Vice President, Customer Solutions Center - East Africa

It is the housing for all Mastercard's products & services capabilities in a geography(s), and it aims to drive Mastercard growth and revenue by creating and selling compelling data-driven, scalable and needs-based solutions to new and existing customers by tapping into Mastercard's extensive suite of products and services offerings.

Role Responsibilities:

• Understands overall market strategy, industry trends, and customer needs for all segments in a given geography
• Works with division/market president to prioritize opportunities
• Empowers AMs and BDs to farm and hunt. Supports account planning,
• opportunity identification, and solutioning for frontline sales
• Meets customers to support important pitches and understand their needs
• Monitor utilization of products and platforms by our customers and take actions accordingly
• Leverage Mastercard capabilities to translate market strategy into solutions
• Responsible for compiling of solutions to deliver meaningful value for MA customer base
• Manages the capacity and focus of the Solution Architects (SA), Technical Architects (TA) and Solution Specialists (SS) within the Customer Solutions Center (CSC) to ensure that each prioritized opportunity gets the right level of support it requires
• Builds agile 'squads' for high or moderately complex opportunities/RFPs requiring multiple MA capabilities by staffing with the right resources
Identifies the right solutions architects, solution specialists and technical architects
• Request resources from other customer solutions centers in case of missing expertise for a specific opportunity
• Invites all enabling functions for support in solutioning in collaboration with AM / BD e.g. legal, finance etc.
• Drives the approach for enterprise level pricing and supports the SAs in developing the commercial propositions for complex solutions
• Tracks performance of agile 'squads' as well as resources in the Customer Solutions Center. Takes necessary actions to improve performance
• Supports the integration of acquired capabilities into the customer solutions center and supports the responsible parties with rollout planning of the acquired capabilities into the given geography
• Identifies gaps and requires additional investment in the customer solutions center based on evolving market needs - in collaboration with the relevant market heads
• Enable knowledge and best practice sharing:
• Provides market intelligence and requirements to regional Product Management and Product Development teams along with their associated product specialists
• Understands new products & capabilities working together with solution specialists to ensure that information is shared and utilized across all customer solutions center resources
• Helps market development / segment heads with market intelligence and insights on demand for specific solutions across their segments
• Shares best practices with other CSCs within and across the region to drive better customer experience and more relevant solutions

Experience:

• Strong understanding of industry trends and market intelligence.
• Good understanding of product technology and APIs.
• Good understanding of regionally relevant MA products, services, and solutions.
• Ability to link market developments to implications on MA products and services.
• Strong analytical and financial understanding.
• Proven ability to influence and motivate others to achieve objectives.
• High energy, strong people leadership, experience in leading diverse and cross functional teams.
• Strong interpersonal skills - the ability to build rapport and credibility quickly across functions.
• Strong negotiation skills with a proven track record in delivering commercial performance.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard's security policies and practices;
• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;
• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and
• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard's guidelines.