The Senior Manager, Business Relationship & Strategic Planning role is responsible for working with global business stakeholders to contribute to planning, creating and implementing an IT vision and strategy aligned with the company’s strategic business plan.
He / she proactively serves as a “trusted advisor”, and is the primary point of contact from IT for business executives, managers and key contacts. He / she represents IT in promoting IT services and capabilities. He / she provides support in delivering technology products and services to ensure business satisfaction and strive to be a valued and preferred IT service provider to all business partners. He / she facilitates the planning and execution of business changes through the use of technology and serve as a lead role in enabling the business to achieve their objectives through the effective use of technology.
He / she must be able to communicate clearly, negotiate well, listen well, mitigate conflict, build alliances and achieve desired results using strong interpersonal and diplomacy skills. He / she works closely with others on intangible issues across organizational and business-entity boundaries. His / her knowledge of technology risks and opportunities is shared to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the business.
He / she works as the strategic interface with assigned areas of the business (i.e., World Vision Business Unit, National Office, Regional Office and Support Office) for the purpose of business/IT strategy development, solution discovery, service management, risk management and relationship management. These individuals serve as the relationship linkage between the business and IT. They provide highly-valued strategic consulting level support and guidance through key IT initiatives. They also communicate decisions, priorities and relevant project information to appropriate levels of staff regarding service requests, projects and initiatives.
He / she must be able to plan, manage, develop metrics for and report on parallel complex pipeline and ongoing initiatives. He / she will contribute towards developing and improving standards and processes related to portfolio and project planning. He / she is responsible for identifying potential risk and inter-dependencies across projects.
Strategic Relationship:
- Establishes and maintains a strategic relationship with global senior stakeholders, business owners and the IT organization.
Oversight:
- May participate as a member of an advisory board for the prioritization of IT initiatives based on organization(s) needs/strategy, IT workload and budget.
- Ensures the resolution of IT issues
- Ensures the conceptual completeness of the technical solution.
- Works with organization stakeholders and technical resources to create and implement an appropriate solution required to meet organization(s) business goals.
Advocacy:
- Represents the business requirements and priorities to IT and represents the IT vision and requirements to the business to ensure the best possible outcome.
- Promotes an understanding of IT roles, processes and activities to assigned area(s) of the organization(s).
- Acts as an advocate for business requirements and required results.
- Ensures other IT departments are aware of key business issues.
- Identifies and resolves potential problems and conflicts.
Consulting:
- Provides strategic consultation to business and IT teams.
- Participates in quality reviews and provides feedback.
- Advises on options, risks, costs versus benefits, and impacts on products, business processes and system priorities.
- Ensures IT solutions support the organization’s short-term and long-term business goals/strategy and align with World Vision’s Global IT strategy.
- Analyzes technology trends to determine impact to the achievement of organization(s) goals.
- Performs assessments and provides recommendations based on business relevance, appropriate timing and deployment.
Business Requirements:
- Maintains awareness of changes to the organization(s) strategy, goals and processes to ensure requirements appropriately reflect the needs of the organization(s). Facilitates changes when necessary.
- Recommends options, identifies risks and analyzes cost vs. benefits.
- Negotiates agreements and commitments by facilitating communication between business stakeholders and IT from initial requirements to final implementation.
- Manages business leadership priorities of IT projects and requests.
Project Planning:
- Participates in short- and long-term planning sessions with clients to improve business processes.
- Identifies enterprise opportunities that align with organization’s strategy and performance.
- Analyzes pipeline and ongoing projects to identify inter-dependencies and provide input to portfolio and project planning accordingly.
- Communicates with organization’s stakeholders and project managers, and other stakeholders to ensure awareness of progress, risks, and results.
Business Case:
- Analyzes feasibility studies and make recommendations to stakeholders.
- Manages the business case development process.
- Contributes to the development of a business case. Recommends expenditures based on the size, scope, and cost of hardware and software components.
- Reviews and evaluates business cases to confirm identified financials and risks, validate value and business alignment, and recommending a course of action.
- Presents business cases to the client.
Business Process:
- Identifies opportunities to increase business efficiency and effectiveness by reviewing current business processes and facilitating development of plans for improvement, when appropriate.
Risk Management:
- Works with business stakeholders in the identification and evaluation of risks associated with business decisions.
- Helps in the development of risk mitigation plans.
Customer Satisfaction:
- Establishes customer satisfaction metrics and ensures client satisfaction is achieved.
- Manages development and implementation of a plan(s) to improve client satisfaction.
- Manages client expectations.
- Supports and participates in the formal reporting of project status.
- Recaps quarterly IT performance.
Service Level Agreemenets (SLAs):
- Negotiates Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) with clients in accordance with IT standards and specifications as required.
- Reviews and analyze SLA reports.
- Communicates SLA results and issues to appropriate stakeholders.
Coaching/Mentoring:
- Develops, motivates, and directs IT team members and fosters a team environment.
- Recommends training programs targeting specific areas of improvement.
- Mentors members of the team and provides input to performance reviews.
- Requires leadership, negotiation skills and experience/in-depth knowledge of business requirements analysis, project and portfolio management and IT processes.
- Typically requires 10 or more years of IT experience, 5-7 years of experience in the areas of IT management, project and portfolio management, process engineering or solutions management.
- Requires experience in successfully implementing large, complex projects or IT leadership role.
- Extensive experience working in a cross-cultural, geographically dispersed team.
- Willingness and ability to travel domestically and internationally, as necessary.
- Effective in written and verbal communication in English.
Preferred Skills, Knowledge and Experience:
- NGO experience.
Work Environment/Travel:
- The position requires ability and willingness to travel domestically and internationally up to 30% of the time.