Vodafone

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Role Purpose/Business Unit:

The Executive Head: Ventures Operations is responsible for defining, building, and scaling Vodacom Business’s ecosystem of strategic partnerships, ensuring they deliver value aligned to the business’s growth, innovation, and customer success strategies. This role leads the design and implementation of an enterprise-wide partnership framework, focusing on commercial excellence, joint value creation, innovation co-development, governance, and long-term business impact. The incumbent acts as the strategic lead across local and global partner engagements—across technology, commercial channels, OEMs, and strategic alliances—while enabling Vodacom Business to unlock competitive advantage through the partner ecosystem

Your responsibilities will include:

Strategy Formulation & Execution:

• Define and execute the strategic ventures/partner management framework across all Vodacom Business lines.
• Identify, evaluate, and prioritise high-value strategic partners across Telco Tech, Cloud, ICT, IoT and Fintech.
• Drive commercial due diligence and business case development with relevant lines of business for new and existing partnerships.
• Champion partnership-led innovation and co-creation in alignment with Vodacom’s growth priorities.
• Set strategic KPIs and commercial performance targets for partner contribution to revenue and margin.
• Shape multi-year partner roadmaps and portfolio strategies with cross-functional stakeholders.
• Analyse the market white space to identify new partners, channels and proposition opportunities within defined areas of growth
• Provide partnership strategy assistance to subsidiary companies to drive growth and achieve business objectives.

Business Enablement & Value Creation

• Lead onboarding, contracting, and commercial negotiations for all Tier 1 partnerships.
• Establish performance measurement tools, scorecards, and review cadences to ensure accountability.
• Work with product and GTM teams to launch joint propositions and accelerate time-to-market.
• Facilitate sales enablement with partner solution integration, training, and playbooks.
• Identify funding or co-investment opportunities from strategic partners to accelerate market impact.
• Management of rebates and marketing development funds from partners to ensure transparency in VB.
• Support the account teams and LOBs at partner negotiations
• Drive Vodacom Business brand elevation through thought leadership on market trends, customer insights and technology innovation, in collaboration with the marketing team.

Ecosystem, Governance & Risk Management

• Design and operationalize a governance framework that covers partner tiers, types, and lifecycle stages.
• Chair regular Partner Review Boards to monitor execution, innovation delivery, and compliance.
• Mitigate risks across contractual, reputational, and operational areas by implementing best practices.
• Ensure partner compliance with regulatory, data privacy, and security frameworks.

Stakeholder and Relationship Management

• Establish executive-level relationships with key partners to advance shared strategic goals.
• Build trust-based engagement models across internal and external stakeholders.
• Act as the executive sponsor in critical partnerships, ensuring escalations are resolved swiftly.
• Collaborate with Marketing and Comms to enhance Vodacom’s thought leadership and partner visibility.

Delivering through People:

• Lead a high-performing Ventures team, fostering innovation, agility, and commercial acumen.
• Embed a culture of ownership, strategic thinking, and excellence.
• Conduct ongoing skills gap assessments and ensure upskilling in partner management methodologies.
• Drive team motivation and recognition initiatives, aligned with the Spirit of Vodacom
• Oversee the activities of the team to ensure effective delivery of business outcomes.
• Supports and enable the team to succeed by encouraging frequent knowledge sharing between team members amongst other enablement initiatives.
• When required, initiate disciplinary processes for team members calling on support from HR when required
• Resolve grievances raised by team members and escalate only if required

The ideal candidate for this role will have:

• B Degree/Equivalent
• A Post Graduate Degree in Business or related fields.
• 8+ years in Strategic Partnerships/Ventures, Business, Strategy
• Proven experience in structuring and scaling large enterprise or technology partnerships
• Strong exposure to deal-making, contracting, and innovation ecosystems
• Experience working in multinational matrix organisations within ICT, Telco, or Tech sectors
• Pragmatic and hands-on, strong ability to execute and deliver plans and projects by way of own crafting
• Building strong, collaborative and trusting partnerships and team relationships as well as structuring organisations
• Strong understanding of the technology landscape and industry trends.

Technical Competencies

• Strategic Partner Management and ROI optimization
• Joint proposition development and partner co-innovation
• Enterprise engagements, including solutioning
• Governance, contracting, and legal fluency in partnership contexts
• Digital ecosystem strategy and transformation enablement
• Familiarity with South African and global ICT partnership landscapes
• Strategic mind set and out of box thinking
• Strong communication skills and the ability to interact comfortably with a cross-section of management, including C-suite executives, at a global level
• Strategic Thinking: Effectively delivers against assigned strategy, exceeding expectations. Translates strategy into clear areas of focus and priorities
• Understanding of SA business landscape
• Understanding of the Value Chain Analysis with regards to various partner businesses.

Behavioural Competencies

• Commercial Acumen and Decision-Making
• Customer Centricity and Market Insight
• Collaboration, Influence, and Executive Presence
• Accountability and Results Orientation
• People Management and Organisational Agility
• Strategic Orientation and Visionary Leadership
• Accountability: seeks feedback and identifies opportunities for improvement or innovation
• Collaboration: Actively fosters collaboration, seeks input and effectively partners
• Resilience: Actively seeks opportunities for growth, demonstrates a strong commitment to self-improvement and has a growth mindset
• Flexibility: uses various techniques to influence others (lobbies, approaches decision makers, finds sponsors)
• People Management: Ensure team work together to deliver on their responsibilities creating accountability and ownership

Closing date for Applications: 21 August 2025.

The base location for this role is Vodacom, Midrand Campus.

The company's approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.

Vodacom is committed to an organisational culture that recognises, appreciates, and values diversity & inclusion.