Director - Digital Services & Partnerships

Director - Digital Services & Partnerships

Job details

Job overview 

• Lead the development, launching, and managing of digital product propositions and corresponding partnerships. 
• Oversee the establishment of partnerships with vendors to deliver profitable new digital services and revenue streams for Ooredoo Group. 
• Role holder is responsible to lead for Ooredoo group this vertical with more than 5% of Group revenues and more than 15% Group free cash flow contribution. Objective is to increase this progressively further with double digit growth rates. 
• Sets and executes the strategy for building partnerships and conceptualizing, developing, and delivering digital products and services. 
• Focus on :
  • B2C, including Digital, VAS and Platforms (e.g. Gaming); 
  • B2B2C, including messaging, mobile advertisements, TV; and API monetization
  • B2B including data monetization, cloud services, IOT, and hosting services among others. 
  • Develop an enablement layer foundation for unlocking a digital partnership economy

Your impact on our goals

• Portfolio Management of Existing Digital Services and Partnerships
• Develop and drive the development of the Group partnerships strategy to leverage Ooredoo Group scale and support OpCos in delivery of non-core revenue growth 
• Create digital & partnerships roadmaps to be followed for all endeavours
• Direct Ooredoo Group team to review the current portfolio of Digital Services & Partnerships across the Group and identify gaps in availability and sourcing of new partners to launch new services 
• Review existing standalone contracts in Opcos with partners for synergies through cross-OpCos deals, identify & quantify those synergies, align top management stakeholders in Opcos to support cross Opco deals, lead negotiations to establish cross-OpCo deals realizing synergies through better commercial terms or broader access to new services
• Analyse digital service partnering & platform activities of telco peers (local, regional) as well as emergent trends for opportunities or threats and embed conclusions into the digital services partnering strategy
• Define and oversee implementation of the strategy for development of a robust and innovative B2B, B2C, and B2B2C digital services and partnerships portfolio, including framework, business model, enablement tools, platform requirements, customer experience and market strategies
  • B2C – service examples: Direct carrier billing, bundled content propositions, Video, Games, Music partnerships, Storage, AI products etc.
  • B2B – service examples: software sales, cloud storage, hosting, business VAS services etc
  • B2B2C/wholesale – service examples: A2P, RCS & CPaaS, API monetization & wholesale deals, mobile advertising, communication services
• Guide & advise OpCos in selecting the best solutions / partners for their markets RFPs, contracts, frameworks and assisting in answering questions, providing guidance on final solution selection, etc. 
• Cooperate w/ OpCos in closing gaps in availability, devise/ develop with OpCo implementation approach & timelines and facilitate coordination between partners & OpCos for local implementation
• Act as a Digital Services and Partnerships SPOC in Ooredoo Group for various functions for their relevant projects which need OG involvement (Group Corporate Governance, Group Internal Audit, Group Legal, Group Finance, etc.) as well as for key digital service partners as the Ooredoo SPOC for partnering requests (e.g. Microsoft, Google, Sinch, InfoBip, …) and coordination into the Ooredoo organisation
• Analyse/Review reporting for Digital Services financial performance, 
  • Develop initiative/actions to capture opportunities or mitigate shortfalls in performance in regular quarterly/monthly cadence. 
  • Prepare & provide read-out/present read-out to Group Chief Strategy Officer regularly along reporting cadence. 
  • Prepare top management ready presentation/discussion material & present to Group Management Committee (GMC) or other Group top management forums where required on performance, strategy and initiatives of digital services at Ooredoo Group.
  • When needed attend performance review sessions with OpCos for overall performance monthly, provide inputs to respective review questions from Group and highlight performance issues to OpCo top management where applicable.
  • Establish/conduct regular quarterly exchange meetings with OpCos on Digital Services to review across Opcos with OpCos their performance, lessons learnt, best practices and capture required needs/inputs/actions from Group and execute on those in alignment with Group stakeholders.
  • Review performance of top 5 external digital services partners on a quarterly base along clearly defined metrics and KPIs, provide those reviews as reports and highlight any operational issues faced and improvement opportunities to vendors for actions, follow up on actions. Syndicate potential OpCo feedback for the performance reviews of digital service partners and invite OpCos to those reviews.
• New Business Development for New Digital Services
  • Identify trends for promising business opportunities in the digital service space that are suitable to drive profitable digital service revenue growth for Ooredoo, wrap those trends in an annual framework that bolts-on to existing service category and develop for each respective area a viewpoint, target partner list, target commercial structures & conditions, Go-To-Market strategy/tactics and respective action list to develop a new partner portfolio for the identified segment.
  • Align framework for new business development areas/focus verticals with respective Group Functions (e.g. technology, commercial, …) and respective OpCos in quarterly exchange meetings (see above) and move forward to implementation with OpCos. Where applicable develop a RACI logic for each respective area on who does what between Group and OpCo.
• Lead in group wide programs for digital service categories where this applies (Support in creating a Group wide strategy for Pay-TV/OTT TV/SVOD that is flexible to work in each of the OpCos)

OpCo Enablement & Best Practice Sharing 

• Lead with Group function support the identification of required enablement tools, support / managed services requirements, MSP/SI requirements etc for Group projects on digital services or OpCo enablement to operate digital services on a common delivery stack where applicable.
• Ensure development and dissemination to all OpCos, best practice guidelines for content services/digital VAS services to drive through improvements in revenue and operational effectiveness across the Group of companies. This includes sharing learnings form the different OpCos content teams. 

