Manager: Value Realization

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

Job Summary

This role is accountable for maximizing return on investment across Business Banking’s transformation portfolio. The role ensures that all initiatives are strategically aligned, properly prioritised, and consistently tracked for benefits delivery. This leader orchestrates value governance, harmonises cross-functional delivery teams, drives financial and non-financial value outcomes, and embeds a culture of performance accountability. This role is instrumental in enabling Business Banking’s ambition to become the Bank of the Entrepreneur by ensuring that change efforts translate into real, measurable, sustainable business value.

KEY FOCUS AREAS

• Drive portfolio-wide value realisation to maximise ROI across Business Banking transformation initiatives.

• Align strategic priorities and ensure initiatives support Business Banking’s long‑term objectives.

• Lead benefits realisation processes, from value identification to tracking and reporting.

• Optimise delivery outcomes by applying structured portfolio, programme and value management frameworks and enhance decision-making through data-driven insights, analytics and executive-ready reporting.

• Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to ensure cohesive, integrated execution and strengthen governance by embedding value frameworks, performance scorecards and accountability mechanisms.

• Champion continuous improvement, operational excellence and best-practice delivery methodologies by supporting digital and data transformation by integrating analytics, dashboards and automation into value tracking.

• Influence senior leaders and drive alignment on strategic trade-offs, priorities and value outcome

ACCOUNTABILITIES

Strategy Formulation and Execution

• Translate strategic objectives into operational plans with clear deliverables, timelines, and performance measures.

• Align team or practice area priorities with business goals, ensuring tactical execution supports broader strategic outcomes.

• Monitor progress, identify risks, and implement corrective actions to ensure delivery.

• Translate Business Banking strategy into measurable value outcomes, KPIs and portfolio targets and evaluate emerging opportunities and make recommendations on portfolio prioritisation.

• Support executive decision-making through scenario modelling, impact assessments and forecasting and develop and maintain multi-year value realisation roadmaps

• Ensure strategic delivery frameworks (Agile, Lean, Waterfall) are leveraged to maximise value.

Customer Primacy

• Use customer insights to inform service design and delivery improvements.

• Champion initiatives that enhance customer experience, satisfaction, and loyalty.

• Collaborate across teams to ensure consistent and differentiated customer journeys.

• Ensure all value metrics and prioritisation frameworks incorporate customer impact and that they translate customer pain points into value-focused business cases.

• Partner with customer experience teams to quantify customer-led benefits (e.g., reduced effort, faster turnaround, improved satisfaction).

• Ensure customer outcomes remain at the centre of initiative design and benefits measurement.

Sustainable Growth

• Contribute to the development and execution of growth plans aligned with business unit priorities.

• Drive performance accountability within the team or practice area.

• Support investment decisions through analysis of operational impact and value creation.

• Identify and quantify value levers that drive revenue growth, cost efficiencies and productivity uplift.

• Monitor performance against strategic growth targets and recommend corrective actions.

• Ensure benefits are sustainable, embedded and tracked post-implementation.

• Enable long-term capability building to support continuous value optimisation.

Client-Driven Innovation and Change

• Identify opportunities for innovation and continuous improvement.

• Lead change initiatives, ensuring readiness, engagement, and adoption.

• Support the implementation of new technologies, processes, and practices.

• Promote innovation by identifying opportunities for digital, data and process transformation.

• Drive adoption of best practice change methodologies.

• Facilitate experimentation and test‑and‑learn approaches to accelerate value.

• Champion cross-functional collaboration to deliver integrated innovations.

Leading Talent

• Develop team or practice capabilities to meet current and future business needs.

• Foster a culture of performance, inclusion, and continuous learning.

• Manage performance, development, and succession planning.

• Build, mentor and develop a value realisation capability across the portfolio.

• Foster a high-performance culture focused on accountability, results and continuous improvement.

• Upskill teams on value measurement, financial modelling and benefits tracking.

Operational Effectiveness

• Translate business priorities into operational plans with defined KPIs and scorecards.

• Optimise processes for efficiency, quality, and alignment with customer needs.

• Resolve operational issues and ensure continuity of delivery.

• Standardise value frameworks, tools and reporting processes across the business.

• Improve operational performance by identifying inefficiencies and recommending optimised solutions.

• Drive process excellence and operational transparency through rigorous measurement.

• Monitor initiative performance against agreed milestones, KPIs / OKRs and SLAs.

Digital Adoption

• Promote the use of digital tools and platforms to enhance service delivery and operational efficiency.

• Identify opportunities for automation and digitisation.

• Support digital transformation initiatives and ensure effective adoption.

• Leverage digital tools (Power BI, data analytics platforms) to enhance portfolio visibility.

• Ensure digital enablement is integrated into value tracking and governance processes and partner with technology teams to measure and optimise digital transformation outcomes.

• Promote data-driven decision-making through automation of reporting and insights.

Good Governance, Risk and Compliance

• Implement governance, risk, and compliance frameworks within operational routines.

• Promote risk-aware decision-making and ensure adherence to regulatory requirements.

• Monitor and manage operational risks, ensuring timely resolution and reporting.

• Oversee governance of transformation investments and ensure adherence to approval frameworks.

• Monitor value realisation risks and escalate issues proactively.

• Ensure compliance with audit, regulatory and financial oversight requirements and establish transparent reporting structures to support executive governance forums.

Data Monetisation

• Use data and analytics to inform decisions, improve performance, and identify opportunities.

• Ensure data quality and relevance for reporting, insights, and operational planning.

• Apply performance insights to drive continuous improvement and value creation.

• Identify opportunities where data can unlock direct or indirect commercial value.

• Work closely with analytics, digital and product teams to quantify and monitor data-related benefits and incorporate data monetisation metrics into business cases and value frameworks.

• Enable responsible and ethical use of data aligned to governance standards.

Stakeholder Management

• Build and maintain collaborative relationships with internal and external stakeholders.

• Align delivery with stakeholder expectations and business priorities.

• Communicate progress, risks, and outcomes effectively.

• Influence and align senior leaders across Business Banking, Digital, Operations, Finance and Risk teams.

• Facilitate executive-level discussions on prioritisation and value decisions.

• Maintain strong communication channels to ensure shared understanding of value drivers.

• Act as trusted advisor to leadership on strategic value and portfolio performance.

COO DNA

As a member of the management team, it is expected to embody and promote the COO DNA, which includes:

• Customer Obsession: Start with the customer and work backwards. Focus on solving client problems and creating measurable value for clients.

• Commercialisation: Drive business value through operational excellence, always seeking opportunities to maximize value realization and return on investment.

• Digital Dexterity: Leverage technology, automation, and data to deliver value faster and more efficiently. Encourage digital empowerment and adoption of new tools.

• Cost Optimisation: Instil habits and practices that reduce waste and optimize resources, while maintaining or improving client value.

Education

Postgraduate Degrees and Professional Qualifications: Financial Sciences (Required)

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised