Partner Development Manager, SMEs at Microsoft

Africa Transformation Office (ATO) Background 

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Africa is one of the best places on the planet to bring our mission to life. It is home to 1.3B people and 54 countries. The talent in Africa reflects a tremendously rich and diverse potential that can truly impact the world over the next few decades. Being the youngest continent in the world with a median age of just 19.5 years, Africa is contributing to +12M youth being added to the global labor force every year. By 2040, half of the world's young people will live in Africa. Africa's growth is propelled by being a mobile first continent which is fueling connectivity, innovation, and scalability.  

Our aspiration is to transform Africa to a Cloud-first, Digital-first continent enabling a thriving digital economy across Africa while reinventing Microsoft's digital assets and capabilities to serve the young continent's transformation needs. With that in mind was the establishment of new team; the Africa Transformation Office (ATO), which will be established and chartered with the following:   

• Build strategic, unconventional partnerships with key governments, institutions and enterprises to enable and accelerate digital economy across the African continent. 
• Develop digital marketing engines to enable and accelerate Startups and SMBs. 
• Plan and land infrastructure enablers and game changers in the continent. 
• Enable Africa as a Foreign Direct Investment destination supported by expanding our technologies for MNCs across key industries. 
• Manage the 4Afrika initiative and further integrate it to key company programs and engines to amplify its impact.  
• Foster digital skilling and job creation to maximize the economic opportunity for the African youth and workforce. 

Role Summary 

This role will report into the ATO SME and Startup Lead and can be based out of Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria or South Africa. The role will be instrumental in contibuting to the mission to empower millions of Africa SMEs and to positively impact employment and wealth creation.

You wll work with the Lead to scale and recruit these SME businesses via partnerships and deliberate partnerships  with Governments, Telcos, Financial Services Institutions, Global development organisatioins, Partners, digital engines (Marketplace) and availing platforms for regional and global reach.

You will co-create bespoke value propositions based on market insights that will include but not be limited to providing the required technical and business SMEs skilling and mentoring solutions to underserved communities, and female SME founders. You will be focusing on African big bets industries Financial Services , Agriculture, Health, Education and Energy.

Finally you will be co-leading the partnerships and project workstreams that will avail access to the relevant products (existing or new SKUs), bundled offers, provision of connectivity and end to end solutions that will enable these SMEs to transform while contributing to economic growth as well as growing the Microsoft cloud business on the Continent.

The PDM will be a key member of the ATO team and will also work closely with the lead to commercialise initiatives that will target the SME sector – a key focus industry for all Government and foreign direct investment stakeholders.

Responsibilities

The PDM will be responsible for creating a Microsoft powered Africa SME marketplace as the central mainstay of a unique value proposition.

The PDM is responsible for recruiting new Microsoft Partners in the marketplace. The PDM will be expected to oversee research on Industry and customer needs to identify where Microsoft has gaps in its portfolio of partners to meet customer needs or, there are opportunities to disrupt the marketplace with new and differentiated solutions and services that can transform business for Microsoft SME customers.

The PDM will be expected to lead the 360 degree business relationship with companies through the process of bringing new service offerings and solutions to market. The PDM will engage at the very highest level of executives at partner organisations seeking to buildtrust and developing joint business plans defining Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies, driving implementation of all aspects of the strategy and by orchestrating relationships between the partners’ technical, sales and marketing teams and Microsoft to achieve the expected commercial outcomes. .

• The PDM represents Microsoft to new partners, communicates our strategy, sells our vision and brings partners along in the digital transformation journey. The outcome will be to drive application development, long-term revenue, cloud consumption and digital transformation through a set of cloud applications&solutions leading to workload/industry based co-sell. 
• The Partner Dev Manager will work with strategic partners to join Microsoft Cloud Platform and build solutions that will provide a unique expertise and solve customers’ business challenges.

Key responsibilities include:

• Strategy development and Planning - Develop Partner Recruit Strategy and Compete Plan: research, qualify and analyze potential new partners, articulating market insights about competitors. Create Recruit strategic partners target list based on Recruit Council, Capacity Plan, Industry Solution Categories and Segment priorities. Target list of highest value solution for the territory.
• Value proposition development – Contribute towards the development of a differentiated vlaue proposition while leveraging on Microsoft and Parters’ assets. This would entail a concise development of the customer experience journeys including development of the appropriate marketing and communication strategy.
• Project leadersihp and reporting – Initiate, drive and manage various SME execution workstreams including identifying any synergies with other ATO and Microsoft business partners. Own programme management including generating and presenting project updates to various stakeholder groups.
• Build a trusted advisory relationship with partners - Builds expansive network with Business and Technical managers: sharing ideas, perspectives, building trusted advisory reputation within partner team. Create Executive Sponsorship and Relationships to build trust and drive for commitments.
• Build New Solutions – Secure partner commitment to build net-new solutions on Microsoft cloud platform. Evangelize profitability of MS relationship, MS value proposition, quantify market opportunity and align expectations on engagement, deliverables, SLA, programs and services. Coordinate engagement of teams required to enable/skill up partner and manage solution development.
• Leverage and request Microsoft Programs Services to:
  Support partner on launching new solution on Marketplace and ensure solution is discoverable
  •Create/execute GTM plan for new solution
  •Coordinate with Channel Managers for first customer opportunities
  •Supervise partner engagement with Microsoft Programs, ensure SLA and Partner satisfaction and deliverables.
• Drive business growth - Accountable for the growth of the business across the solution area partner portfolio, aligned with the Channel Management & Co-sell team, inclusive of expected partner impact. Drive business performance measured by revenue (usage & consumption), customer acquisition, apps, as well as the support global expansion. Demonstrate account management excellence through high quality interactions with the partner, and through well-orchestrated interactions between partner executives and Microsoft executives.
• Stakeholder management – Drive customer and partner business initiatives while driving strategic execution thinking amongst team and business partners. Execute timely and appropriate transfer of partner to partner management teams for long-term partnership, or transfer partner to programmatic assistance when no longer appropriate for PDM engagement.

Compliance:

• Personally, commit to generate and protect Microsoft trust by modeling integrity every day and contributing to ethical sales and sustainable growth.

Qualifications

• 5-10+ years of experience in core sales experience, partner channel development, business development, alliance management in the technology industry
• Executive presence and ability to influence business leaders through business value propositions
• Experience with technology platforms and developing new product and business solutions
• Working knowledge of cloud business models & how apps/services are brought to market
• Strong experience of managing virtual teams across functions and geographies:
• Inclusive and collaborative – driving teamwork and cross-team alignment
• Strong partner relationship management and solution development skills
• Strong communication and presentation skills with a high degree of comfort
• Challenger mentality leveraging internal and/or external resources, conflict resolution, and follow through
• Bachelor's degree desired (Sales, Marketing, Business Operations) MBA preferred