Head of Online Product

Job category: FMCG, Retail, Wholesale and Supply Chain

Location: Cape Town

Contract: Permanent

Remuneration: Market related

EE position: No

Introduction

The Head of Online Product is a pivotal role within the Woolworths Online Team, responsible for overseeing the development and management of a large portfolio of Online & App digital products across food, fashion, beauty and homeware. The role is both strategic and operational in nature, influencing and managing the broader rationalisation and prioritisation of the digital roadmap, commercial value tracking and ensuring an efficient and quality outcome across a number of cross-functional squads.

Key Responsibilities

1. Define the multi-year Online Product Strategy and Vision, in alignment with the broader Foods, Fashion and E-commerce strategies.
2. Lead a diverse team of product managers, product owners and cross-functional squads to execute against the strategy and vision, ensuring teams are empowered, skilled, and work effectively to deliver and support quality digital products.
3. Ownership of the Online Product Roadmap and facilitation of the prioritisation process and backlog management.
4. Lead the end-to-end product development lifecycle, from ideation and concept validation to implementation and release.
5. Work closely with the Online Programme Lead to drive the delivery of the Online Product Roadmap throughout the lifecycle.
6. Implement product management best practices to ensure timely and efficient product delivery.
7. Work closely with the Head of the Value Creation, UX & CRO to ensure customer insights and experience are at the heart of discovery, design and execution.
8. Use customer insights and data analytics to drive product improvements and optimize user experience.
9. Commercial oversight and value tracking of digital products, ensuring appropriate budget allocation against defined value targets and tracking to these goals.
10. Define business case for digital initiatives and its ROI.
11. Ensure smooth transition of initiatives from the build cycle into the Production Support Model, based on accepted quality metrics.
12. Monitor the market to identify shifts and opportunities that could be considered for the Online Roadmap.
13. Technology and platform management: Stay abreast of emerging technologies, industry trends, and best practices in digital product development and support.
14. Evaluate and select suitable platforms and technologies to support digital products and services.
15. Regularly interact with stakeholders and partners to understand challenges and formulate plans to address these challenges through the use of, or changes in, the Online platform.
16. Support, coach and mentor the Product team to grow in their capabilities and deliver quality initiatives.
17. Grow the Product team to meet the demands of the Online roadmap, through recruitment, contracting and skills development.
18. Responsible for the overall success of the Online platform as a product and the associated success metrics as defined in the Online KPI scorecard.

Competencies

1. Strong management, leadership and people skills.
2. Customer and quality obsessed, striving for simple solutions to often complex problems.
3. Strong understanding of product model operating models and levers that drive quality and efficiency.
4. Excellent communication, influencing and stakeholder management skills - ability to collaborate and work in a matrix organization.
5. Budget management and commercial acumen, ensuring the value is derived post the implementation of digital products.
6. Visionary and future-oriented thinker.
7. High integrity, consistent and clear and visible values.
8. Resilient, positive and able to manage complexity, uncertainty and rapid change.
9. 10 years of experience working in a technology and/or retail company.
10. 10 years of experience managing product teams that deliver technology/e-commerce innovation.
11. 10 years of experience with product design.
12. Post-Graduate degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Marketing, Business Administration or Engineering, or equivalent experience.