Head of logistics

Paps is an end to end logistics platform that offers innovative distribution and delivery solutions to companies and merchants through a geolocated application. Pioneer in the Senegalese market and looking to expand in other countries, Paps is experiencing high growth and looking for a Head of logistics for its teams in Côte d’Ivoire.
At Paps, we welcome people from all backgrounds who seek the opportunity to help build the future of logistics in Africa. If you have the curiosity, passion, and collaborative spirit, work with us, and let’s move the world forward together.

About the Role
Operations are the heart of our start-up. As the Head of Logistics, you will take part in the creation of the operational strategies, establish the processes, and drive the innovation that will determine the continued success of Paps in Côte d’Ivoire.
The ideal candidate for this role should have strong strategic thinking and analytical skills, excellent time-management and organizational habits, and be ready to lead by example. Given the nature of our operations, this isn’t your average Monday-Friday 9-5 job, but if you’re hungry for a true start-up experience and ready to shape the future of logistics in Africa, this is the role for you. You will report to the Chief Operations Officer.

What You’ll Do :
Build and lead a team. Grow your team to cope with exponential growth. You will be defining hiring needs and leading the hiring process for new operations members. At the same time, you’ll be managing the entire logistics team in Côte d’Ivoire. You will have to develop the organization enabling to manage the day-to-day operations. This will require coaching every member reporting to you.

Create a fun, inclusive, and safe work culture. You will help create a hard-working, challenging, and fun workplace. Above all else, you will be responsible to ensure the safety of your team and our papsers.

Obsess about the customer. Focus on customers – champion customers understand their needs and double up when they are delighted. You will ensure we have all tools and information required to maximize client experience across the country.

Ensure quality. Your number 1 goal will be to ensure the highest quality to our clients. You will have to develop your team’s understanding of quality and identify improvement opportunities.

Develop a strong business relationship with our logistics partners.

Grow the business. You will be constantly seeking solutions that scale, while overseeing the growth of our business. Your processes and projects will directly contribute to the country’s growth. You will have to identify main development opportunities in term of offer or costs and develop solutions to leverage those opportunity (e.g. increase our ability to perform international deliveries)

Manage the operations costs. You will monitor expenses and performance, analyse monthly costs and variance from budget, identify improvement opportunities and engage with all the stakeholders to ensure the implementation. You will have to work closely with the finance team to identify costs improvement opportunities.

Analyze Data. You will ensure you are creating, collecting, and incorporating as much data about operations as possible to constantly monitor performance and find opportunities to improve and optimize the quality and efficiency of Paps’service. You, with help from colleagues, will build the analytical frameworks and operational models to enable constant improvement. You will own all performance related KPIs.

Communicate. You will build, maintain, communicate, and present detailed reporting to the directing team and to your team.

Problem Solving. All day everyday. You will operate a technology platform and capital assets in dynamic urban environments. All kinds of obstacles, barriers, problems, and snags happen on a daily basis and you must be ready to solve them as fast as they happen. You see upcoming systemic problems from far away, and nip them in the bud. You will also have to anticipate and address future roadblock due to our growth.

Create & Optimize Process. We are a young company with an innovative product in new environments – we not only need to create and constantly optimize our own processes for this operation, but for the many challenges that are to follow in the near future. Design and implement them with simplicity in mind.

Collaborate. In order to manage the logistics strategic roadmap, you will need to collaborate with key functions such as sales, academy, operational excellence, customer experience, product, finance, HR, and other teams.

Balance attention to detail with swift execution. We need to do things quickly, and we need to do them well. Balancing those can be challenging, and this should be a strength.

Be open.

Communicate with Sales and advise as to the current & future operational capacity in regards to enterprise accounts.

Ensure transparent communication with all our partners, customers from terms and conditions to updates when things break.

Drive a culture of being transparent within your team, the rest of the Paps team, our clients and our logistics partners.

Be flexible.

Develop various ad-hoc models and operation analyses to support key business decisions.

Be a Hustler and get your hands dirty and do the gritty work that comes along with the higher-level thinking.

Support the expansion of our logistics network

What you’ll need

• +5 years of warehouse and 3PL management
• At least 3 years of E-commerce logistics experience
• Strong experience in Lean Manufacturing
• Experience with data-based decision-making, exercising good judgement in ambiguous circumstances, and effectively communicating across a diverse team.
• Strong Excel skills are a must, other database experience helpful. Comfortable learning and using new software tools.
• Very strong analytical skills required
• Excellent project management skills
• Capacity to influence through others and work in a project mode
• Team management experience
• Strong Communication skills
• A significant experience in a fast-paced environment
• Autonomous, business driven, strong rigour in the workplace
• Curious and passionate about innovation in Logistics