Head of LOOP Grow Business at NCBA Group

JOB PURPOSE STATEMENT

Loop is the flagship product that anchors the LOOP DFS strategy. Loop is anchored on platform strategy that could scale throughout Africa and be a mobile-based payment and financial services platform connecting consumers and merchants.  The platform offers a variety of services, such as mobile money transfers, bill payments, P2P lending, and digital wallets for merchants to receive payments. The platform leverages the growing use of mobile phones and the increasing demand for financial services in Africa to attract and retain customers. To further scale the platform, LOOP DFS will partner with established financial institutions, mobile network operators, and other relevant companies to offer a comprehensive suite of financial services.

The holder of this role will be responsible for ensuring that market opportunities match LOOP DFS's strategy and strategic directions. The role holder is responsible for the commercial design, implementation, monetization and overall ownership of the commercial strategy of the Grow Business.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES)

Financial (30%)           

• Revenue growth: The primary financial objective for the the Head of Grow Business is to drive revenue growth for the Ecosystem. This involves developing a comprehensive commercial strategy that targets new markets, identifies new customer segments, and drives sales and marketing initiatives to meet revenue targets.
• Gross margin growth: In addition to revenue growth, the Head of Grow Business must also focus on profitability within the Ecosystem. This involves managing costs, optimizing pricing strategies, and driving operational efficiency to ensure that the company is operating in a financially sustainable manner.
• Customer lifetime value: The Head of Grow Business must focus on maximizing customer lifetime value by building strong customer relationships, reducing churn, and increasing expansion customers. This involves developing and executing customer retention.
• Return on investment: The Head of Grow Business must ensure that the company is getting a return on its commercial investments within the Ecosystem. This involves tracking and measuring the effectiveness of sales and marketing initiatives, partnerships, and other commercial programs to ensure that they are delivering the desired results.
• Market share: The Head of Grow Business must focus on increasing the company's market share within the Ecosystem by identifying and pursuing growth opportunities in new and existing markets. This involves developing and executing market entry and expansion strategies and ensuring that the company is competitive in the marketplace.
• Drive partner acquisition: The Head of Grow Business in the assigned ecosystem focus on Partner acquisition with the intention of adoption of Embedded financial infrastructure products or the development of a market place that will bring partners, consumers and producers into a value exchange arrangement.

Internal Business Processes (30%)       

• Sales and marketing process optimization: The Head of Grow Business must focus on optimizing the company's sales and marketing processes to ensure that the company is able to effectively target and acquire new customers. This involves streamlining processes, identifying and removing bottlenecks, and continuously improving the effectiveness of the company's sales and marketing efforts.
• Risk management: The Head of Grow Business must focus on managing risk to ensure that the company is able to identify and mitigate potential risks and avoid negative impacts on its customers and the broader business. This involves developing and implementing risk management policies and procedures, monitoring compliance with regulatory requirements, and identifying and mitigating potential risks.
• Cross-functional collaboration: The Head of Grow Business must focus on fostering cross-functional collaboration across the organization to ensure that the company is able to effectively execute its commercial strategy. This involves working closely with other departments, including product, engineering, and customer support, to ensure that everyone is aligned around the company's commercial objectives and working together to deliver value to customers.
• Performance tracking and measurement: The Head of Grow Business must focus on tracking and measuring performance to ensure that the company is achieving its commercial objectives and making progress toward its financial and growth targets. This involves setting performance metrics and tracking progress against these metrics, identifying areas for improvement, and adjusting the company's commercial strategy as needed.

Customer (20%)       

• Customer acquisition: One of the primary customer objectives for The Head of Grow Business is to drive customer acquisition. This involves identifying and pursuing new customer segments, developing effective sales and marketing strategies to reach these customers, and ensuring that the company is meeting their needs and delivering value.
• Customer retention: In addition to customer acquisition, The Head of Grow Business must focus on customer retention. This involves developing and executing customer retention programs and ensuring that the company is delivering an exceptional customer experience that keeps customers coming back.
• Customer satisfaction: The Head of Grow Business must ensure that the company is delivering a high level of customer satisfaction by monitoring customer feedback and acting to address customer concerns and issues. This involves building strong relationships with customers, providing excellent customer service, and ensuring that the company is meeting its commitments and delivering on its promises.
• Customer lifetime value: The Head of Grow Business must focus on maximizing customer lifetime value by building strong customer relationships, reducing churn, and increasing cross-sell and upsell opportunities. This involves developing and executing customer retention and loyalty programs and ensuring that the customer experience is exceptional.
• Customer feedback and insights: The Head of Grow Business must also focus on gathering customer feedback and insights to inform the company's product and service offerings. This involves conducting customer surveys, analysing customer data, and using customer insights to drive product innovation and improve the customer experience.

