Finance & Treasury Portfolio Head- Washington, DC

Job #:	122239
Title:	Finance & Treasury Portfolio Head
Job Stream:	Information Management and Technology
Location:	Washington, DC
Closing Date:	10/23/2012
Background / General description:
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on the private sector. We help developing countries achieve sustainable growth by financing investment, providing advisory services to businesses and governments, and mobilizing capital in the international financial markets. In fiscal 2011, amid economic uncertainty across the globe, we helped our clients create jobs, strengthen environmental performance, and contribute to their local communities—all while driving our investments to an all-time high of nearly $19 billion. For more information, visit www.ifc.org.  The Corporate Business Technologies Department (CBT) is the Information Technology department within IFC. CBT provides flexible, robust and secure IT solutions and services to enable IFC to achieve its mission and business objectives in all IFC locations worldwide. An opportunity exists within CBT for a Finance and Treasury Portfolio Head to join this dynamic team and contribute to the continued success of the department’s work program. The selected candidate will report to CBT’s Manager of Corporate Business Applications. CBT is seeking a leader to expand client support capabilities for the Accounting Finance and Treasury portfolio. The candidate will assume direct responsibility and oversight for a newly created portfolio for Accounting Finance and Treasury serving as CBT's primary interface to its IFC clients and providing value-added IT products and services in a responsive and cost-effective manner. To that extent, the candidate will work in a complementary fashion with the Manager with an emphasis on building a client centric service delivery capability for the related business areas, within the context of best practices in enterprise architecture, modern sourcing techniques, modular design and delivery of IT systems, and any appropriate integration of IT services or platforms with other World Bank Group entities. Core responsibilities include: (i) manage related IT portfolio of business applications throughout the entire lifecycle from inception through implementation, deployment, maintenance, and retirement; (ii) minimize gaps, redundancies, rework, and duplication of effort by coordinating new requirements with Business Sponsors and other Business Portfolios; (iii) manage and mentor Client Officers to provide state-of-the-practice services as per CBT PMO standards in planning, developing, implementing and maintaining systems in a responsive and cost-effective manner; (iv) ensure that projects within the portfolio are executed under CBT’s strategic guidelines (e.g. technology standards, development methodology, outsourcing/offshoring); and (v) gain an in-depth understanding of the business and its underlying processes and data.
Duties and Accountabilities:
The position requires a broad, cross-functional perspective to ensure that sound management best practices are enforced across all Accounting Finance and Treasury applications, business processes, and IT development and maintenance procedures.  The candidate will actively contribute to re-engineer and streamline business processes, data flows and architecture to promote a more productive, reliable, efficient and risk-minimizing applications for the Accounting Finance and Treasury portfolio.  S/He will take on a key role in managing the production support team for IFC core financial applications ACBS, SAP, Investran, Summit, CTMS etc. including support for and enforcement of technical requirements related to existing and emerging financial operational control and compliance. The Head for Accounting Finance and Treasury must also have a combination of technical understanding, back office operations experience, financial consulting experience, leadership insight, and pragmatism to take stock of in-house situations of the portfolio and make improvements in a decisive and objective manner to improve overall client satisfaction and delivery of projects. Specific responsibilities include: 1. Inconsultation with business Sponsors and CBT Management, initiate approved projects under the three-year IT program. This includes assigning Client Officers, and agreeing on delivery approach (resourcing strategy, ITSC approval, and project timeline) 2. Manage the production support environment and maintain critical financial applications across different countries 3. Facilitate prioritization of requirements (new development, enhancements, and maintenance) across the business area by identifying constraints with regard to CBT delivery capacity, business area absorptive capacity, and corporate windows of opportunity for deployment as defined by the PMO 4. Facilitate agreement among multiple Sponsors to resolve business issues as they relate to IT development 5. Act as the escalation point for unresolved issues within the business area 6. Act as the first point of contact for emerging issues and dependencies between Business Portfolios 7. Provide status of portfolio to PMO via weekly status meetings with Portfolio heads PMO, and CBT Management 8. Present monthly status of IFC IT initiatives to business areas and solicit feedback 9. Contribute to the three-year IT plan (business requirements and associated budget)
