- Johannesburg
- Salary: Market Related
- Job Type: Permanent
- Sectors: IT Technology
- Reference: 2143700
Vacancy Details
Employer: Sizwe Africa IT Group
Purpose:
To lead the Data Centre Infrastructure and Cloud Computing Solutions team towards achieving commercial, solution, service and strategic objectives to ensure increased profits and market penetration. To providing customers with full end-to-end solutions, including Data Centre Infrastructure design and build, Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud solutions as well as remote and on-site support, all tied up with a customer enhanced service level agreement designed to suit our customers business needs. Support and assist inter Portfolio, Sales, Service Delivery, OEM and Partnership teams while in compliance with the Sizwe governance model.
Key objective:
- Provide leadership across this portfolio in compiling, enhancing, researching, and lead the commercial, financial, marketing and value proposition to all internal teams and external customers.
- Support and assist the Sales teams nationally with solutions crafting, pricing and subject matter expert(s) focusing on delivering Data Centre Infrastructure, Private, Public and Hybrid Compute, Storage, Virtualization, Hyperconverged and Containerization solutions to our customers.
- Support and assist the Service Delivery team(s) nationally, including service management.
- Oversee the development of Data Centre Infrastructure and Cloud solutions by gathering customer requirements; conferring with users; providing best fit vendor agnostic solutions;
- Provide Presales, and technical leadership on Data Centre Infrastructure and Cloud modernization, showcasing a deep understanding of platform services and how to use them to develop innovative solutions for our clients.
- Grow, engage and manage technology partner(s) OEMs where required, pertaining to this Portfolio (e.g. Azure, VMWare Cloud Director (VCD), Huawei).
- Support in ensuring that Data Centre and Cloud solutions are Cloud-optimized and well architected, enabling customers to reap the benefits of their elasticity, horizontal scalability, automation and high availability.
- Act as a visionary and strategist for the Solution area and create, evaluate and implement high-level plans and design proposals for Sizwe solutions;
- Achievement of the collective profit targets of your respective Portfolio by selling solutions balanced across all our Portfolio offerings.
- Be accountable for the technical validation of solutions within your Portfolio, proposed to current and potential customers, including liaising with Sizwe Sales, Service Delivery, and OEMs and Partnership teams.
- Within the solution development lifecycle, this role will be responsible for leading the Solution Qualification Scorecard (SQS), solution evaluation and selection, buy vs. build decisions, all cost-elements of the solution, early-phase project estimates which contribute to the business case, high-level designs (HLD), low-level designs (LLD) and compilation of Statement of Work (SoW) schedules.
- Work with the wider Sizwe team to assist on opportunities which fall outside primary responsibilities where required.
- Lead and Grow the product selection and sizing within your Portfolio, complex solution design and multi-vendor integration, and facilitate product demonstrations and customer proof of concept engagements.
- Be responsible for the collection of all pricing elements to build the solution proposal and the inclusion and leading of all Sizwe teams during the Deal Approval Committee (DAC), Solution Review, Commercial Review and pre-submission proposal processes to customers. Manage and meet profit targets.
Key tasks:
CLIENTS
- Support and maintain existing hosted clients with related sold services, DRaaS, BCaaS, etc;
- Attend to customer visits, SLA meetings, and related services meetings if and when required;
- Manage client sold service complaints and/or challenges;
- Support revenue generation team in developing skills to execute effective and efficient face to face engagement(s) with existing and new clients;
- Support service delivery team in developing skills to execute effective and efficient in compliance with portfolio requirements and ensure service management engagement with clients;
- Build and maintain strong client relationships to support the revenue generation team in achieving targets;
- Make sure that the sold services is fully understood and communicated to all internal stakeholders;
- Constantly seek and get client satisfaction feedback on a monthly basis;
- Deliver Strategic workshops to clients if and when required and build strong client relationships;
- Compile, support and deliver complete proposals / write-ups and commercial costing to the Bid Management team and other stakeholders, as and when required.
