Managing Director – Applications Portfolio
NTT DATA · Johannesburg
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The Opportunity
NTT DATA is seeking an accomplished executive to lead the South African Applications Portfolio, bringing together Applications, SAP, Customer Experience (CX), Business Process Services (BPS) and Data as one integrated, market-facing business. This strategically significant role will shape the portfolio’s direction, accelerate sustainable growth, strengthen market relevance and deliver profitable expansion.
The successful candidate will combine commercial acumen, strategic vision and exceptional people leadership with deep expertise across enterprise applications, platforms, data, digital transformation and technology-enabled business processes.
Purpose of the Role
The Managing Director will provide end-to-end strategic, commercial and operational leadership for NTT DATA South Africa’s full Applications Portfolio: Applications, SAP, Customer Experience, Business Process Services and Data. The role is accountable for creating a coherent portfolio strategy, integrating capabilities across these service lines and taking differentiated, industry-relevant solutions to market.
The role carries full accountability for profit and loss performance, growth strategy, sales enablement, market development, portfolio innovation, delivery excellence, partner performance and talent leadership. Working within a highly matrixed global organisation, the Managing Director will translate global priorities into locally relevant execution, connect specialist capabilities into integrated client propositions and build a scalable, profitable and sustainable business.
As the executive leader of the portfolio, the incumbent will inspire high-performing teams, strengthen strategic client and partner relationships, and position NTT DATA as a trusted transformation partner across applications, enterprise platforms, experience, process services and data.
Key Responsibilities
1. Portfolio Strategy and Business Leadership
- Define and execute an integrated South African strategy across Applications, SAP, CX, BPS and Data.
- Create clear portfolio choices, priorities and investment plans that strengthen growth, differentiation and profitability.
- Connect capabilities across the portfolio to form end-to-end, industry-led client solutions rather than stand-alone service offerings.
- Localise global strategic priorities and offerings into executable South African growth plans.
- Lead transformation initiatives that improve competitiveness, relevance, scalability and speed to market.
- Balance portfolio growth with disciplined operational management and customer-centred execution.
2. Commercial and P&L Leadership
- Own full portfolio profit and loss accountability, including revenue, margin, cost, utilisation and investment performance.
- Deliver sustainable revenue growth, profitability and market-share expansion across the portfolio.
- Build and maintain a healthy, balanced pipeline across Applications, SAP, CX, BPS and Data.
- Sponsor strategic pursuits and personally engage in priority bids, negotiations and complex client opportunities.
- Develop long-term account growth strategies with country, industry, sales and delivery leadership.
- Apply commercial discipline to pricing, contracting, delivery models and portfolio investment decisions.
3. Go-to-Market and Client Leadership
- Define and execute a unified go-to-market strategy aligned to global priorities and South African market needs.
- Position the portfolio around measurable business outcomes, combining advisory, transformation, implementation, managed services and business process capabilities.
- Enable sales teams with compelling propositions, market insights, client stories and pursuit support.
- Build trusted relationships with C-suite and Board-level stakeholders and act as executive sponsor for strategic clients.
- Identify new market opportunities, whitespace and cross-sell potential across the five portfolio domains.
- Champion AI-enabled applications, intelligent automation, data-driven services and digital experience innovation.
4. Portfolio and Offering Leadership
- Applications: Grow application development, modernisation, integration, testing, quality engineering, low-code and application management services.
- SAP: Expand SAP advisory, transformation, implementation, migration, cloud and managed services capabilities, supported by a strong SAP ecosystem.
- Customer Experience (CX): Grow customer, employee and digital experience solutions, including CRM, commerce, contact centre and experience-led transformation.
- Business Process Services (BPS): Scale technology-enabled business process solutions that improve efficiency, service quality and business outcomes.
- Data: Grow data strategy, engineering, platforms, analytics, governance and AI-enabled data solutions.
- Ensure offerings are integrated, repeatable, commercially viable and supported by the right skills, alliances and delivery capacity.
5. Partner Ecosystem
Develop executive relationships with strategic technology partners including:
- SAP
- Microsoft
- Salesforce
- Oracle
- Snowflake
- Databricks
- AWS
- Drive joint go-to-market initiatives, co-innovation, partner investments, certifications and pipeline development.
- Ensure partner strategies support portfolio differentiation, delivery capability and profitable growth.
6. Delivery and Operational Leadership
- Provide executive oversight of delivery across the portfolio, ensuring delivery excellence, customer satisfaction, strong governance, quality outcomes and sustainable profitability.
- Create consistent operating rhythms, performance visibility and accountability across sales, delivery and capability leadership.
