develop the team.

go to method of application »

The CFO at Pula is far from the typical manager of the finance function. You must fulfill the role of a modern CFO and perform as a key partner on strategy, growth and  finance as well as driving product and operational synergies within an innovative insurtech environment. The CFO will be expected to uphold technical excellence at Pula and derive value from financial and risk insights to drive and inform strategy.

The role of the Pula CFO will include:

Strategy, Planning and Management

• Mentor and develop the finance function by setting a strategic department vision as well as building a cost efficient finance organizational model that will scale across boundaries.
• Serve as a strategic business partner to our Chief Executive Officer, Board of Directors, and executive leadership team.
• Assess and evaluate financial performance of our organization with regard to long-term operational goals, budgets, and forecasts..
• Identify, acquire, and implement systems and software to provide critical financial and operational information and reporting. Evaluate departments and make suggestions for automating processes and increasing working efficiency.
• Communicate, engage, and interact with the Board of Directors, CEO, and senior executive leadership team to ensure full transparency over the financial performance of the company.
• Create and establish yearly and quarterly financial objectives that align with the company’s plan for growth and expansion.
• Serve as a key member of our executive leadership team.
• Participate in pivotal decisions as they relate to strategic initiatives, and operational models.
• Interact with and align departments with the Company plans, initiatives, and recommendations.
• Financial Analysis, Budgeting and Forecasting
• Prepare and present monthly financial budgeting reports including monthly profit and loss by division, forecast vs. budget by division, and weekly cash flow by division.
• Review and analyze monthly financial results and provide recommendations.
• Identify, develop, and execute analysis of business initiatives, product launches, and/or new service offerings.
• Develop, maintain and enforce monthly operating budget and annual company operating budget.
• Manage financial planning and analysis department. Supervise creation of reports, software implementation, and tools for budgeting and forecasting.

Accounting, General Ledger, Administration and Operations

• Ensure the proper functioning of all systems, improve automation, databases, and financial software.
• Review and ensure application of appropriate internal controls and financial procedures.
• Ensure timeliness and accuracy of financial and management reporting data.
• Oversee the preparation and communication of monthly, quarterly, and annual financial statements.
• Oversee the preparation and timely filing of all local, state, and federal tax returns.
• Partner with People Operations to ensure appropriate legal compliance.
• Oversee the month-end close process, constantly reviewing procedures while eliminating inefficiencies.
• Review all month-end closing activities including general ledger accounts, balance sheet accounts, and overhead cost allocation.
• Enhance and implement financial and accounting systems, processes, tools, and control systems.
• Serve as a key point of contact for external auditors; Manage preparation and support of all external audits.
• Ensure timely and error free bi-weekly payroll processing, systems, automations, and payroll GL accounting.

Financial Management

• Manage cash flow planning process and ensure funds availability.
• Explore new investment opportunities and provide recommendations on potential returns and risks.
• Maintain outstanding banking relationships and strategic alliances with vendors and business partners.
• Build and utilize forward-looking models and activity-based analyses to provide financial insight into the organization’s plans and operating budgets.
• Represent the company to banks, financial partners, institutions, public auditors, and officials.
• Remain current on audit best practices as well as state, federal, and local laws regarding company operations.

Cash Management

• Oversee weekly cash management and Accounts Payables Department, approve large payables, sign checks, authorize large wires etc.
• Supervise Accounts Receivable management and provide guidance relating to the collection process.

What you need to have to be successful: 

• At least 10 years of experience leading a finance department.
• Experience in Big 4 firm - PWC, EY, KPMG or Deloitte
• Experience with building finance systems, controls and processes from scratch.
• Experience with budgeting controls.
• Qualified Chartered Accountant (CA or CPA) or any similar Accounting qualification.
• Experience building and maintaining an ERP system for complex business operations.
• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Finance, or another relevant field.
• Experience working in social enterprises is an added advantage.
• Startup experience is an added advantage.