PEOPLE MANAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
- Manage and mentor a team of Solutions Architects within your scope of responsibilities;
- Hire, train, coach and motivate Solutions Architect team in achieving our set out objectives;
- Coach and develop the team in four critical areas: client engagement, client knowledge, technical and industry knowledge and the consistent application of the disciplines required to deliver on target;
- Develop and maintain superior performance standards for the organisation (coaching and performance standards, call activity, forecasting, client relationship management);
- Contributed to positive changes in key areas including: improvements in the company’s efficiencies, shortening revenue generation cycles, and further improving employee morale and motivation;
- Ensuring the team remains focused on delivering exceptional client experiences whilst respecting company policies, procedures, and profit margins;
- Assist employees in identifying gaps in their performance followed by the development of action plans that result in improvements in client relationships, service and teamwork;
- Hold and document weekly meetings and monthly meetings with your team;
- Make sure that your people feel ”safe” to speak honestly and openly in a Sizwe environment;
- Solicit feedback from direct reports in order to meet your objectives by holding one-on-one and weekly team meetings;
- Where direct reports are not meeting their agreed performance, discuss and agree on corrective actions and a development plan to improve the performance within an agreed timeframe;
- Manage disciplinary process if and when required;
SELF DEVELOPMENT
- Grow and Ensure compliance as a subject matter expert within this portfolio;
- Research and build knowledge and skills in order to be an effective leader within this portfolio and related technologies and offerings;
- Be proficient in presentation skills, financial and commercial management, relevant innovation skills, service management, systems and service delivery processes;
- Solicit feedback from peers, managers and employees as to your strengths and areas of development;
- Ensure personal compliance with technology partner(s) (OEM) certifications;
- Maintain all minimum certifications as agreed with the portfolio strategy;
- Attend to technology partner(s) OEM’s training scheduled timeously;
- Prepare training and development plans for yourself bearing in mind your areas of development and career objectives.
TEAM WORK
- Ensure a customer centricity approach in collaborating with internal teams with the objective of providing fit-for-purpose, Vendor Agnostic solutions to current and future customers;
- Contribute openly and honestly at all internal and customer facing meeting meetings;
- Be a team player and ensure your people are too;
- Solicit and accept any feedback from both your internal and external stakeholders.
MANAGE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS:
- Identify the relevant role players in accordance with business requirements and dependencies;
- Set-up meetings with the role players to discuss the roles and responsibilities and possible areas of cooperation, improvement and conflict;
- Obtain mutual agreement on the resolution of issues, meetings required and the delivery of inter-dependent outputs and results;
- Agree to the expected outcomes from each party and assist in the setting up of SLA’s where required;
- Monitor the performance of all relevant role players continuously to ensure that the agreements are honoured;
- Inform the relevant role players of the outcomes, deviations and actions required;
- Implement continuous follow-up to ensure that the relationship is maintained;
- Manage relationships in accordance with policies, procedures and legal requirements; and
- Manage relationships within the allocated time frame.
- Monitor and review opportunities in order to qualify opportunities as early as possible in the cycle;
COMPILATION OF MANAGEMENT REPORTS:
- Compile extra-ordinary Portfolio reports based on specific needs and/or projects and present to Executive and Executive teams;
- Collect required data from all relevant sources, and verify the data to ensure that only applicable information is utilized for customers monthly or quarterly reporting;
- Collate the information into the required format for producing your customer reports to the Service Delivery team members based on agreed customer SLAs;
- Generate the report utilizing the information in accordance with policies and procedures;
- Make recommendations in accordance with the information at hand;
- Distribute reports to the relevant internal stakeholders and OEMs;
- Present high-level weekly and monthly reports to Executive, if and when required.
MANAGE GROUP PERFORMANCE
- Manage the capturing of the metrics on the performance management instruments and mechanisms on a Quarterly basis;
- Continuously ensure that the performance metrics are updated to obtain validity, accuracy and integrity of information;
- Develop and implement the necessary quality management systems and policies to ensure that service delivery to the client is maintained at the desired standards.