- Improve productivity, utilisation, workforce mix, delivery methods and reuse of intellectual property and accelerators.
- Provide executive leadership for relevant South African delivery capabilities and ensure effective alignment with global delivery resources.
- Act decisively on delivery risk, client escalation, commercial exposure and operational underperformance.
7. People and Culture Leadership
- Build an inclusive, high-performance culture that attracts, develops and retains scarce and critical talent.
- Lead, coach and inspire a diverse portfolio leadership team, with clear accountability across the five portfolio domains.
- Build succession pipelines and future-ready capability across commercial, technical, consulting and delivery disciplines.
- Champion collaboration across business units, industries, countries and global teams.
- Create a strong employee experience grounded in purpose, inclusion, continuous learning and opportunity.
Leadership Expectations
- Operate as an enterprise leader, making decisions for the strength of the overall portfolio and NTT DATA South Africa.
- Balance bold strategic ambition with disciplined execution and commercial judgement.
- Influence effectively in a global matrix and align diverse stakeholders around shared outcomes.
- Build confidence through authentic, visible and accountable leadership.
- Navigate complexity and ambiguity while maintaining pace, focus and delivery.
- Create trusted relationships with clients, partners, employees and global leadership.
Candidate Profile
Experience
- 15–20 years’ experience in the technology consulting, IT services or digital transformation industry.
- Significant executive leadership experience with accountability for a large, complex services portfolio.
- Proven ownership of a substantial P&L and a track record of sustainable revenue growth and improved profitability.
- Demonstrated success leading sales, go-to-market, delivery and capability organisations.
- Experience building, scaling and transforming businesses across multiple technology or service domains.
- Experience operating in highly matrixed, global organisations and leading multicultural teams.
- Executive client engagement experience, including complex pursuits, negotiations and strategic account growth.
- Experience in South Africa and/or the broader Middle East and Africa market is highly desirable.
Technical and Industry Expertise
- Strong understanding of enterprise application services, including development, modernisation, integration, testing and managed services.
- Working knowledge of SAP transformation and managed services, enterprise platforms and cloud-enabled operating models.
- Understanding of CX technologies and services, including CRM, commerce, contact centre and digital experience.
- Understanding of BPS models, intelligent automation and technology-enabled process transformation.
- Strong appreciation of data engineering, data platforms, analytics, governance and AI-enabled solutions.
- Commercial understanding of partner ecosystems and platforms such as SAP, Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, Snowflake, Databricks and AWS.
- Ability to translate emerging technology trends into relevant, commercially viable client propositions.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Technology, Engineering or a related discipline.
- MBA or equivalent postgraduate qualification preferred.
Personal Attributes
- Commercially astute and growth-oriented
- Strategic, decisive and execution-focused
- Customer-centric and market-facing
- Collaborative and effective in a matrix
- Inspirational, resilient and adaptable
- Curious, innovative and comfortable with ambiguity
- Passionate about developing people
- Culturally intelligent and credible at Board and C-suite level
Measures of Success
- Achievement of portfolio revenue, profitability, margin and cash objectives.
- Growth in qualified pipeline, sales conversion, market share and cross-portfolio opportunities.
- Balanced growth across Applications, SAP, CX, BPS and Data.
- Expansion of strategic client relationships and partner-generated business.
- Successful localisation and execution of global portfolio strategy.
- Improved delivery quality, customer satisfaction, operational discipline and productivity.
- Strengthened employee engagement, critical-skill capability and leadership succession.
- Increased market recognition of NTT DATA’s integrated Applications Portfolio in South Africa
Workplace type:
About NTT DATA
NTT DATA is a $30+ billion business and technology services leader, serving 75% of the Fortune
Global 100. We are committed to accelerating client success and positively impacting society through
responsible innovation. We are one of the world’s leading AI and digital infrastructure providers, with
unmatched capabilities in enterprise-scale AI, cloud, security, connectivity, data centers and
application services. Our consulting and industry solutions help organizations and society move
confidently and sustainably into the digital future. As a Global Top Employer, we have experts in more
than 70 countries. We also offer clients access to a robust ecosystem of innovation centers as well as
established and start-up partners. NTT DATA is part of NTT Group, which invests over $3 billion each
year in R&D.
Equal Opportunity Employer
NTT DATA is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer with a global culture that embraces diversity. We are committed to providing an environment free of unfair discrimination and harassment. We do not discriminate based on age, race, colour, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, disability, pregnancy, marital status, veteran status, or any other protected category. Join our growing global team and accelerate your career with us. Apply today.
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