Learning and Growth (20%)       

• Continuous learning: The Head of Grow Business must prioritize continuous learning and development for themselves and their team. This involves staying up to date with the latest industry trends, attending conferences and events, and seeking out new knowledge and best practices to inform the company's commercial strategy.
• Talent development: The Head of Grow Business must also focus on developing and growing their team to ensure that they have the skills and expertise needed to execute the company's commercial strategy. This involves providing training and development opportunities, mentoring and coaching team members, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth.
• Innovation: The Head of Grow Business must prioritize innovation and encourage their team to think creatively and identify new ways to drive growth and profitability. This involves staying up to date with emerging technologies and market trends, identifying new opportunities for growth, and fostering a culture of experimentation and innovation.
• Strategic partnerships: The Head of Grow Business must focus on identifying and building strategic partnerships that can help the company achieve its commercial objectives. This involves developing strong relationships with partners, identifying opportunities for collaboration and co-creation, and leveraging partner capabilities to drive growth and innovation.
• Data-driven decision-making: The Head of Grow Business must prioritize data-driven decision-making to inform the company's commercial strategy. This involves analysing customer and market data, tracking performance metrics, and using insights to make informed decisions and drive continuous improvement.

JOB SPECIFICATIONS

Academic:

• A Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology or Business-related field of study from a recognized university.
• MBA or a Master’s degree in a business field is desirable.

Desired work experience:

• At least ten years' work experience, five of which should have been in a management position in a Technology or Fintech. Should have participated in strategy development and implementation, and having led large successful business development projects and/or initiatives.

JOB COMPETENCIES

Technical Competencies

Business Strategy       

• Business Development: You should have a strong understanding of business development principles and be able to identify and cultivate relationships with potential partners that will contribute to the growth of the business. This includes conducting market research to identify potential opportunities and developing strategies to engage with potential partners.
• Product and Industry Knowledge: As The role holder, you will need to have a deep understanding of the company's products and services and the industry in which it operates. This will enable you to identify potential partners that align with the company's strategy and products and build relationships with them.
• Collaboration and Communication: You will need to be an excellent communicator and collaborator, able to work with cross-functional teams to achieve shared goals. This includes working with sales and marketing teams to identify potential partnerships and working with product and engineering teams to develop integration solutions.
• Negotiation and Contract Management: As a key member of the business development team, you should have strong negotiation and contract management skills to ensure that agreements with partners are favourable for the company.
• Strategic Planning: You should be able to develop and execute a strategic plan for ecosystem development that aligns with the company's overall strategy and goals. This includes setting clear objectives, identifying key performance indicators, and developing a roadmap for execution.

Platform Business Design

• Customer empathy: The Head of LOOP Grow Business must have a deep understanding of the needs and preferences of the company's customers. This involves developing empathy for customers, conducting user research, and incorporating customer feedback into the design of the platform.
• Design thinking: The Head of LOOP Grow Business must be able to apply design thinking principles to the platform design process. This involves developing user-centered design solutions, prototyping and testing designs, and iterating based on user feedback.
• Technical knowledge: The Head of LOOP Grow Business must have a strong understanding of the technical aspects of platform design, including APIs, data models, and software architecture. This involves working closely with engineering and product teams to ensure that the platform is designed in a way that is scalable, reliable, and secure.
• Collaboration and communication: The Head of LOOP Grow Business must be able to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, including product, engineering, design, and business teams. This involves communicating effectively, building consensus, and aligning teams around a common vision for the platform.
• Innovation: The role holder must be able to drive innovation in the platform design process. This involves staying up-to-date on emerging technologies and trends, exploring new design approaches, and experimenting with new features and functionality.
• Business acumen: The Head of LOOP Grow Business must have a strong understanding of the business implications of platform design decisions. This involves balancing the needs of customers with the needs of the business, understanding the competitive landscape, and making data-driven decisions that drive growth and profitability.

