Applications Director

Responsibilities

• Support CIO by delivering the committed portfolio of IT projects on time, to scope and within budget and within agreed constraints
• Support the organisation by ensuring that all relevant applications are available per SLA
• Accountable for the long term roadmap of each application including staying abreast of technology changes in the applications landscape (cloud, IOT, digitalisation, AI) including owning all application updates year on year
• Ensure a long term strategy of the ERP applications is maintained and agreed to by the CIO and IT Directors
• Lead a team of functional analysts, developers and reporting specialists to support ERP, HCM, BI, CRM and other application needs
• Ensure application development methodologies, principles, standards and processes are defined and ensure compliance across IT portfolio with a future focus on agile methods of work
• Create a culture of high performance, continuous optimisation and cost effectiveness and manage team performance
• Serve as the Centre of Excellence for applications under the control of the Applications team providing expertise on application functionality, roadmaps (understanding vendor future plans)
• Support CIO and Enterprise Architecture Director in critical review of Application Roadmaps (created by Enterprise Architecture Director)
• Quorum member of Architecture Review Board that approves / rejects solution designs
• Serve as point of escalation for Program Manager, assist in mitigating delays and removing obstacles that are delaying projects
• Establish, communicate, manage and enforce appropriate change and release management, test and quality mechanisms
• In conjunction with Portfolio Management Director pro-actively plan future IT resource requirements with third-party suppliers for both projects and application support
• Review business cases (business and IT) to assess all application impacts
• Own all business cases and RFI / RFP / RFQ related to any applications related work
• Work closely with the Project Delivery Director to deliver projects on time, scope and budget
• Work closely with the Service Delivery Director to support applications to meet business objectives
• Work closely with the IT Business Engagement & Architecture Director and architecture team
• Manage large scale application configurations and development, as well as large scale projects
• Manage development teams by providing guidance and leadership where necessary
• Manage and grow talent
• Business stakeholder management
• Plan and estimate new projects based on approved prioritised projects and new solutions

Experience

• 8+ years in leading large teams (with proven results)
• 8+ years of application development and management experience
• 8+ years in managing suppliers and large contracts
• Experience in Architecture and testing and test management an advantage
• Experience in Project Management an advantage
• Experience in working in a Delivery Centre environment an advantage