The Role

The Service Delivery Manager acts as the client’s advocate, ensuring services and products meet expectations while driving adoption and performance. They monitor delivery quality, resolve issues, and implement improvements at both operational and product levels. Through proactive communication and governance, they build trust within the client’s organisation, achieve customer satisfaction, and position the organisation as a strategic partner.

Responsibilities

• Client Relationship Management
  • Manage Client Expectations: Serve as the primary point of contact for clients, ensuring that their expectations align with service offerings.
  • Service Reviews and Reporting: Conduct regular service reviews with clients to discuss product performance, identify areas for improvement, and address any concerns.
  • Client Satisfaction: Monitor client satisfaction metrics, handle complaints, and proactively address issues to enhance the overall client experience.

• Service Performance and Quality Assurance
  • Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Develop and track that all services meet agreed SLAs and key performance indicators (KPIs), reporting any deviations to clients and management.
  • Continuous Improvement: Identify opportunities for process improvements and implement changes to enhance service delivery quality.
  • Performance Tracking: Regularly monitor, analyse, and report on service delivery metrics, identifying trends or issues that may impact service quality.
  • Compliance Assurance: Drive and contribute in compliance requirements and questionnaires raised by clients with regards to the Product offering.
  • Contract Renewal and Negotiations: Support contract renewals, negotiating service terms to meet both the business and the client needs.

• Incident and Problem Management
  • Issue Resolution: Coordinate and oversee the resolution of incidents, ensuring timely response and effective communication with clients.
  • Root Cause Analysis (RCA): Coordinate and oversee incident review sessions with internal teams. Set out clear improvement plans to avoid future recurrence. Discuss the detailed RCA with clients to ensure alignment with relevant feedback.
  • Incident Management: Lead response efforts during service disruptions, maintaining client communication and coordinating with technical teams to restore normal operations.

• Coordination with Business, Technical and Product Teams
  • Collaboration with Teams: Liaise with business, product and development stakeholders to ensure smooth client product rollouts and track performance.
  • Change Management: Oversee the implementation of product updates or service changes (hosted or client on-prem), managing client communication and post-implementation support.
  • Technical Escalations: Act as an escalation point for complex technical issues, coordinating with engineering and hosting teams to ensure timely resolution.

• Process Development and Standardisation
  • Service Delivery Processes: Develop and document service delivery processes, ensuring they are efficient, scalable, and aligned with best practices.
  • Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs): Create and maintain SOPs to ensure consistency in how services are delivered and to facilitate training for team members.
  • Automation and Innovation: Identify areas for automation within the service delivery realm to increase efficiency and reduce manual effort.

• Stakeholder and Executive Reporting
  • Executive Updates: Provide regular updates to senior management on service delivery performance, issues / risks, and improvement initiatives.
  • Dashboard and Report Creation: Design and scope dashboards and reports that highlight key service metrics for internal and external stakeholders.
  • Project Status Reporting and Handovers: For new implementations or upgrades, regularly update stakeholders on progress, risks, and issues to ensure timely delivery. Ensure smooth transition of projects into the wider operations team by adopting the standard way of working.

• Strategic Service Planning
  • Client Growth Support: Work closely with account management and sales teams to support client product adoption and growth, including scoping additional services or adjustments to meet evolving needs.
  • Long-Term Service Strategy: Develop and implement strategies to enhance the long-term quality and scalability of service delivery team and the wider operations team.

Skills and Experience

Successful candidates for this role will generally possess the following qualifications and skills:

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent.
• 5 Years of experience or more in managing relationships as a SDM or similar role, including contract negotiation, performance evaluation, and issue resolution. (Essential)
• Extensive experience in developing, negotiating, and managing SLAs to ensure that services provided meet or exceed agreed-upon standards.
• Strong background in managing and resolving incidents and problems related to clients or 3rd Party services, demonstrating the ability to minimize service disruptions effectively. (Essential)
• Analytical and problem-solving abilities to address service delivery issues and optimise performance.
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to lead cross-functional teams, foster collaboration, and drive service provider performance to achieve organizational objectives.
• Deep understanding of service management principles, frameworks (such as ITIL), and best practices to ensure the efficient and effective delivery of services. (Essential)
• Project Management experience to plan, organise, and coordinate teams, timelines, and deliverables.
• Strong verbal communication skills and the ability to influence team members and stakeholders.
• Experience in creating and delivering reports and presentations to clients.
• Experience with Hosted or SaaS offerings preferable in an AWS environment.
• Experience in EMV 3-D Secure and card-not-present (CNP) e-commerce environment (beneficial).
• Experience in a range of Authentication Products (In-App Auth, Fido, NIUSSD etc.) (beneficial)
• Experience in Mobile Application and SDK support to clients (beneficial).
• Expertise in Salesforce (beneficial).
• Experience in Reporting tools like PowerBI, Tableau or similar.
• Experience in Monitoring and Fault-finding tools like Opsgenie, Prometheus, Kibana, Zabbix.
• Experience accessing and manipulating data using SQL or Python (beneficial).

Personality Attributes

• Ownership Mindset: Must have high degree of initiative and passion to improve the overall client engagement.
• Leadership Traits: Must be able to aid in advocating and driving an initiative to completion through professionalism, confidence and cooperation.
• Team Building Skills: Must be a collaborative team player.
• Business Acumen: Must have strong business acumen including the ability to (i) think strategically, frame for success and execute tactically; (ii) prioritize work effort; and (iii) deliver results over the short, medium and long term.
• Strong Problem-Solving Skills: Ability to identify a problem's root cause and identify the solution that will drive maximum impact.

Additional Requirement

• Able to work daily core hours of 11h00-19h00 SAST, for sufficient overlap with our key US clients.