Selection Criteria:
The nature of this function demands that it be led by an individual with keen business analytic ability to ensure that opportunities are seized to optimize efficiency, effectiveness (elimination of redundant tasks), and superb communication skills. This requires that the candidate have:  (i) a mature understanding of IFC's financial and accounting business lines and practices;  (ii) a deep familiarity developing, supporting and customizing COTS financial, accounting and treasury applications;  (iii) up-to-date, best practice experience with SDLC;  (iv) a robust, cross-functional perspective to be able to bridge the business to information technology gap; and  (v) a perceptive and diplomatic ability to sort out cost-effective and common approaches that meet identified business requirements. • The candidate must possess a clear mastery of IT information system state-of-the-practice, a proven and well articulated awareness of fundamental aspects of business and financial systems, and enterprise data store approaches. S/he must have a clear understanding and appreciation of the components and dynamics of an Enterprise Architecture, and the agility needed to support changing corporate objectives in a dynamic marketplace. Moreover, the candidate must exhibit a clear comprehension and appreciation for the postulates and practice of IT Governance.  The position demands substantial experience for the analysis and definition of requirements for IT systems and platforms within a globally-distributed enterprise in the Finance and Treasury sectors. In addition to the required knowledge cited above, selection will be based on: • Advanced degree in Computer Science, Finance, MBA or related field and minimum of 8years experience providing IT enabled solutions to the banking and financial sector (or equivalent combination of education and experience). • Thorough understanding of IFC back office operations supporting IFC investments, trade products and donor funded portfolios. In depth understating of IFC investment processes and experience working with investment teams on new financial products and defining business events and operational procedures to support these products • Must be a seasoned technical expert with a strong business acumen, having in-depth understanding of the principles and practices of IT, and a strong track record of designing and delivering IT-enabled business systems for financial institutions within schedule and budget • Experience in successfully managing a production support environment and maintaining critical financial applications that require 99.9 % uptime across different countries • Experience in procuring and implementing commercial of the shelf banking applications for large financial institutions, required to support Loan Accounting, Equity, Treasury and Financial Accounting, including managing historical data conversion and leading business process re-engineering for STP  • Mature understanding and mastery of core financial applications used by IFC such as ACBS, Datamart, IFC Client Billing, Payment, SUMMIT, INVESTRAN and Business Events Manager acquired managing implementations and/or upgrade projects for all these applications • Strong Organizational Skills and Business Judgment: Ability to distinguish between what is and is not critical, and to balance on both strategic and short-term issues. A track record of delivering results under stressful timetables • Leadership Effectiveness: Outstanding leadership and management skills as evidenced by: a track record of hiring, retaining, developing and motivating teams to perform to best of their abilities. Breaking down of organizational silos and collaborating with business units; and, a track record of successful personal engagement and communication with a culturally diverse workforce • Teamwork and Consensus Building: As a multinational, multicultural institution, success at IFC requires the ability to negotiate and facilitate trade-offs and build consensus and commitment to a recommended direction among multiple stakeholders, with broadly divergent frames of reference. The candidate must also embrace and foster respect for all, including diversity in age, gender and origin, and have a record of developing and mentoring staff to ensure career development and succession planning • Personal Integrity & Effectiveness: Highest personal and professional integrity as demonstrated through strong personal values, as well as consistent words and actions.  Build and sustain strong collegial working relationships with other units of the IFC and the World Bank Group, and be comfortable approaching others assertively, responsibly and supportively • Strategic Vision: Must have a track record of understanding and translating client’s business needs into a coherent IT vision with deliverables Applications must be submitted online. Only those candidates selected for interviews will be contacted. Candidates can check the status of their applications by visiting www.ifc.org/careers.