Assistant Trade Marketing Manager

EMEA Head of Applications

ABOUT THIS OPPORTUNITY

Reporting into the EMEA CIO and sitting on the Technology Leadership team, as EMEA Head of Applications you will establish and lead the Applications Centre of Excellence, responsible for product ownership and support of strategic EMEA applications.

You will partner with internal technology groups and external suppliers to ensure that strategic application platforms align with the company's overall objectives. You will also serve as a strategic partner to business leaders, internal innovation teams, and IT functional areas by helping them identify and take advantage of new digital opportunities while providing guidance and ensuring solutions align with the business and IT strategy.

Initially, there will be a strong focus on the HR and Finance Digital Transformation programmes, which are currently in progress. The resulting HR (SAP SuccessFactors) and Finance (TBD) platforms will transition to the EMEA Applications Centre of Excellence for Product Ownership, including functional improvements and ongoing support.

You will also oversee the CRM platform (Salesforce), which is led by the Head of Salesforce Centre of Excellence.

In addition, we currently use approximately 400 applications across 18 EMEA countries. You will be responsible for Application Portfolio Management, to better understand the current application landscape and (working with key business stakeholders) define an application strategy to optimise value for the firm.

The business growth strategy is underpinned by significant M&A activity. Working with the PMO and EMEA Solutions Architect, you will be required to oversee the application mapping of acquired applications aspects of M&A work, including finding pragmatic ways to quickly onboard target firms to the standard application stack.

What You'll Do

Key responsibilities:

• Establish and lead Product teams to own the support and ongoing development of the forthcoming EMEA HR and Finance platforms
• Lead the Salesforce Centre of Excellence (direct report: Head of Salesforce CoE)
• Lead the EMEA Applications Portfolio Management initiative
• Build the long-term strategic roadmap for all EMEA Applications.
• Establish Business Partnership (Relationship Management) function to better align applications with business requirements
• Align the applications teams with existing IT Service Delivery teams (via established ITIL processes) to meet business support SLAs
• Develop and maintain policies, guiding principles and standards to ensure that a consistent application framework is applied across the firm.
• Develop application rationalization framework to reduce technical debt.
• Stay current on cloud technologies and cloud and hybrid cloud frameworks.
• Partner with Information Security to ensure architecture aligns with security strategy and policies.
• Perform additional responsibilities as requested to achieve business objectives.

You might be just who we're looking for if you have...

• Eight or more years of professional IT or IS experience.
• Five or more years of application leadership experience.
• Experience of leading Product Ownership: ongoing support and development of applications
• Demonstrable Business Relationship Management experience
• Experience of leading an Application Portfolio Management initiative
• A deep understanding of the ITIL framework (which is our established framework for IT Service Delivery) particularly Release Management
• One to three years of global IT experience.
• The ability to think big and challenge conventional wisdom regarding technology refresh and hype.
• Strong leadership and negotiation skills with business and technical groups.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong project management and organization skills.
• A demonstrated ability to build consensus among many stakeholders.
• The ability to be comfortable with ambiguity and a willingness to take principled bets on new technology.
• The ability to establish, implement, and enforce appropriate IT standards to meet business requirements.