Director - IT - Real Estate/Financial Services

The role is the building block and driver for the corporate and business divisions to achieve their objectives. It is an indespensible partner to every business segment and plays a major role in the achievement of business objectives via provision and delivery of innovative and cost effective technology solutions to meet business needs.

The position reports to the COO

Responsibilities:

Ownership of Corporate IT Strategy including its development and roll out

- Optimal cost of ownership of IT hardware and services

- Articulation of long-term business requirements

- Lower cost of operations through IT enablement

- IT articulation and delivery of long-term corporate strategy

Ownership and control of IT annual spend (opex and capex) of AED 12 to 15 Million. IT Opex comprises circa 6% of the organisation's annual operating budget and approx 8% of annual corporate capex spend (excluding property)

- Implementation of agreed solutions within budget and alignment with IT strategy

- Monthly IT Financials review and control

- Ownership of outsourcing decisions for hosting hardware and software solutions, including the development and management of third party service providers of critical applications.

- Negotiation, Management and Development of robust SLAs and monitoring performance against Service Levels.

- Cost benefit of oustsourcing of selected services and success measurement as 2% reduction in service costs per year.

- Incident management and SLA breach occurrences per year

- Asset Management constituting 15% of the total fixed asset base of the organization

- Development and Implementation of IT Procurement Strategy, Inventory Management, surplus asset sales and depreciation policy in coordination with Finance.

- Setting depreciation policy, ensuring that asset lives and annual charges are optimized.

- Optimize capex and opex purchases, build relations with third party suppliers

- Conduct physical verification and develop asset management polices

Lead businesses in providing IT solutions, which includes areas of business process automation, enhancements to online customer experience and introduction of property and commodity focused solutions.

- Measure project success rates via ROI, and service provision to customers in shorter duration

- Decrease in number of physical customer visit requirements and decrease in waiting times at counters.

- Offer alternative means of communication and service availance from aiming at minimum number of touch points/customer visits to and provision/tracking/updating of complete services online,

- Meet organizations customer satisfaction targets

- Leadership of IT team of 9 resources spread across areas of IT networks, infrastructure, operations and applications.

- Low staff turnover

- Increase in employee staisfaction rates year on year

- Develop and implementation of employee development and career growth plans

- Succession planning for key roles

- Annual and Bi annual detailed performance assessment reviews.

Chairman of the IT Steering Group responsible for the technical and financial management of all operational aspects of IT including:

- Budget Planning

- Policies and Procedures Development and Implementation

- Resource Planning and Development

- Departmental Structure and Reporting

- Project Steering and Delivery

- Strategy Development and Implementation

- Operational Efficiency of IT Department in terms of budgeting and investments, resourcing and project delivery

- Strategic Alignment of IT with Corporate Goals and Strategy.

Member of the organization Governance and Risk Committee responsible for

- Development and Implementation of Risk and Governance Frameworks

- Review of Organization policies and procedures

- Development and Implementation of Compliance Frameworks

- Development and Implementation of Business Continuity Plans

Robust and audited GRC framework in place

- Monitor IT investments post implementation ensuring a minimum annual ROI of 8%-10% of total investment amount

- Operational cost efficiency as per benchmarks and KPIs agreed upon

Incumbents with experience in Large Property Development Companies with experience in UAE may only.