Head - IT Application

Responsibilities:

Candidates should be able to:

- Provide leadership, vision and direction to the applications organization to ensure it will contribute to the company achieving its goals.

- Work with Business and IT leaders to develop an overall application strategy in the context of the business strategy and initiatives

- Develop productive relationships with business leaders and product managers across the organization to influence how applications can enable new sources of value.

- Drive the ERP Transformation program for the company

- Define and enhance methodologies and practices for the application life cycle management in line with best practice and practical experience of continuous improvement.

- Ensure that application processes (including those of external service providers) are conducted in line with corporate social responsibility, environmental and technical policies and applicable standards and legislation.

- Manage application group personnel, developing their skills and capabilities to meet the needs of the organization, as well as building on existing recruiting capabilities to address new needs and skills gaps.

- Implement and manage application product roadmaps status reporting, metrics and benchmarks.

- Manage relationships with major vendors and service providers to ensure they cost-effectively meet the needs of the organization.

- Conduct regular surveys of stakeholder satisfaction with application products, publish the results and, where necessary, implement action plans to improve satisfaction.

- Overseeing the assessment of the technical and business fitness of the application and product portfolio and their associated costs and risks.

- Facilitating the application product governance process to gain consensus on a prioritized set of measurable business outcomes that applications and products must support.

- Prioritizing Change / Enhancement Requests on ERP as well as Bespoke applications basis inputs from the Business routed via the IT Infrastructure and Operations Service Desk

- Working with the Information Security Lead to ensure that the organization's application products are effectively secured and that risks are mitigated.

- Leading the team in growing competencies in Lean IT, agile development, DevOps, Low Code & Design Thinking principles and frameworks and leveraging the same in the day-to-day development of applications

Skills and Competencies:

- Strong communication skills with a proven ability to understand key concepts and communicate effectively with technical staff, business stakeholders and senior management.

- Proven ability to communicate technical concepts to nontechnical people to enhance understanding and drive to decisions that lead to positive outcomes.

- Proven ability to collaborate, build relationships and influence individuals at all levels in a matrix management environment (as well as external vendors and service providers) to ensure that segregation and overlapping roles are identified and coordinated.

- Strong organizational skills, the ability to perform under pressure and management of multiple priorities with competing demands for resources.

- Strong analytical, data processing and problem-solving skills.

- Proficiency in process formulation and improvement.

- Expertise in software application testing and performance monitoring

- Also must have in-depth knowledge and experience of the following:

- Financial accounting and reporting practices applicable to application products, costs and risks.

- IT contracts and their likely cost implications.

- Engagement with procurement and legal contract advisors for additional information.

- IT applications, operations, service and support organizations.

- Development and implementation of processes and policies.

- Lean IT, agile development, and DevOps principles and frameworks

Qualifications & Experience

- 10 to 12 years of progressively responsible relevant experience in managing a team of at least 10 members in application products development, implementation or management.

- Experience managing in an organization primarily using agile development methodologies.

- Experience transitioning an organization from traditional to agile development methodologies.

- Experience in running an ERP transformation (implementation or upgrade program)

Education

- A bachelor's or master's degree in business administration, computer science