Product Manager - Finance & Accounting

Reporting to:

Senior Product Manager - Operation Excellence

Future career growth:

Leading finance and account management system along with revenue authorities integrations at Wasoko.

Summary:

Seeking a data-driven professional with 4+ years of experience managing finance and accounts product life cycles with the heavy use of tools and algorithms to maximize Wasoko’s investments into operations activities by supporting the improvement of the current financial and accounting systems like SAP.

Location: Fumba, Zanzibar or Bangalore, India or Nairobi

Responsibilities

• Create and own the product roadmap planning processes for Wasoko Finance requirements
• Formulate and execute a rolling product roadmap in support of portfolio plans. Identify, marshal and organize resources to meet required goals
• Lead new product introduction efforts within specific goals for team leadership, accounting processes and designs, schedule, cost, quality, availability and order cycle time goals
• Engage with internal vendor partners to create, implement and maintain product change management processes within the financial systems
• Align matrices with team members from across all functions to develop new product plans and sustaining change management processes. Typical functions include Planning, technical project management, Finance, Reporting etc.
• Represent the finance product design team. Use production expertise to influence and negotiate for optimized accounting operations
• Communicate project status updates to various project stakeholders, including team members and executives. Synthesize a multitude of issues into a clear, concise and focused message. Present with confidence and brevity.
• Always push the leading edge of innovation and excellence and program management practices.
• Stay abreast of latest advancements in technology, competition, industry developments, and regulatory environment.
• Help implement best industry standards and best practices in the financial and accounting processes and systems

Requirements

• 4+ years of experience working with accounting and/or field force for multi-location teams
• Mandatory experience in working on SAP system
• Experience with african market or similar geography to understand the market dynamics of different payment methods and reconciliation for accounting
• Experience with automation tools like Excel/VBA/Zapier or programming languages to achieve the same
• General manager/owner mentality, entrepreneurial drive, and proven ability to take ownership and influence others
• Proven ability to drive cohesion and collaboration among many different people & functions
• Confidence, presence, and credibility to command the respect of colleagues and senior stakeholders, especially within Sales, Operations and Engineering
• Extensive knowledge of product lifecycle management, product strategies, product requirements and roadmap planning, and product requirements decision making
• Exceptional communication skills which include clear written and verbal communication as well as the ability to listen effectively.
• Excellent creative thinking skills with an emphasis on developing innovative solutions to solve complex problems that may not have one clear answer
• Demonstrable capability to negotiate requirements and decisions effectively across a diverse range of teams and to lead through influence
• Ability to create, formalize, and implement, a product portfolio strategy
• Ability to influence cross-culturally across a range of global stakeholders in the engineering, operations, and marketing organizations
• Proven ability to execute in all phases of the product development life cycle, resulting in high-quality software or IoT hardware products, delivered on time
• Demonstrated ability to work in a self-directed manner, seeking out areas that need attention, rather than being asked to look at specific problem areas
• Outstanding technical problem-solving skills and a passion to solve hard problems

• Strong program management skill set with the ability to lead cross-functional teams