Business Model Innovation    

• Market Research: The role holder should have a deep understanding of the market and industry in which the company operates, and be able to identify emerging trends and customer needs. This will enable you to identify opportunities for new business models that align with customer needs and company strategy.
• Customer Focus: The role holder should have a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences, and be able to design business models that create value for customers. This includes developing customer personas, conducting user research, and using customer feedback to improve and refine new business models.
• Design Thinking: The role holder should have strong design thinking skills to facilitate the development of new business models. This includes identifying customer pain points, prototyping new solutions, and testing and iterating on ideas.

Partner Management 

• Strategic thinking: The role holder must be able to think strategically about the company's partner ecosystem and how it can drive growth and achieve its commercial objectives. This involves understanding the company's competitive landscape, identifying emerging trends and technologies, and anticipating changes in customer needs and preferences.
• Relationship building: The role holder must have strong relationship building skills, including the ability to establish and maintain strong relationships with partners. This involves identifying potential partners, building rapport, and working collaboratively to achieve shared goals.
• Negotiation: The role holder must be able to negotiate effectively with partners, including negotiating terms of agreements, pricing, and other commercial terms. This involves understanding partner motivations, identifying areas of mutual benefit, and building consensus around shared goals.
• Communication and collaboration: The role holder must be able to communicate effectively with internal teams and external partners. This involves building consensus around shared goals, managing expectations, and communicating complex technical concepts in a clear and concise manner.

Activation Management

• Analyse data: The role holder must have the ability to Analyse data from user behaviour, acquisition channels, and activation metrics to identify opportunities for improvement in the activation process.
• Optimize sign-up flow: The role holder must have competencies in optimising the sign-up flow can improve the user experience and reduce drop-off rates. Working with UX / UI function in simplifying the registration process and providing clear instructions can help increase conversions.
• Focus on Aha moments: The role holder should be able to define Aha moments which help users realise the value of the product or service. By identifying these moments and optimizing them.
• Implement gamification: The role holder should be able to define gamification use cases in non-game contexts to increase engagement.
• Test and iterate: The role holder should be able to run testing for different strategies and iterate on them so identify what works best for their product and user base. Should be able to run A/B testing, review user feedback, so as to make decision-making that lead to improvements in activation management.

Retention management         

• Use case retention: The role holder will have the ability to develop strategies for use case retention.
• Frequency retention: The Head of LOOP Grow Business will have the ability to develop frequency retention strategies to increase the percentage of users who continue to use Loop DFS product over time.
• Intensity: The Head of LOOP Grow Business will have the ability to implement Intensity strategies that will increase the level of engagement that users have with Loop DFS products.

Monetization management           

• The role holder will have the ability to manage strategies that will increase revenue for the product portfolio and average revenue per customer
• The role holder will have the ability to manage strategies that will reduce cost of goods sold (COGS) where possible therefore increasing Gross margins for the Loop consumer and Loop merchant products.
• The role holder will have the ability to manage payback periods for a product within the ecosystem.
• The role holder will manage the life time value of customers by measuring the LTV: CAC ratios.

Financial Acumen     

• Financial Analysis: The role holder will have the ability to analyze financial data and draw conclusions about the financial health and performance of the ecosystem.
• Budgeting and Forecasting: The role holder will have the Knowledge of budgeting principles and techniques to create, manage and maintain budgets for the ecosystem.
• Cost Management: The role holder will have the ability to manage and optimize costs for the ecosystem by identifying areas for cost savings and controlling expenses.
• Financial Modelling: The role holder will the ability to build financial models to evaluate potential ecosystem development opportunities and forecast future financial performance.
• Risk Management: The role holder will have risk management know how and be familiar with risk management principles and techniques to identify and mitigate financial risks to the ecosystem.
• Strategic Financial Planning: The role holder will have the Ability to develop and implement financial strategies to achieve the ecosystem's objectives.
• Stakeholder Management: The role holder will have the ability to communicate financial information effectively to stakeholders, including investors, partners, and internal team members.
• Knowledge of Financial Regulations: The role holder will understand financial regulations and compliance requirements that affect the ecosystem

Credit Lifecycle management          

• The role holder will have a sound understanding of management of credit lifecycles for short term and long-term loans ensuring that day 60 defaults are kept within budget.

Collaboration 

• The role holder will have the ability to work in cross functional teams within Loop DFS so as to achieve commercial goals.

Behavioural 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 behavior 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