CIO Business Platforms & Corporate

WPP is the creative transformation company. We use the power of creativity to build better futures for our people, planet, clients, and communities.

Working at WPP means being part of a global network of more than 115,000 accomplished people in 110 countries. WPP has headquarters in New York, London and Singapore and a corporate presence in major markets worldwide.

We create transformative ideas and outcomes for our clients through an integrated offer of communications, experience, commerce, and technology.

WPP and our award-winning agencies work with most of the world's biggest companies and organisations - from Ford, Unilever and P&G to Google, HSBC, and the UN. Our clients include 61 of the FTSE 100, 307 of the Fortune Global 500, all 30 of the Dow Jones 30 and 62 of the NASDAQ 100. WPP are the leader in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index and 20th in the FTSE 100 rankings for Women on Boards.

WPP is currently driving the industry's largest business transformation across the marketing and advertising sector. Dominic Shine has recently joined as our Global CIO and is driving a major transformation of our Enterprise Technology capabilities across the group. Key to this transformation is the strengthening of the Global Enterprise Technology Leadership Team and the introduction of a new operating model which will see 2500+ technology professionals across the group come together to form an integrated global team that services and enables the ongoing transformation of our agencies and functions. We are looking for a unique c-suite level candidate to play a role with a significant dual focus at the highest level of our organisation.

Firstly, this role will be a CIO of Business Platforms and drive the strategic roadmap and adoption of global enterprise platforms and applications working closely with our WPP eExCo consisting of WPP agency leaders. They will lead a team of business platform leaders in each of our three agency clusters (Creative, Media and Production, PR and Specialist). The remit of this role is significant E2E responsibility for building, running and transforming enterprise platforms and shaping agency cluster-specific technology to grow our businesses (inc. Workday, Maconomy, Dynamics, Salesforce, Wrike, Monday).

Secondly, this role will be the Corporate CIO and the strategic technology partner to the WPP executive team and leaders of group functions (inc. Mark Read CEO, Joanne Wilson CFO, Lindsay Pattinson CPO, Andrew Scott COO and Laurent Ezekiel Chief Marketing and Growth Officer) driving business transformation across the group. This role will work closely to define and weave enterprise technology into our wider global operating model, partnering with our Chief Transformation Officer and core HQ stakeholders to transform the WPP back office operating model and associated processes.

This role would suit a seasoned leader influencing and advising c-suites in their technology decisions and strategies; alongside tackling and transforming a highly-fragmented legacy estate (e.g 300+ ERP instances) along with rationalisation of 1000s of applications across a FTSE 100 company; with a remit to drive consistency and enterprise buy-in and adoption whilst continuing to shape platforms unique to each agency cluster that will enable business growth.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy & Planning

• Co-develop Enterprise Technology strategy in line with WPP overall business strategy and objectives with Leadership Team, translating it into long term (3-5 years) and short term (1-2 years) plans for the Corporate CIO tower.
• Provide inputs into Corporate/ HQ/ Functional strategies and drive proactive Technology insights and recommendations in alignment with overall Technology Roadmap for respective function.
• Oversee annual financial planning and budgeting for Enterprise technology and Corporate CIO tower, setting financial KPIs and milestones that are linked to broader Enterprise Technology targets.
• Establish and monitor success metrics and KPIs, measuring Enterprise Technology strategic impact and value across Corporate.
• Co-develop Enterprise Technology Investment Roadmap, monitoring investment impact and value across Corporate.
• Drive adoption of Enterprise Platforms across agencies and markets working closely with respective Agency CIOs and TechOps Leads.
• Align Corporate strategy and Enterprise Technology strategy through development of Enterprise/ Business/ Corporate platforms, support adoption of inter-agency and service platforms.

Enterprise/ Business/ Corporate Platforms and Enterprise Architecture

• Manage and oversee an enterprise-level view of the platforms (enterprise, corporate/agency & business), services and applications landscape across Enterprise Technology.
• Maintain an enterprise platform roadmap to meet Agency and Corporate enterprise technology demand.
• Work closely with Agency CIOs to create strategy to push adoption of enterprise and business platforms across agencies.
• Set standards/best practice for product / platform development across Agencies, Corporate and TechOps.
• Develop standards, best practices, policies, and processes to allow Enterprise Technology and respective teams to create and implement coherent and consistent enterprise-wide technology architecture.
• Collaborate with respective CIOs and TechOps to identify, recommend, develop, implement, and support cost-effective technology solutions.
• Manage risks associated with information and Enterprise Technology assets through the development and implementation of architectural standards and processes.
• Advocate and educate peers, subordinates, and senior management on architectural strategies, principles, and standards.