PORTFOLIO CLUSTER
- Constantly work with multiple inter Portfolio teams ensuring consistent, integrated working relationship between solution architects, presales consultants, technology team, clients and employees and revenue generation teams to make sure that you and your team always have cover on our strategy execution, innovation, planned revenue and profit targets;
- Lead the responsible Solutions Architects and Subject matter Experts in compliance with goals, targets of the Portfolio Cluster and entire Sizwe;
- Make sure that all internal stakeholders are thoroughly familiar with the detail of the portfolio’s commercial, technical, business, service delivery and financial value;
- Assist and support the revenue generation team(s) and empower them with the required skills and techniques in order to position and sell portfolio in the agreed market space;
- Make sure that the portfolio team create, support, and enhance in compliance with the Sizwe processes;
- Constantly review, enhance, GROW, innovate and update the portfolio offering in support of value creation, profitability and growth;
- Monitor and review opportunities in order to qualify opportunities as early as possible in the cycle and match captured qualified opportunities against correct Solution Block offering;
- Work closely with the other Portfolio Managers, and Teams;
- Work closely with the Product Solutions Managers and Teams;
- Work closely with the Sales and Marketing Team;
- Provide detail reporting on the status of your Portfolio to the Executive on a weekly and monthly basis;
TRANSFORMATION
- Make sure that you and your team leads the way in terms of transformation, specifically;
- Understand and be able to communicate positively around transformation internally and externally to all our clients and stakeholders;
- Comply with demographic requirements and targets;
- Make sure that your PDI’s are managed appropriately with all the help they need in order to succeed, lead in this area as you are an ambassador for Sizwe;
- Make sure that you build a culture of Respect, Trust, Transparency, Integrity, Openness and Honesty within Sizwe and externally
GENERAL
- Ensure that all systems and documentation is administered and kept up to date as per the Company process and requirements;
- Any ad hoc function required to perform from Executive from time to time
Candidate Requirements
Experience:
Data Centre’s Infrastructure and Hyperconverged technologies experience. Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud platforms exposure. Sound knowledge and hands-on experience on IaaS, PaaS, SaaS Cloud platforms (Azure, Huawei, VCD), VMWare ESXi, VMWare vSphere v8, Veeam, CommVault, SUSE Linux, Windows Server 2016/2019, DELL, HPE, Lenovo, Fujitsu, Huawei Server and Storage skills required.
Education:
- Grade 12 or equivalent NQF level 7 qualification
- IT related degree (or equivalent NQF7)
Minimum requirements:
- Minimum 5 years management experience on a senior level with the specific knowledge to the collection of this portfolio;
- A customer centricity mind set by always putting the customer first, and a team orientated approach working across internal teams within Sizwe in delivering revenue generating and fit-for-purpose solutions for our customers;
- Sound knowledge of the commercial components of the portfolio, differentiation, value proposition, skills and processes required to remain competitive;
- Good knowledge of the related and associated portfolio(s), technologies and components of the portfolio, including the bodies involved and the legislation and regulations controlling the environment in which your portfolio operates, this will include Data Centre Infrastructure and Cloud Computing Architectures;
- Sound management of the portfolio team, including but not limited to recruitment and selection of employees, performance measurement and management processes;
- Thorough knowledge of the documentation, proposal write-ups’, cost elements, pricing, responses, marketing material and initiatives that drive value creation for customers within your scope;
- Knowledge and understanding of the principles of business, the application thereof, the opportunities within business and the seizure of such opportunities;
- Sound knowledge and understanding of the business processes implemented and the relationship to the performance management of Sizwe to ensure achievement of business targets;
- Advanced business presentation skills both in the compilation of a presentation and the actual presenting;
- The ability to identify the relevant role players involved in critical relationships and manage the relationships to ensure the success of the business;
- The ability to apply solution design thinking processes to different situations and transfer the competence to new situations;
- The ability to negotiate with role players and arrive at a win-win situation in the best interest of the organisation and the negotiating party;
- Knowledge and understanding of the management and development of human capital in accordance with business needs and objectives;
- The ability to accurately give an account of information pertaining to the performance of outputs;
- The ability to maintain confidentiality at all times when dealing with situations;
- The ability to attend to finite detail whilst executing outputs to ensure the quality of service;
- Managing the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards;
- Willing to work extended working hours;
- Willing to travel if and when required;
- Own transport with valid driver’s license;
- Work in compliance with - and enhancement of the Sizwe various Governance and management systems (ISO) including but not limited to the accepted roles and responsibilities with the required systems;
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About Sizwe Africa IT Group
About Sizwe Africa IT Group
Sizwe Africa IT Group is one of South Africa’s leading integrated IT solutions providers. It is a passionate, skilled and rapidly-expanding partner of choice for many progressive organisations; both in the public and private sector.
Over the past 20 years, Sizwe has established a nationwide footprint on the back of an impressive track record based on its ability to provide and deploy effective, resilient and reliable solutions.
Sizwe also partners with leading hardware and software vendors.
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