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Application Support & Maintenance Manager

Schedule

 : Full-time

Primary Location

 : United States-New Jersey-Englewood Cliffs-Englewood Cliffs -700 Sylvan

Shift

 : Day Job

Job

 : Information Technology

Travel

 : Yes, 5 % of the Time 

Description

 
 
Position Summary:
Unilever’s vision and strategy – the ‘Compass’ – focuses on growth and sustainability, with an ambition to double the size of the business by 2020, while reducing its environmental footprint.  Compass is based on winning in four areas: winning with brands and innovation, winning in the market place, winning through continuous improvement and winning with people.
               
As part of Enterprise Support, IT Services is a critical component underpinning Unilever’s ability to win in the market and achieve the goals of Compass.  It does this by delivering excellent IT services globally so that Unilever can better serve customers, translate its global scale into local cost competitiveness and create maximum agility.
 
Enterprise Support and IT Innovation have agreed a joint strategic agenda, which sets out the following ten priorities:
1.       Consumer intimacy        
2.       Connect with the customer
3.       Real time information service
4.       Seamless business integration
5.       Great place to work       
6.       Deliver superior services
7.       Efficient service operations
8.       Global process and systems convergence
9.       Building a professional services community
10.   Sustainability program
 
The IT operating model – which sets out key roles and responsibilities, and interfaces across IT Services and IT Innovation – has been designed to ensure that the IT function can deliver on these priorities.
 
The Application Services & IT Service Delivery team plays a vital role in introducing technology innovation to the business in the form of new and enhanced IT services and in delivering a portfolio of integrated global and regional IT services that enable the business to operate and grow.  It performs three primary functions:
·         Service Introduction – managing the introduction of new or amended services, including provision of centralized ‘factory’ capabilities in support of IT Innovation, to meet the evolving needs and objectives of the business, whilst targeting “zero-incident” change so that the new capabilities are delivered without interruption to business operations.
·         Service Delivery – integrating the Service Lines to ensure that all global and regional IT services are delivered to the business in accordance with agreed service levels, continuously minimizing the probability and impact of any unplanned service interruption.
·         Application Services – delivering second line application support and maintenance services for the Core Platforms, Global Applications and Regional L&H applications in accordance with agreed service levels and Enterprise Support goals and managing the relationship with, and performance of, all third party providers of application development, support and maintenance services.
 
As a part of the Application Services Support & Maintenance team, the purpose of the Application Support & Maintenance Manager role is to ensure that IT services are delivered in accordance with the agreed scope and service level agreements; opportunities for achieving greater cost effectiveness are proactively investigated and actioned upon and applications are reviewed and consolidated to remove redundancies, working with various Service Providers.
 
The Application Support & Maintenance Manager reports to the AS Support & Maintenance Director
 
Duties and Responsibilities:
Within his/her portfolio scope (as above), the Application Services & Maintenance Manager has the following accountabilities:
 
Application Support & Maintenance
·         Ensure that the Service Providers deliver IT services (Application Support and Application Maintenance) in accordance with the agreed scope & service level agreement (SLA) for the given portfolio, in accordance with all applicable performance metrics, including CPIs, KPIs, ESR, user satisfaction targets, operating level agreements and underpinning contracts. 
o   Ensure that Service Providers resolve incidents and issues in an efficient and effective manner, and that the root cause analysis studies are conducted and clear improvement plans are identified
o   Ensure that service requests (SRs) are implemented according to the agreed SLA
o   Establishes problem resolution procedures and defines consequences of non-compliance
 
·         Analyze and monitor suppliers’ performance against agreed service levels, publishes the results, and initiates remedial actions based on results
·         Reviews SLAs, modifies/defines new SLAs and extensions to existing SLAs as & when needed in line with changing business requirements
·         Bring in pro-active measures to measure service performance
·         Works with Service Delivery teams during issue escalation for coordination, planning and reviews
·         Ensure high availability of Applications to the Unilever business by designing and deploying high quality maintenance plans, covering backup, archiving, housekeeping, health checks, job runs, administration, etc. 
·         Plan for and ensure Proactive Application maintenance to prevent unplanned disruption due to incompatibility of software versions & incomplete/untested release packages
·         Work with Service Providers to plan for progressively reducing incidents, improving availability of services and thereby increasing user/client satisfaction.
 
