Fleet Card Operations Manager (18-month contract)

Vivo Energy (VE) distributes and markets Shell and Engen branded fuels and lubricants to retail and commercial customers in Africa. We operate in 28 countries across North, West, East and Southern Africa where we have a network of over 4500 service stations. We also export lubricants to other African countries.

The Fleet Card Operations Manager is accountable for the end-to-end governance, performance, and continuous improvement of fleet card operations across all markets. The role ensures that day-to-day processing activities are executed consistently, that controls and compliance obligations are met, and that the appropriate tasks are performed at the right level — whether centrally or in-country — based on operational sensitivity, risk, and efficiency.

The role carries specific accountability for managing the transition from outsourced business management services to an internally operated model, including the development and embedding of in-house capability across central and country teams. It operates at the intersection of the central fleet operations function, in-country Commercial Service Centre (CSC) teams managing B2B customer relationships, and the wider business and operations organisation.

This role is also positioned as a key architect of the longer-term operating model evolution, contributing to the design and progressive implementation of a Global Business Services (GBS) structure that will ultimately consolidate fleet card operations within a broader shared services capability covering all lines of business and functions.

1. Operational Governance & Controls

• Own and maintain the Fleet Card Operations Control Framework, ensuring all processing activities are governed by documented procedures, segregation of duties, and clearly defined accountability at central and country level.
• Define and enforce the task sensitivity matrix that determines which operational activities are performed centrally versus in-country, based on risk, system access requirements, and data sensitivity.
• Ensure compliance with relevant regulatory requirements, internal audit standards, and card scheme rules across all operating markets.
• Maintain a central risk register for fleet card operations, escalating material control breaches and driving remediation to closure.
• Oversee card lifecycle controls including issuance, blacklisting, limit management, and balance integrity procedures, ensuring appropriate authorisation at each step.

2. Insourcing Transition: Outsourced to Internal Operations

• Developing and executing a formal insourcing transition plan, including activity mapping, knowledge transfer schedules, capability gap assessments, and risk-managed cutover milestones for each in-scope market for all phases, first to inhouse model and secondly with a view to centralization, where relevant, activities.
• Working with HR and country leadership to define the internal staffing model required to absorb transitioned activities, including role design, recruitment support, and onboarding into central and country operational teams.
• Establishing the internal process documentation, systems access, and training programmes necessary to ensure new internal resources can operate to the required standard before outsourced responsibilities are relinquished.
• Managing contractual wind-down obligations with outgoing service providers, ensuring continuity of service during transition periods and a clean handover of data, documentation, and operational accountability.
• Monitoring post-transition performance to validate that insourced operations are meeting SLA and control standards, and intervening where gaps emerge during the stabilisation period.
• Reporting progress and risks to senior stakeholders throughout the transition, maintaining a clear programme plan with defined gates and decision points.

3. In-Country Staff Management & Capability Development

• Provide operational leadership and day-to-day direction to in-country fleet operations staff, working through country team leads to ensure consistent execution of central standards and procedures.
• Collaborate with in-country Business and Operations Managers to embed fleet card operational responsibilities within local team structures, ensuring clarity of role, accountability, and performance expectations.
• Define and maintain training curricula for in-country fleet card operational staff, covering system use, process adherence, escalation protocols, and compliance obligations.
• Conduct regular performance reviews of in-country operational staff against defined KPIs, identifying development needs and supporting country managers in addressing capability gaps.
• Serve as the functional authority on fleet card operations for in-country teams, providing guidance, resolving ambiguity, and acting as the escalation point for complex or sensitive operational matters.
• Support the design of in-country resourcing models as fleet card operations scale, advising on the appropriate balance between locally embedded resource and centralised support.

4. CSC Interface: B2B Customer Relationship Overlap

• Define and maintain the operating model interface between the central fleet operations function and in-country CSC teams, including clear delineation of accountability for customer-facing activities versus back-office processing.
• Establish joint SLA and escalation frameworks with CSC team leads, ensuring that operationally-driven service failures are identified, owned, and resolved within the central operations function rather than absorbed by customer-facing teams.
• Provide the CSC with accurate, timely operational data — including transaction exception reports, balance queries, card status information, and processing turnaround performance — to support effective B2B customer management.
• Participate in key account reviews and customer escalation forums where operational performance is a material factor, representing the central operations function and committing to remediation timelines where required.
• Identify recurring customer issues that originate from operational or system root causes and feed these into the continuous improvement backlog, closing the loop between customer experience and operational process.
• Work with CSC leads and commercial teams to ensure that any new fleet card products, services, or contractual commitments are operationally feasible and that the central team is prepared to support them before go-live.

5. Central-to-Country Handover & Task Allocation

• Define and maintain a clear RACI framework governing the division of operational tasks between the central team and in-country fleet and finance teams.
• Establish formal handover protocols for sensitive activities — including fleet card migrations, system cutover events, and bulk card actions — ensuring in-country teams are briefed, trained, and operationally ready before accountability transfers.
• Serve as the primary escalation point for in-country teams on operational issues that exceed local resolution capability or cross defined sensitivity thresholds.
• Conduct regular operational reviews with country leads to assess adherence to central standards and identify areas where local capability needs to be developed or where central support should be increased.
• Manage the onboarding of new markets onto the central fleet card platform, coordinating system configuration, staff training, and parallel run periods to ensure a controlled transition.

