Nsovo Thwala

Delivered to date

• Improved ways of working by implementing governance across the sdlc process in order to deliver features faster and at the right quality
• Delivered in-progress business critical features that were delayed due to unorganised ways of working e.g. marketing consent on Salesforce, enabling FICA, enabling customer engagement programme etc
• Delivered the ability to access Social Media escalations via Salesforce
• Delivered capability to track Business Banking leads generated from a web form from retail branches

Responsibilities

• Liase and collaborate with stakeholders on defining customer needs and requirements.
• Develop and own the product strategy/roadmap (part of a broader product vision owned by the Product Head) that is executable and centered around client value.
• Ensure the product strategy/roadmap aligns/contributes to attaining the strategic goals of Capitec.
• Give clear and convincing explanations as to why the product is needed/why someone would want to use the product.
• Self-organise to drive delivery of the contracted product increment and implementation of the strategy/roadmap.
• Translating customer needs into items on team backlogs (defining the ‘what’) and refining backlogs effectively.
• Set goals and measures and communicate these clearly to team members.
• Collaborate with the Business Stakeholders, Business Analysts, and Technical Analysts to ensure that all stories/tasks are ready to 'pull' into an iteration and have clearly stated acceptance criteria.
• Prioritising work on team backlogs in consultation and collaboration with the team.
• Defining, prioritising and ordering Business Epics (Features) of the product (team) Backlog in conjunction with stakeholders, other subject matter experts, and business owners.
• Spend time working closely with the team to clarify specifications (writing user stories/Epics) to effectively communicate to the team what needs to be done, why, and what the dependencies are.
• Identify where/when/who the team is being impacted by incoming work.
• Work together with other Product Owners and stakeholders to progressively refine upcoming Product Backlog items so they are each well understood.
• Participate in iteration planning and preparing for planning.
• Contract with other Product Managers to deliver completed value within a cadence.
• Drive the product sprint plan across committed delivery teams, between planning cycles.
• Manage impact of re-prioritisation to ensure minimum impact on team.
• Define/understand and enforce/manage the team’s capacity and respect WIP limits.

Achievements

1. Risk mitigation:

• Daily monitoring of statements feed and ensuring self-healing of the statement component
• Prevented unauthorised access to login credentials
• Automated Channel logs for support
• Improved eventing across the ecosystem
• Automated Colleague audit report

2. Migration strategy from legacy to strategic platform framework

• Integration to connectivity protocols as per offered value propositions
• Integration to the virus scanning device
• Integration to the Payments channel layer
• Defining file processing validations and entitlements
• Ensuring sufficient end-to-end auditing

3. Management Information Reports

• Automated extraction of data
• Automated the refresh of the Power BI model
• Enhanced the PowerBI reports

Responsibilities

• Set the PAN African short, medium and long-term strategic direction for the Host-to-host platform in partnership with clients, product and technology stakeholders.
• Defined Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for the Host-to-host Platform in support of Absa Group and/or CIB’s strategic objectives.
• Defined strategic channel initiatives and requirements that will drive the strategic objectives of Absa Group and/or CIB.
• Ensuring strategic channel initiatives or product delivery solutions are partnered with the relevant value metrics.
• Ensuring the delivery of product epics/features are tracked and the flow metrics of features are monitored and effectively managed.
• Created a forum that reviews and monitors the digital adoption rate against the target metric for integrated channels (i.e Host-to-host and API)
• Continuously evaluating relevant technology trends/breakthroughs and keeping abreast of influencing factors in relevant security risks.
• Planning and managing ongoing channel investment and activity in-line with defined portfolio requirements.
• Engaging stakeholders to build ongoing support, mutual understanding and common commitment on business outcomes.
• Participating in strategic client engagements to aid Implementation Managers to build mutually-beneficial relationships with clients through the differentiated solutions offerings.
• Assessing Fraud and Operational risks and implement relevant mitigation strategies with a view to consistently reducing organisation and/or reputational risk.
• Partner with People Change and Marketing to define and execute on Marketing and Communication Strategy for Host across Africa.
• Preparing and presenting monthly business report, as well as key business cases underpinning strategic investment initiatives.
• Define, Manage and Report on Key Performance Indicators such as:
• Client Experience
• Client and User adoption of Host platform
• Number of Incidents
• Operations Risk
• Channel Cost to Serve
• Channel Up time

