Head of Operations

1. PROFILE

Role Title: Head of Operations, Oman

Reporting to: Chief Operating Officer

1. CONTEXT

Ooredoo Group (OG) is one of the fastest growing telecom groups in the world.

Ooredoo Group is focused on managing the Group’s performance, strengthening its global presence, and entering selected adjacent markets.

As a result, OG has established a FinTech organisation – Ooredoo Fintech - committed to responsibly building an ambitious and innovative fintech business in the Middle East & North Africa region and beyond.

Ooredoo Fintech acts as a parent company and fully owns local fintech subsidiaries in each of the six target markets, which will hold the local regulatory license and permissions.

The local fintech subsidiaries will be responsible for execution in the local markets, for running compliant, efficient operations and for building capabilities (Centres of Excellence) that can be reused and leverage across the Group.

Leaders in Ooredoo Fintech will be tasked with building one of the most well-funded, ambitious and impactful ventures in the region, hence a few personal ingredients are essential:

• Gravitas, presence and remaining centred on the long-term vision.
• Ability to lead teams at scale.
• A vision and the ability to build capabilities that are effective in a market and – at the same time – designed to be leveraged across the entire Group
• Ability to think, act and deliver constantly and incrementally.
• Ability to lead and manage a wide array of partners suppliers and colleagues across multiple jurisdictions.
• Demonstrably operating with an attitude that is simultaneously structured, pragmatic, credible & courageous

1. ROLE PURPOSE

The Head of Operations, Oman is a business leader with track record in building resilient and efficient businesses.

He/she will make the Oman operations a superbly organised, modern, integrated organisation that conducts its business efficiently and responsibly - and builds capabilities that are reused across the Group

The role holder will be responsible for a broad range of Operational aspects in Ooredoo Fintech Oman, including:

• Customer Service
• Financial operations
• Compliance operations
• B2B Operations
• Partners Operations
• Partnerships with Ooredoo Oman

In addition, Oman will act as Center of Excellence for the Group for Customer Service and Financial Operations. The role holder will be responsible of designing, implementing and overseeing these two functions across the Group,

On many aspects, Ooredoo fintech starts from scratch or from low levels of harmonisation across countries, hence the ability to drive standardisation and automation at scale is key.

Being experts in the field, credible leaders and having a co-founder attitude to building the business is a must have.

1. ROLE ACCOUNTABILITIES

Customer service

Lead the Oman Operations

• Design, structure, and run all aspects of the customer service and customer care function, ensuring users (consumer and merchants) in Oman receive exceptional and accurate service
• Establish service levels and actively manage and monitor
• Take corrective actions when service level is not met.

Lead the Customer Service

• Lead the design, set up, implementation of customer service operations for the entire group across all markets.
• Achieve economies of scale by harmonising operating procedures and centralising activities where possible
• Manage the centralised operation and be accountable for the customer service performance (if centralisation happens);
• Ensure group standards and procedures are adopted across the group countries, monitored and continuously developed
• Be the primary interface for Group suppliers and manage their performance accordingly

Financial operations

Lead the Oman Operations

• Design, structure, and run all the operational aspects of financial operations, including: reconciliations with settlement banks, card providers, bill payment partners, payment gateways and all other partners
• Ensure daily, weekly, monthly monitoring of funds, inflow and outflow and manage discrepancies and incidents through effective, standardised processes
• Submit reporting and reconciliations to central banks and regulators, timely, when required
• Ensure capacity is in place, teams are trained and equipped with appropriate tools.

Lead the Finops Center Of excellence for the Group

• Lead the design, set up, implementation of Finance operations for the entire group across all markets.
• Achieve economies of scale by standardising and harmonising operating procedures and centralising activities where possible
• Manage the centralised operation and be accountable for performance (if centralisation happens);
• Coordinate with Ooredoo Fintech Finance team for accurate reporting and effective accounting processes
• Be the primary interface for Group suppliers and manage their performance accordingly
• Ensure group standards and procedures are adopted across the group countries, monitored and continuously developed

Compliance Operations

Lead the Oman Operations

• Design, structure, and run the operational aspects of compliance function including Anti Money Laundering Operations, Fraud Management Operations
• Manage inflow of cases/alerts, output, backlog. Ensure capacity is in place, teams are trained and equipped with appropriate tools.
• On a quarterly and yearly basis, coordinate the roadmap and the performance management with the with the Group Center of excellence (not in place yet, but likely to be set up in Qatar) to achieve a high degree of standardisation and harmonisation across the group

B2B Operations

Lead the Oman Operations

• Design, structure, and run all the operational aspects of the salary disbursemenmt operations, including user onboarding, employer onboarding and management, debit cards logistics/operations
• Ensure capacity is in place, teams are trained and equipped with appropriate tools.
• On a quarterly and yearly basis, coordinate the roadmap and the performance management with the with the Group Center of excellence (not in place yet, but likely to be set up in Qatar) to achieve a high degree of standardisation and harmonisation across the group

Partner Operations

Lead the Oman Operations

• Design, structure, and run all the operational aspects of the local partnerships with bill payment partners, payment gateways etc..
• Establish SLAs and monitor partners performance through appropriate forums
• Ensure procedures are set up, commonly adopted and teams are trained and equipped with appropriate tools. Ensure incidents are properly raised, tracked, resolved and reported
• Develop an ambitious plan for Oman to expand its partnerships landscape in new areas (lending, agents) and execute accordingly
• In partnership with Ooredoo Finetch COO, develop a vision for the Group Center of excellence for Partnerships to achieve a high degree of standardisation across the group

Partnerships with Ooredoo Oman

• Establish which services will be provided to Ooredoo Fintech by the relevant Ooredoo telecom business in each market (and vice versa)
• Define arm’s length contracts with the Ooredoo telecom business for the provision of services to Fintech and vice versa.
• Establish the governance for these agreements and manage deviations in service level, costs, outputs, where appropriate

• LEADERSHIP
• Be a structured, organised, credible leader, able to manage local operations as well as contributing to the rest of the Group via the Centers of excellence
• Be a leader of people – act as a role model at all times and coach, mentor and direct teams based on multiple geographies
• Make Ooredoo Fintech a superbly organised, modern, integrated organisation that conducts its business efficiently and responsibly.
• Instil a culture of continuous improvement in everything the business does.
• Bring focus, discipline and structure across all markets
• Act as a business builder, focused on the long success of the business

• Experience and Skills
• A business leader, with at least 2 decades of experience and proven track record of running a wide range of functions (operations, customer service, partnerships)
• Has led multi-country operations, with focus on automation & standardisation across markets
• Track record in business building – ideally internal scale up within large organisation, start-ups or Private Equity backed ventures.