6. SLA Management

• Own the end-to-end SLA framework for fleet card operations, covering transaction processing, dispute resolution, card issuance, balance settlement, and exception handling at both central and country level.
• Define and publish SLA targets in consultation with country operations leads, commercial teams, and technology partners, ensuring targets are measurable, realistic, and aligned to customer commitments.
• Monitor SLA performance on an ongoing basis, producing regular reporting for senior stakeholders and flagging deterioration trends before they impact customer experience.
• Lead structured root cause analysis for recurring SLA breaches and drive corrective action plans with clear owners and timelines.
• Manage SLA obligations within vendor and third-party agreements, including payment processors, card manufacturers, and CMS providers, holding partners accountable through formal governance forums.
• Provide reporting on SLA performance adherence and drive continuous improvement actions to address shortfalls.

7. Compliance & Regulatory Adherence

• Ensure all fleet card operations comply with applicable in-country financial regulations, data protection requirements (including GDPR where applicable), and anti-money laundering obligations.
• Maintain oversight of KYC and customer due diligence processes as they apply to fleet card account management, ensuring in-country teams execute to central standards.
• Coordinate with internal compliance, legal, and risk functions to assess the operational impact of regulatory changes and implement required process adjustments within agreed timelines.
• Maintain audit-ready documentation for all core operational processes, ensuring the central team can demonstrate control effectiveness at any point.
• Support internal and external audit activity relating to fleet card operations, acting as the primary point of contact and ensuring findings are addressed systematically.

8. Business Process Design, Modelling & IT Integration

• Own the end-to-end business process library for fleet card operations, ensuring all core processes are documented to a consistent standard using agreed modelling notation (e.g. BPMN or equivalent), version-controlled, and accessible to central and in-country operational teams.
• Lead process design activities for new or changed operational capabilities, including insourcing transitions, platform migrations, new market onboarding, and product launches, ensuring that processes are designed with control, efficiency, and scalability in mind before go-live.
• Conduct regular process reviews to identify inefficiencies, control weaknesses, or misalignment between documented procedures and actual operating practice, driving remediation through structured process improvement cycles.
• Ensure that process models explicitly capture the handoff points between business operations and IT systems, providing the IT support organisation with clear, accurate process context to inform incident triage, change impact assessment, and system configuration decisions.
• Own the business-side relationship with IT support organisations (internal service desk, application support, infrastructure, and vendor technical support teams), acting as the primary point of contact for fleet card operational systems and ensuring that support coverage is structured, escalation paths are documented, and resolution SLAs are defined and monitored.
• Define and maintain a support model matrix covering all fleet card operational systems, mapping each system to its business owner, IT support tier, escalation path, and contracted resolution SLA, ensuring there are no gaps in coverage across the application estate.
• Participate in change advisory and release governance processes as the business operations representative, assessing the operational impact of system changes, coordinating business readiness activities, and ensuring operational teams are prepared before changes are deployed to production.
• Coordinate the business response to system incidents affecting fleet card operations, working alongside IT teams to triage impact, communicate to affected stakeholders, manage workaround procedures, and contribute to post-incident reviews with a business process lens.
• Contribute business process and operational requirements into IT project briefs and system enhancement requests, ensuring that technology solutions are grounded in real operational need and that acceptance criteria reflect both functional and process performance expectations.

Requirements

Essential Experience

• Significant experience in payment card operations, fleet card management, or a closely related financial services operations environment.
• Demonstrated track record of managing multi-country or multi-market operational teams with accountability for SLAs, controls, and compliance.
• Experience designing and implementing operational governance frameworks including RACI models, task sensitivity classifications, and escalation protocols.
• Experience managing third-party service provider relationships, including SLA negotiation, performance management, and formal governance.
• Experience working at the operational interface with B2B customer-facing teams, understanding how back-office performance translates into customer experience.
• Demonstrated experience in business process design and documentation, including the use of structured process modelling approaches to capture operational workflows, control points, and system integration boundaries.
• Experience managing the business-to-IT support interface, including defining support models, participating in change advisory processes, coordinating incident responses, and contributing operational requirements into system design and enhancement activity.

Desirable Experience

• Experience managing insourcing or business process transition programmes, including knowledge transfer, internal capability build, and vendor wind-down.
• Exposure to Global Business Services, shared services design, or operating model transformation programmes.
• Experience in emerging or African market payment environments, with an appreciation of connectivity constraints, regulatory variability, and offline processing challenges.
• Familiarity with fleet card migration programmes, including system cutover planning, balance migration, and parallel run management.
• Exposure to ERP-integrated payment environments (e.g. SAP S/4HANA) and the reconciliation workflows between payment platforms and finance systems.
• Knowledge of IFSF, NEXO, or other forecourt and fuel retail payment standards.

Skills & Competencies

• Strong analytical capability with the ability to translate operational data into actionable insight and clear management reporting.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the confidence to engage at senior leadership level and the credibility to work effectively with in-country operational and customer-facing teams.
• Change leadership capability — able to drive insourcing and operating model transitions with structured programme discipline and effective people management.
• Structured problem-solver with a rigorous approach to root cause analysis and corrective action.
• Strategic thinker who can operate in current-state delivery mode while contributing meaningfully to longer-term operating model design.
• Strong process orientation with the ability to model, critique, and redesign operational workflows, and to translate process requirements into clear briefs for IT and technology teams.
• Clear and precise communicator, both written and verbal, with the ability to produce high-quality documentation and stakeholder communications.