Innovation Facilitation

• Develop annual innovation strategy with clear priorities and follow through on identified priorities in alignment with OpCos. Focus on innovations to drive efficiency and effectiveness of the telco business model.
• Maintain innovation leadership exchange team as exchange forum for key innovation projects of OpCos and innovation priorities of Ooredoo Group
• Execute POCs in those priority fields after alignment with relevant Ooredoo Group functions to test hypothesis with a lead OpCo and review performance. Facilitate roll-out on a broader base throughout Group in case of successful POCs
• Maintain relationship network with key forums for innovation in the telecoms space.

Policy, Processes, Compliance

• Develop processes, rules, procedures, and policies that will be executed by the digital services teams in the OpCos and at Ooredoo Group (e.g product lifecycle, vendor and customer lifecycle management, partner selection, product launch, B2B marketplace, etc.)
• Align the respective policies and processes with local OpCo’s policies and processes 
• Responsible for supplier integrity checks based on the rules & process developed for this purpose
• Assure confidentiality of the data according with company’s rules
• Ensure compliance with the Group Digital Services & Partnerships policies, processes, procedures and rules
• Monitor the existing processes and mechanisms to ensure that the Digital Services & Partnerships process and the relevant Group Digital Services and Partnerships contracts are performed/ issued in accordance with the relevant approvals as per authority matrix
• Be accountable to the Audit function regarding department’s initiatives
• Ensure placement of appropriate controls on the Digital Services & Partnerships activities and collaborate with stakeholders to ensure the implementation of the relevant action plans within the committed deadline

Budgeting/Planning

• Develop financial plan and identify required budgets for digital service function at Ooredoo Group, align with Senior Director Propositions, Digital Services and Partnerships and with GCCO and provide as input to OG headquarter planning
• Review of OpCo financial plans for digital services in annual planning cycle with respective challenging where required.
• Lead for development of market views for the digital service segment in our OpCo markets for addressable markets together with strategic planning & performance management team and mirroring market growth vs OpCo growth profile for digital services.

People management

• Lead team activities, provides guidance and support, and monitor workload and priorities 
• Develop team members and support in their professional development goals in coordination with OGHR
• Manage team performance and strive to improve employees with OGHR support

Team dynamics 

Internal             

• Relevant Group Senior stakeholders: Commercial, Branding, Technology Internal Audit, Corporate Governance, Finance, Legal & Regulatory & Strategic Sourcing. 
• Ooredoo OpCos, Commercial/Marketing, Security, IT, TV, Technology, Finance, Legal & Regulatory, and Local Procurement teams.

External

• Group and OpCo MSP’s, vendors & 
• Digital partners

Your profile

Experience      

• 15 years relevant Telecom experience favorably with experience on the MSP or ISV side. Experience working with multiple ISV’s and commercial product lifecycle management. 
• Experience in B2B, B2C, B2C2B and ICT product conceptualization, development, and monetization, creating value propositions for specific market segments
• Performance management experience, of which 6-8years should be in telecommunications 
• Expert knowledge of digital services and partnerships management, enablement tools, Operations management, & working in a highly competitive market environment with in-depth knowledge & expertise in building business cases and feasibility studies for new product & solution development
• Experience and understanding of the regional and international digital services landscape 
• Researching and establishing new digital revenue stream opportunities across the Group 
• Extensive experience in pricing, ideally in prepaid as well as post-paid arenas.
• Demonstrated track record and Expert Knowledge in customer insights, segmentation, and propensity modelling.
• Proven expertise in measuring supplier performance in relevant telecommunications supplier markets
• API experience to analyze commercial viability of projects.
• Experience in conducting internal audits desirable
• PowerPoint presentation and Excel modeling skills

Qualifications

• Minimum bachelor’s degree in a business/IT and/or IS discipline. Master degree would be considered a plus and PMP certification desirable.
• Written/oral fluency in English. Arabic language is preferred, but not mandatory

Must-have skills 

Technical

• Commercial acumen and analysis -Advanced
• Digital Technology Knowledge - Intermediate
• Business Partnering - Advanced
• Financial Analysis - Advanced
• Product Development and lifecycle Management - Advanced
• Corporate Performance Management - Intermediate
• Leading practice analysis - Intermediate
• Industry innovations, trends and commercials - Advanced
• Conceiving, identifying, exploring, and building strategic partnerships - Advanced
• Strong critical thinking skills -   Advanced
• Entrepreneurship – Intermediate
• Solid project management skills -Intermediate 

Behavioural

• Networking & Influencing Collaboratively -Advanced 
• Delivering Results & Fostering Ownership -Advanced 
• Building Customer Value - Advanced 
• Leading Teams - Advanced 
• Driving Change - Advanced 
• Shaping Strategy - Advanced

Join a purpose-driven, forward-thinking team

At Ooredoo, you’re stepping into a place where your growth truly matters. We’re building a digital future that’s better for people and communities, and we believe that starts with empowering our own teams to learn, stretch, and shine.

Whatever your role, you’ll work on meaningful projects, grow your skills, and help create real value for our customers and the world around us.

Join us — and let your Ooredoo growth journey begin.