Strategy Associate (Remote) at UpEnergy

UpEnergy brings aspirational energy saving products within reach for low-income communities. We create valuable health and environmental outcomes by providing our users with products that improve their lives every day. Our approach combines local, on-the-ground teams leveraging our platform to best serve users, with over a decade of experience building platforms that generate valuable carbon emission reductions and allow us to provide our products to local communities at affordable subsidized prices.

We are recruiting to fill the position of:

Job Title: Strategy Associate

Location: Remote
Job Type: Full time
Department: Commercial

About the Role

• In this context, UpEnergy is seeking a driven and passionate individual who will assist the Strategy Manager in group operations and country distribution teams to first identify best practices, and work closely with them to execute tactics and build capacity that is tailor made across our different product lines.
• The role will be to develop tools to coach distribution team members in each market to develop their commercial strategy skills and build robust and localised distribution strategies. This role requires a keen ability to work cross-functionally with country teams and key central functions including Distribution, Carbon Operations, Business Development, Finance and others.
• The right candidate will liaise with the Strategy Manager and ensure the creation, adoption, implementation and monitoring of business performance standards  and tools for growth in the various Business Units.
• He/She provides support to key personnel and ensures the constant improvement in the skills of these key personnel.
• The UpEnergy Strategy Associate is an exciting position that will provide the opportunity to work across multiple UpEnergy markets. If you are eager to gain incredibly rich, hands-on experience while being part of one of the fastest growing social enterprises in Africa and believe you’re up for the challenge (as well as a lot fun!), we’d love to hear from you!

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implementation of strategic sales and commercial projects across
• Hands-on sales support for countries, particularly with undertaking performance improvement strategies for countries
• Training & capacity development for country sales teams.

Main Activities
Training & capacity development (approx 50%):

• Develop training and tool kits for the development of skills across the distribution team
• Coach distribution team members in each market to develop their commercial strategy skills and build robust and localised distribution strategies.

Strategic UpEnergy Commercial Projects (approx 30%):

• Design, scope out, implement and monitor strategic projects to improve the effectiveness and/or efficiency of our sales strategy, operation and execution capability across UpEnergy markets
• Optimising our end-to-end distribution team performance management approach, including target setting and forecasting, commissions and incentives, tools, reporting, governance and accountability
• Designing strategies to mitigate key strategic commercial risks, e.g. market saturation, competitive landscape shifts and market entry.

Country support: Tactical commercial turnarounds (approx 20%):

• Where there are key challenges and areas of underperformance at the country level, provide “hands-on” tactical support for countries to undertake sales turnaround strategies to deliver results
• Where required, support the country to undertake analysis and identify key issues impacting performance, as well as the key levers at their disposal to achieve results
• Support the development of tactical turnaround strategies, review their robustness and provide hands-on support throughout their implementation, as required.

 Does This Sound Like You?

• At least 1-3 years in business / commercial strategy, project management roles (or similar)
• Experience in sales and marketing (ideally B2C), particularly in sectors like FMCG, microfinance or telecommunications
• Experience living and working in Africa (ideally 1-2 years minimum
• General strategic, analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to breakdown a problem, conduct research and analysis, develop an evidenced-based strategic response, then communicate and align stakeholders around the direction
• Decent analytical skills and ability to synthesize and interpret qualitative and quantitative data into practical strategy recommendations. Critical thinking and analytical skills, with the ability to work with large amounts of data (including Excel modelling) to develop strategies and make rigorous decisions.
• Project management, with the ability to manage high-impact cross-functional strategic commercial projects end to end (including planning, analysis, conclusions and implementation) to achieve result
• Commercial capability across sales and marketing (particularly in B2C), with a demonstrated history of delivering strong commercial results
• Stakeholder engagement and communication skills
• Exceptional judgement, problem-solving skills, and ability to “Think Big & Make it Happen” both independently and collaboratively
• Language: English. French/Portuguese is a big plus
• Excited to be part of UpEnergy’s growth story
• Open to significant travel to UpEnergy’s markets in sub-Saharan Africa.

Application Closing Date
Not Specified.