Product Specialist

This details all the information about the job posting.

**WORKING CONDITIONS**
***_This position is, in the normal course of events, office bound. Currently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most employees are working from home. When it is safe to do so, and management announces a return to office, you will be required to comply with this instruction. Should you have any pre-existing medical conditions that could hinder your return to working in the office, please advise the interview panel, should you reach this phase in the recruitment process._

Job Title

Product Specialist

Location

Selby - Johannesburg, GP 2001 ZA (Primary)

Occupational Level

Skilled / Professional / Supervisory

Job Category

Product

Job Type

Permanent

Description

We are Africa’s leading automated clearing house. Our advanced payment systems allow for seamless interbank switching, clearing and settlement and our extensive processing infrastructure, together with our economies of scale, this means we can provide these key payment systems at maximum cost-efficiency and minimum complexity. We have been ensuring increased interoperability between banks in our home country for decades, reducing risk and producing world-first innovations along the way.

More recently, we have been facilitating increasing interoperability on a regional, cross-country level and with our team of innovative payments experts at the helm, we are ready to help usher in a whole new era of modern, digital payments infrastructure on the continent.

Our people are pivotal to the success of this mission and are therefore highly valued. We aim to ensure that each person understands the importance of their role within the organization, creating clearly defined expectations with known priorities; providing regular feedback and opportunities to develop skills; and the required tools and know-how to maximize their talent and grow within the organization.

The main purpose of the Product Specialist is to support a product or suite of products and services within the scope of the Product Manager as part of the contribution to Product Lifecycle Management. The product specialist is to support the product manager in the advancement of their tasks and responsibilities (including strategic, operational and regulatory tasks) necessary to meet client and industry requirements.

The product specialist is required to understand all detail and to have in depth product knowledge of the product/ suite of products within their portfolio and is responsible for monitoring and reporting on performance, analysing statistics, escalations as required and ensuring that the product supports and meets the customers’ expectations and to agreed SLAs. Support the product manager in the management and control of individual and relevant project/ intervention costs.

The specific activities under the Product Specialist role include (not limited to):

- Product Reporting
- Product customer and service provider liaison
- Incident and Problem Management (including resolution)
- Product Infrastructure management and support
- Risk management and risk mitigation
- Change management of defects, upgrades and innovation changes
- Maintain and update product collateral
- Input to product pricing and budgetary process

**RESPONSIBILITIES**

**Finance**
**Cost Management**
- Contribute to pricing and budget setting
- Check and authorize monthly billing reports prior to issuing
- Ensure correct billing for all ad hoc services provided to customers

**Stakeholder Engagement**
- Develop and maintain good stakeholder relationships
- Deliver on internal and external stakeholder requirements/SLA’s
- Liaison with all relevant service providers:

- IT Infrastructure
- IT Operations
- 3rd Parties
- Growth and Transformation
- Customer Lifecycle Management
- Service/Support Management

**Delivery of Processes / Projects**
**Strategic Alignment**
- Contribute to and deliver on BU goals and activities aligned to strategy
- Assist with input and data into the detailed business plan and strategy

**Initiatives/ Projects for Continuous Improvement**
- Demonstrate innovative thinking in area of expertise and translate this into business process/ solutions/ working practice improvements
- Deliver client or company specific projects in line with company standards and in agreement with line manager

**Product Support**
- Manage product defects against SLA
- In alignment with Service management, manage all incidents raised to resolution.
- Escalate all outstanding incidents, outside the SLA, to the primary and secondary escalation points.
- Drive and conclude all Problem Management processes to resolution, to understand any underlying problem causing service disruptions
- Recommend and Initiate changes as required. (To enhance the product, or fix an underlying issue)
- Be the administrative control for changes for the product

**Monitoring and analysis**
- Reporting on product and customer statistics, as well as the anal