Senior Director, Enterprise Systems Delivery and Department Administration

Overview

General Summary: The Senior Director, Enterprise Systems Delivery and Department Administration is responsible for maintaining and delivering enterprise systems solutions, which include the financial management, human capital management, supply chain, franchise management, and data management applications and utilities. Additionally, the role is responsible for administering what has been categorized as “Office of the CIO” duties, which include project/release and financial management orchestration for the shared service IT department.

Reports to: Chief Information Officer

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Enterprise Systems Development

· Lead the delivery and maintenance of the enterprise systems, which include financial management, human capital management, supply chain, franchise management, and data management architectures, applications, and utilities. Serve as functional and technological thought-leader and “product owner” as related to the technical architecture. Chart the architectures to be “cloud-first” in orientation and convergent, serving the enterprise’s portfolio of brands/operating concepts as effectively and efficiently as possible without hindering individual brand and functional team’s trajectories. Lead the migration of existing solutions, applying lessons learned from experience, to destination architectures.

· Foster reliable capability and innovation in systems and business processes by listening to and partnering with functional teammates and users and by keeping current in market solutions and trends. Establish and maintain strong relationships with functional teammates and senior executives so as to identify needs and seek full range of business solutions. Also establish and maintain strong, strategic relationships with solution vendors and partners. Unlock and advance the native and potential capabilities of the underlying architectures, applications, and utilities as technical and functional thought-leader and enabling partner, particularly for data-related functions.

· Apply a proactive ‘product development’ mindset and delivery orientation to the architectures and applications in custody with an outward time-horizon conscious of solutions’/assets’ viability per their lifecycle, market trends, and changing needs of supported business units and their functional teams. Explicitly chart and maintain the roadmap of solution evolution over time, delivered in predictable and reliable iterations/releases.

· Ensure that useful data is provided by the enterprise systems that not only meet the holistic needs of management but also enable higher levels of capability and performance. Create the strategy, enabling architectures, operational model, and business case to further progressive data warehousing, data integration/ harmonization, business intelligence, and data science capabilities, the latter including conversational and generative artificial intelligence.

· Lead project/release implementations and maintenance through sound architectural, functional, and project management expertise, including: thorough and comprehensive knowledge of software development/package implementation life cycle processes and thorough experience in the applications support arena, including job scheduling and management, change management, data management, applications and database troubleshooting and maintenance.

· Ensure a financial value model is prepared for all projects/releases, system changes, and maintenance activities.

· Inspire teammates to consistently meet and exceed objectives through a culture of positivity where hard work and accomplishments are celebrated and appreciated.

· Outline staff and support model, and ensure staff/teammates are developed to not only meet the changing needs of users, customers, and new technologies but also advance the art of the possible.

· Ensure development and implementation all technology policies and procedures including architecture, security, disaster recovery, technology standards, purchasing, internal audit/SOX compliance, and systems documentation.

Delivery Administration

Enterprise Release Management

- Shape and manage processes, tools, ceremonies, and artifacts that:

· Enable prioritization of initiatives that involve technology solution delivery in a clear, quantitative, flexible, and collaborative fashion across brands and business units, implementing effective business-case/data-driven demand management.

· Activate enabling technology strategies (e.g. migration to convergent architectures, progressive data management evolution) through management and maintenance of clear, documented vehicles, such as an enterprise release calendar/roadmap and a resource capacity management apparatus.

· Facilitate creation of confident estimates and delivery release cycles for solutions, anchored on determining critical paths based on understanding of technical solution architecture designs with the enterprise architecture in sight and optimization for resource utilization.

· Provide comfort to the company at large, as delivery and governance evolves to an enterprise release management model from the prevailing “job shop” mode of operation.

· Deliver synthesized reports relaying department operational performance and release or project performance/benefit realization. This involves developing appropriate process steps within teams to support the collection and analysis of appropriate metrics and shaping effective reports or communications to relay key metrics stakeholders and leaders.

· Directly manage a team of and have matrixed oversight of project managers and analysts embedded in business units (managed through processes, tools, and cerermonies outlined above).

Department Financial Management

· Manage department budget and forecast process and artifacts. These duties logically fit with human capacity management tactics underscoring the department’s demand and release management tactics outlined above.

· Establish and manage vehicles that synthesize recurring contractual expenses in coordination with department leaders toward ensuring renewal or termination based their lifecyle. Serve as interface with enterprise procurement and legal partners, accordingly, on new, terminated, or renewed contracts for the department.

· Orchestrate purchasing/PO approval and processing for the department.

· Serve as primary interface to financial management business partners to ensure roll-up and departmental health related to budget, forecasts, PO/invoice processing, contractual compliance/health, and business case articulations and tracking.

Required Skills and Competencies:

· Experience implementing and maintaining packaged ERP systems, namely ‘classic’ financial management and HCM modules. Experience migrating (i.e. integrating/collapsing) such ERP systems and modules inside and between corporate entities strongly desired.

· Experience strategizing, implementing, and maintaining progressive/cloud-oriented enterprise data management architectures, applications, and utilities, including employing: synthesized data apparati (e.g. data lakes, warehouses, operational stores), data integration (i.e. ETL, harmonized data loading), data visualizations and authoritative reports (i.e. drillable business intelligence), and conversational and generative artificial intelligence.

· Experience implementing IT delivery and management frameworks in a progressively widened domain. Thorough knowledge and experience with project management methodologies, processes, and tools – both Agile and Waterfall. Ideally, possess a technology-oriented (e.g. software) product development delivery experience applying release management methodology to bridge coexistence of both Agile and Waterfall -based means.

· Experience managing and nurturing technology vendor relationships towards fulfilling delivery predictability, performance reliability, and innovation.

· Experience directing staff and building teams at progressed scale; understands delegation and accountability, is comfortable with leveraging others to get things done, is an effective coach and mentor to subordinates.

· Proven ability to understand business and technical requirements, development estimates, and project plans. Ability to develop and execute detailed tactical plans on multiple projects. Ability to organize and prioritize multiple assignments simultaneously. Action-oriented and a high tolerance for ambiguity.

· Proven relationship management skills with the ability to interface with all personnel and enterprise teammates. Consultative skills with the ability to engage on a matrix-basis and provide thought leadership and influence. Ability to coordinate, lead and manage groups of people with different objectives from multiple functional areas and ability to form and manage an effective project team.

· IT financial management experience (i.e. managing departmental budgets and forecast, understanding of accounting principles related to capitalization, procurement process experience, contractual/legal wherewithal).

· Experience implementating and maintain human capacity management frameworks that optimize utilization and throughput.

· Excellent written, verbal, presentation, and communication skills as well as excellent listening skills. Experience authoring cogent presentations addressed at audiences of all levels.

· Direct experience leading teams through PCI, SOX, and FTC Compliance activities and audits.

Qualifications

Experience: Seven or more years in information technology or technical function, delivering and maintaining application solutions as profiled and with progressively widened accountability for budgets and responsibility for financial management administration. Corporate IT management in a hospitality/restaurant or retail environment preferred.

Education: Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or relatable field. MBA desirable.