Service Improvement
·         Pro-actively identify opportunities for addressing stability of applications and application lifecycle issues through Service Improvement Plans. 
·         Drive continuous service improvement activities (with Innovation as required) for Application support
·         Liaison as needed with service providers, SD, Innovation, Process Office, geography teams to seek desired inputs to implement service improvement plans that are aligned to ESR metrics and follows a PDCA cycle to deliver desired benefits
·         Proactively identify and investigates opportunities to achieve greater cost effectiveness for App Service, through improving efficiency and performance of these services
·         Work towards continuously reducing cost of service (TCO) of given portfolio
 
Convergence & Process Harmonization
·         Look at best practices across various templates and see how processes can be harmonized and convergence achieved, considering ITIL, PRISM, Unilever processes / best practices
·         Ensure that benefits of process harmonization and convergence are delivered for designated templates / applications.
·         Work towards consolidation of Applications through a) the proactive identification of and b) complete decommissioning of, redundant Applications, in conjunction with Innovation
·         Work towards ensuring compliance with Unilever processes, SOX and other process and security standards.
 
Additional Responsibilities
·         Interface with Unilever sourcing team to ensure agreed  governance model is executed and IT Supplier information is available
·         Work with IT Business Partners, Global and Regional Finance Managers to verify Consumption and aid Invoicing process
·         Manages the application support managers and analysts in his/her team.
 
Key Skills:
·         Business awareness, understanding the broader context in which IT delivery has an impact on overall business performance
·         Strong project management skills
·         Focus on IT Quality and delivery to meet client  and IT business partner requirements
·         Strong decision making skills, making decisions with limited information, taking calculated risks
·         Strong execution skills; ability to follow  through
·         Stakeholder management skills
·         Strong Interpersonal skills and influencing ability; ability to impact and influence customer and stakeholders
·         Strong People Management and Leadership skills to coach, develop and manage performance of team
·         Ability to take accountability for results and demonstrate ownership
 
Key Requirements:
·         Educated to bachelor degree level.
·         Postgraduate qualification such as an MSc, MBA, or other business or scientific qualification preferred
·         Relevant professional certification (ITIL, CMI, Chartered IT Professional et) Preferred
·         Has minimum 8+ years previous experience  in IT application support and maintenance processes, operating ITIL / PRISM processes and working with external support relationships.
·         Experience in managing large scale ERP or applications implementations for global organizations.
·         Technical Knowledge, like SAP certification, OOPS, CMMi, Databases, IT Architecture, etc.
·         Sound understanding of business processes – order to cash, purchase to pay etc – and the way it impacts the business.
·         Knowledge of areas such as software development lifecycle, IT strategy, IT process excellence,  six sigma, IT portfolio management, ERP packages.
·         Is familiar with all aspects of Application Support & Maintenance and Service Delivery.
·         Possesses up to date knowledge of significant areas of operational and/or development environments.
·         Shows a thorough understanding of applicable project management and/or operational management standards and procedures including technical, quality, safety and financial matters across all areas of service delivery.
·         Shows a good understanding of IT Vendor Landscape
·         Shows a good understanding of contracting and commercial aspects of service management.
·         Displays good inter-personal skills at all levels of contact and in a wide variety of situations.
·         Demonstrates the ability to make, and take responsibility for, sound and far reaching decisions on major technical and service delivery issues.
·         Has the experience and cultural awareness required to work effectively with a global team
 
Unilever offers a competitive compensation package which includes: Medical & Dental Plans, Life Insurance, including eligible spouses, domestic partners & children; Health Care Flexible Spending, Dependent Care, Retirement & Savings Plans, Tuition Reimbursement, Paid Vacation and Holidays.
 
Please note: as part of the job application, you will be asked to complete an online assessment. Completion of the assessment is mandatory in order to be considered. Please allow yourself plenty of time to complete both the application and assessment.  If the assessment is filled out partially or not at all, it will adversely affect the progress of your application. Please be aware that you will have to complete the assessment at once as you will be unable to return to it later. 
 
Unilever is an equal opportunity employer. It prohibits discrimination based on age, color, disability, marital or parental status, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status or any other legally protected status in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws.
 
Employment is subject to verification of pre-employment drug-screening results and background investigation.
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