What will you do?

• This role represents the Business across multiple forums and business areas to ensure prioritisation and delivery of the business strategy and priorities through a portfolio of change initiatives. 
• The Product Owner’s responsibilities span across the domains of business product, platform/channel and system (IT solution); and across the full development life-cycle from prioritization, define & design, development, integration, testing & training, delivery into the teams (both internally and business partners) and benefits realization.
• This role work very closely with the leadership team of the Business and contribute to Sanlam’s overall objective of profitable growth.

The role is responsible to: 

• End to end accountability for product, platform/channel and systems (IT solutions) with intentional drive for value and innovation.
• Facilitate business strategy formulation process and vision. Research and analyse the market and best practices; follow our competitors and the industry. 
• Demonstrate the ability and understanding to facilitate integration of products, platforms and systems, processes into the broader Sanlam strategy.
• Identify the future capabilities (People, Product, Process and Technology) that will enable the strategy; and defining a multi-year roadmap for delivery of capabilities.
• Actively participate in change initiatives and projects by providing vision and direction to the development teams and stakeholders throughout the initiative/project and  create business requirements.
• Responsible for defining, prioritizing, evaluating and inspecting the work generated by delivery teams in order to ensure delivered features and functionality is supportive of realising the future business strategy.
• Assess value, develop use cases, and prioritize stories, epics and themes to ensure work focuses on those with maximum value that are aligned with the strategy and    defined outcomes.
• Lead the planning of business and IT solution release plans and set expectation for delivery of new functionalities.
•  Responsible for the creation of a single prioritised backlog of value based outcomes.
• Facilitate a Business Product Owner and Subject Matter group across business areas to inform the business requirements.
• Work closely with all business units including Sanlam Business Solutions delivery organisation. 
• Monitors progress and stakeholder satisfaction on delivery of value. Deploy capabilities into operational business. Balance scope, budget, and time, weighing priorities      according to the needs and objectives.
• Define business cases for capabilities, in support of realising the strategy. Drive, track and realise benefits from various initiatives.
• Identify, diagnose and recommend improvements to be undertaken with the various business areas, providing appropriate and effective solutions.

What will make you successful in this role?
Qualifications and experience

• IT Relevant qualification
• Min 5 years’ experience in roles which designed, led and/or implemented, engineered IT solutions 
• Systems engineering 
• Business process engineering  
• Business intelligence & Business Analysis 
• SQL & Data Analysis 
• Lean Six Sigma, Agile, Scrum,SDLC 
• Program Management 
• Design thinking and GAP analysis 
• Technical Document writing 
• Systems Implementation Experience.

Knowledge and skills  

• IT/Systems/Tools:
• Knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics 365 will be an advantage
• Knowledge of PPO, JIRA, and Confluence
• Working knowledge of the SAFe Agile methodology will be an advantage

Business:

• Sound financial services industry knowledge/context
• SanlamConnect knowledge
• Sales and advice processes/steps/standards/guidelines
• Agile methodologies and implementation practices
• Financial management proficiency. Solid understanding of budgets and variance reporting.
• Outstanding communication, presentation and leadership skills.
• Sharp analytical and problem-solving skills.