Enterprise Architect

HSO Success and Ambition

HSO has grown organically to have more than 400 people throughout the UK and we expect to continue to grow significantly in the next five years. We are a leading member of the Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle, founded in 1987, and specialize in sectors such as Retail, Manufacturing, Professional Services, Financial Services and Local Government. We’ve won several prestigious awards over the last few years including being voted in the UK’s top 10 Best Large companies to work for the last 3 years running. This year we are also proud to have been named the D365 Finance Microsoft Partner of the Year Award and Finalist for D365 Sales & Marketing.

HSO is the place to work for those in the Microsoft Dynamics channel. People join and stay because we care; about adding value to our customers, about delivering what we say we will, striving to improve ourselves, being inclusive and having fun.

The core values that enable us to work so well together, also mean our customers want to work with us. We choose to be different to other Microsoft Partners. Caring about our people, customers and quality of work differentiates us. We always support our people and customers to achieve shared, agreed goals.

Job Purpose:

HSO’s Enterprise Architect will engage with the customer at the highest business level, understanding the vision and translating that vision into a technology strategy which will be executed via the HSO Consulting teams as an effective and controlled program of work.

The enterprise architect will work in 3 major phases across client engagements:

1. Analysis & definition: Provide the supporting detail to the vision in terms of business required capabilities, and how these come together to meet the business vision. Understand the environment in which the business operates and the constraints or opportunities of the legacy landscape. Help in the development of the capabilities and requirements by bringing in best practice and technical innovation and showing how it can be used.
2. Architecture design & program planning: Matching up the technology to the requirements. Taking the requirements and strategies and picking the right technologies and approaches to deliver them effectively into the business. This will be documented as you produce the Architecture design, roadmap and definition documents that project services can plan and estimate against.
3. Governance & Architectural change management: Governance. With the program in full flight there will be ongoing work to ensure it is sticking to the principles, and delivering the values, identified in the earlier stages. As part of the Design Authority you help provide the escalation point for projects, and the control point for the business to be able to re-direct elements of the program in response to business change.

This role covers the process from pre-sales to initial engagements through to the validation of work completed. As such the Enterprise Architect is the key consultant for the customer in the overall definition and implementation of their business systems. This is a highly visible role, both internally and externally.

While the primary focus of this role is in the provision of services to the customer, the Enterprise Architect will also be responsible for contributing to internal process and approach for architectural designs and decisions together with the creation of internal tools and for growing and disseminating the key learnings from new technologies or project experience.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the customer engagement for architectural requirements gathering, design and governance
• Be able to inform and inspire the business debate on technology and digital transformation
• Facilitate discussions on business transformation through ideation and envisioning sessions
• Work with prospects and customer to determine the scope of work, and technology approaches, to create an overall enterprise architecture
• Understand the full breadth of the landscape in which the customer operates (business, geography, regulatory, etc.) and be able to use this in the definition and validation of the architecture
• Manage the enterprise architecture throughout the project lifecycle, ensuring it continues to deliver on the business vision, and delivers value to the customer
• Understand the direction of change of business and technology to create a long-term strategic roadmap
• Be able to assess the feasibility of new processes or technologies within a business
• Optimise and change business process to enable more efficient working practices and more effective technology deployments
• Define and lead the stakeholder engagement from an architectural and solution standpoint
• Make appropriate technology choices for the customer to support the architectural requirements and principles
• Provide the link between the initial engagement, business community and consulting teams across all elements of the program
• Oversee the Solution Architects working on a program of work, ensuring that their designs conform to the standards defined in the enterprise architecture
• Support key roles within the project by creating the framework and principles for them to work within. This could be change management, cloud solution architect, advanced data analytics, etc.
• Produce enterprise architecture and design documentation to agreed standards
• Understand the HSO project delivery methodology and recommend the implementation approach for new solutions
• Work closely with project teams and act as a point of reference/escalation during the implementation of a solution, closely aligned with the Program Manager
• Undertake Business Process design/mapping and documentation
• Create the space for agile, innovative projects running in parallel to the main program
• Participate in pre-sales activities, orchestrating and leading demonstrations
• Represent HSO in a professional and positive manner at all times
• Adhere to health and safety policy and other requirements relating to care of equipment.
• Ensure that all Certifications and Accreditations required to fulfil this Role within HSO are met

Deliverables

The following elements are typical of an Enterprise Architecture blueprint and delivery of these would be the responsibility of the Enterprise Architect:

• Capability Maps
• Business Architecture
• Application Architecture
• Data Architecture
• Integration Architecture
• Intelligence Architecture
• Security Architecture
• Platform Architecture
• Roadmap

Key Competencies

• Vision and thought leadership in technology
• Commercial and budget awareness
• Client facing at CxO level
• Critical thinking and problem-solving skills
• Planning and organising
• Decision-making
• Leadership
• Communication skills to be credible at every level
• Business influencing and leading
• Conflict management

Experience and Skills

The Enterprise Architect will have senior working-level capabilities and experience with many business, functional (application) and infrastructure (operational) products, technologies, processes and services. While often relying on specialists for the construction, implementation and operation aspects of solution delivery in many of these areas, the Architect must have enough capabilities and experience across them to be able to successfully architect appropriate solutions of heterogeneous components.

Essential:

• 6+ years of hands-on software implementation experience across a variety of roles, with at least 3 major projects or 3+ years in a solution architect or leading project role
• Previous experience as an Enterprise or Senior Solution Architect, having been responsible for shaping previous systems and complex programs of work
• Adept at Business Requirement Analysis and able to demonstrate a wide understanding of one or more of HSO’s key markets of Retail, Distribution, Manufacturing and Technical Services.
• Pre-sales experience
• Excellent presentation and demonstration skills
• Project Management awareness
• Good written and verbal communication skills
• Strong understanding of the concepts of modern technology
• Expert level in at least one core area of Dynamics 365
• Broad understanding of all the elements of the Microsoft technology platform
• Awareness and understanding of key players and technologies in the business applications market (e.g. Forecasting software, HR packages, middleware, etc.)
• Good understanding of implementation methodology or demonstrate understanding of the implementation process for ERP systems
• TOGAF qualification, Foundation essential, Practitioner preferred

Desirable:

• Educated to degree level in Computer Science or technical subject, or equivalent experience, with further qualifications in Microsoft technologies and industry qualifications e.g. TOGAF
• Senior business leadership experience (Finance Director, IT Director, etc.)
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics 365, Azure services and Microsoft 365
• At least one implementation with documentation in the role of Enterprise Architect
• Experience implementing solutions for manufacturing, retail and professional services companies
• Worked in a solution delivery from consultancy side