Project Portfolio/ Achievements

• Quest to straight-through processing (STP) which focused on ensuring straight-through processing on Digital Sales Platform (DSP) by implementing an orchestration layer and onboarding principles/technologies (e.g Data golden sourcing, facial biometrics, real-time document OCR, automated analytics etc.) that improve onboarding performance metrics.
• Personal Loans application orchestration of the digital (App and Online Banking) and voice (on Salesforce) onboarding processes in order to ensure a streamlined omnichannel customer experience.
• Digital Sales Migration which focuses on migrating and centralising digital sales processes onto DSP.
• FICA Programme for Retail and Business Banking where the objective was to implement the amended FIC Act 38 regulations across digital servicing and onboarding channels (i.e Online, Mobile and Salesforce).
• Lead the Design team where we designed a process for AVAF/FFS FICA Refresh of juristic entities on Salesforce
• Complex Credit which focused on optimising the end-to-end application process on Salesforce for complex entities within Business Banking.
• WhatsApp Programme where I was building a strategy and POC for incorporating WhatsApp across client facing business units that utilise Salesforce.
• Digital End-to-end Programme which focused on ensuring serving straight-through processing on digital channels and thus reducing hand-offs to physical channels/back-office and improving customer experience.
• Sybrin to Salesforce Migration Project which focused on migrating back-office workflow processes from Sybrin to Salesforce.
• Lead the Design team on a Sales Architecture project where we were migrating the campaigns management process from CLO to Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
• Project managed the Lotto digital banking systems and process improvement project.
• Performed value stream analysis for Lotto and recommended a system process re-design and improvements; improved the financial recon process and designed customer service and incident management processes.
• Completed the foundational process and system requirements for launching Daily Lotto across Absa’s digital channels.
• Performed value stream analysis of the Prepaid Airtime and Data process on digital banking systems where I recommended a re-design and improvements of system processes and UX solutions.
• Analysed Error messages on Absa digital banking channels and recommended UX solutions and new messages to improve UX and eliminate handoffs to physical channels e.g Failed transactions, device linking, online profile registration, managing beneficiaries.

Responsibilities

• My portfolio was focused on straight-through processing and I specialised in onboarding on digital channels and Salesforce.
• Ensuring solutions are aligned with the group’s strategic objectives
• Identifying initiatives and presenting a high-level business case to secure project “seed” funding.
• Determining project budget and ensuring adherence thereof.
• Ensuring projects are delivered timeously by orchestrating pre-development workstreams activities and removing blockers such as design constraints, architecture or system, personnel resources constraints etc.
• Facilitating workshops (or JAD sessions) with Architects, Systems Analyst and Developers to align designs with technical capabilities and best practices.
• Managing the quality of the output of the design teams (Process Engineers, UX/UI designers and Business Analysts) under my portfolio.

Achievements

• Complemented a contact centre business transformation strategy to maximise on the use of digital contact centre technology solutions and reduce operating costs.
• Project managed and drove the adoption, and use of the new policy administration system and self-service platforms within the nominated B2B customer base.
• Implemented FreshWorks CRM for the contact centre and claims team.
• Managed performance of Claims and Contact Centre teams.
• Prepared and delivered system training material (video and manual), sent scheduled communications and surveys to help drive the adoption of the self-service platform by the B2B customer base.
• Performed adhoc tasks such as updating rate tables and setting new rates for annual premium increases.
• Created user journeys for the implementation of chatbots across social media channels, performed a vendor analysis, presented to Ex.

Achievements

• Researched Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Contact Centre and technology trends in order to optimise operations & sales.
• Completed a business transformation strategy which was signed-off by the Group executives and budget approved.
• Drafted and presented board meeting presentation.
• Performed value stream analysis of operations (call centre, administration and collections); prioritised and improved critical system requirements and processes.
• Created contact centre KPI’s and drove a performance driven-culture.
• Improved cash-up system processes for efficient month-end recon processes and management.
• Delivered a project that cleared a backlog of unallocated funds by process re-engineering, defining new system requirements and motivated staff to improve productivity.
• Ensured documentation of processes and ensured compliance with regulations and company policies.

Achievements

• Managed the debt review and administration collections strategy in Credit Risk department and ensured effective adoption by operations whilst streamlining processes.
• Determined and documented system requirements for Debt Intervention.
• Embedded the debt review strategy through facilitation of workshops and prescribed effective processes and process controls.
• Ensured colleague training of new strategies, processes and procedures.
• Kept up to date with industry changes and updating policies, standards and strategies
• Also, I represented Absa Debt Review at Banking Association of South Africa (BASA).
• Achieved zero audit and conformance findings through the creation of a strategy aligned with regulatory requirements and the embedment of improved processes and controls.

Achievements

• Performed As-Is value stream analysis and recommended process, system, people, resource solutions (focused on automation solutions) to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of business units.
• Designed To -Be value stream maps for optimal integration of processes, people and technology by analysing, researching, designing, and recommending innovative and cost-effective business processes.
• I have delivered projects that solved for process inefficiencies and backlogs in Private Bank Segment and Cash Operations.

Achievements

• Continuously improved products and processes to improve sales and reduce operating costs.
• Developed new products as per customer request by liaison with the sales department and customer to document product requirements.
• Determined root cause of product deviations and non-conforming results and implemented appropriate corrective and preventive actions throughout product development process.
• Improved existing products by keeping up to date with market trends and continuously improving manufacturing processes.
• Ensured efficient processes and effective controls through continuous improvement principles and identifying automation process opportunities.
• Ensured traceability of measurements and laboratory analysis and alignment to ISO quality standards.
• Designed packaging material and pallets that are suitable for the different types of products to maximise on container space used for shipment.
• Product returns reduced after I embedded process controls, quality assurance procedures and suitable shipment packaging.
• Designed products to two international companies that helped to save the company from closing down.

Responsibilities

• Managed the performance of the Concentrator and Laboratory.
• Executed process optimisation projects to improve plant efficiencies by utilising six sigma methodologies.
• Performed plant and process design during annual shutdown where I redesigned plant equipment specifications and process flow.
• Compiled weekly metallurgical accounting reports and month-end reports.