Relationship Management & Programme Oversight

• Manage key stakeholders (including Corporate Leaders, Regional Leads, and Functional leads in TechOps, other CIOs, core and enabling functions), across WPP driving Enterprise Technology strategy and proactively managing demand.
• Collaborate with Agency CIOs, Tech Ops and Transformation team, identifying initiative impact on Corporate/ HQ and respective regions, including benefits, risks, context, insights, and feedback.

Financial Planning & Management

• Conduct annual financial planning for respective Corporate enterprise technology spend, global and functional targets and balancing demand and supply.
• Forecast, plan, submit and monitor WPP Enterprise Technology Corporate Budget, providing support and insights for the Corporate Enterprise Technology Annual Budget.
• Oversee business case spend and manage financial targets; drive value realisation from respective platforms/ projects/ initiatives within the tower.

TechOps & Operational Service Assurance

• Oversee assurance of service and address Corporate/ HQ service demand; ensure effective collaboration with TechOps to establish robust means of service delivery and conflict resolution.
• Oversee assurance of Enterprise Technology risk and compliance for Corporate.

Technology Demand Management

• Meet Corporate demand through stakeholder relationship management, proactive tech advisory/ engagement and end to end ownership of Enterprise Technology delivery through respective capabilities within CIO tower; Platforms, Service, Portfolio & Transformation, Risk and Security.
• Oversee development of technology business cases for new enterprise technology demand across regions and markets, ensuring savings are met and actions are taken to resolve issues regarding value creation.
• Oversee Corporate Enterprise Technology demand forecasting, planning and management, in line with governance requirements.
• Oversee the monitoring and reporting of Corporate Enterprise Technology demand performance, risk, and impact.
• Address ad hoc Corporate/Functional demand conflicts, working with key stakeholders to address.

People Management

• Ensure the Corporate CIO tower has the right skills and capabilities, in alignment with Enterprise Technology's strategic direction, developing a workforce plan to attract, recruit, retain and develop business partners globally.
• Provide line-management support for Platform Lead, Corporate Transformation & Portfolio Leads, Corporate Service Leads, Corporate Architecture Lead and R&C / Security Partner including oversight of talent management and development activities.
• Partner closely with Finance, HR and Procurement Partner to deliver organisational and financial outcomes.

Experience

• Experience deploying enterprise-wide platforms across a large, dispersed and complex organisation.
• Experience successfully working with other leaders within a highly matrixed structure where there is close alignment and accountability through direct reports (business platform leads) and agency CIOs to deliver outcomes.
• Expert knowledge and experience of key platforms currently being deployed across WPP e.g. Microsoft, Maconomy, Workday, UHub.
• Ability to build diverse, augmented teams with the right mix of permanent, fixed-term, third-party resources to deliver programme outcomes with a firm eye on value and cost.
• Strong portfolio management skills of multiple enterprise technology platform programmes considering the value, timing and roll out of these enterprise solutions.
• Experience designing enterprise target state architecture, operating model and technology choices in a large, FTSE100- equivalent organisation.

Skills

• Extensive experience in the large-scale roll-out of back-office technologies in big global organisations related to functions - HR, Finance, ERPs.
• Operating model design and organisational transformation - strong ability to define target state org structure and implementing a matrix structure of business platform leads across each CIO organisation. Strong leadership skills and experience driving organisational change across a complex and globally dispersed organisation.
• Strong ability to guide corporate and agency senior stakeholders to consider the trade-off between group and agency objectives as it relates to platform decisions.
• Ability to powerfully communicate the value of enterprise platforms whilst persuasively encouraging agencies to leverage enterprise rather than localised solutions.
• Exec stakeholder management skills with the ability to create key technology partnerships and experience top present to board level and c-suite stakeholders - reviewing requirements and acting as an escalation point.

Behaviours

• Exec c-suite business partnering experience helping senior stakeholders to define and refine their technology and product strategy and roadmap.
• Strong understanding of WPP/advertising business model and end users with deep knowledge of how technology, esp. the Enterprise Technology infrastructure supports and enables that.
• Global perspective and experience in delivering the roll out of platforms on a global scale, including an understanding of the challenges and nuances of international operations.
• Strong commercial acumen and drive to negotiate beneficial contractual terms alongside procurement with key partners and drive ruthless efficiency from current teams (internal and partners) to deliver outcomes cost-effectively.

WPP is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without regard to race, color, religion or belief, sex, age, national origin, citizenship status, marital status, military/veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, physical or mental disability. We believe in creating a dynamic work environment that values diversity and inclusion and strives to recruit a diverse slate of candidates to help us achieve that goal.

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