VP, Applications Services

Vice President of Application Services

The Vice President of Application Services will provide strategic leadership and direction to create coherent, cohesive, agile, and enterprise-focused application technology solutions with a focus on mapping IT capabilities to business needs.

The VP Apps will be responsible for working with the business in order to gain a strong understanding of the business needs and how software can enable and improve the needed business functionality. This person will develop the technology roadmap for applications aligned with the business strategy.

This person will also be responsible for communicating and providing technical design, driving innovation and providing architectural leadership to their team to ensure high value application development, deployment and integrations that meet business requirements and internal standards.

This person will manage and provide leadership to applications teams consisting of internal, managed service and contract resources.  They will be responsible for maintaining the applications environment per SLAs developed with the business.  This position reports to the CIO.

Position Responsibilities:

• Develop multi-year application strategy and roadmap aligned with the business strategy and technology roadmaps.
• Develop departmental KPIs and manage and report to these metrics.
• Develop service catalogs and SLAs for services provided.
• Maintain applications and tools to supported versions
• Manage client expectations for application portfolio, support and delivery.
• Work with cross functional IT leadership to prioritize initiatives across work areas and effective resource planning.
• Develop a practical and working knowledge of business processes; interact with key business partners to recommend solutions that best meet the strategic needs of the business.
• Motivate, lead and develop a team of diverse individuals with a variety of experience levels and skill sets.
• Evaluate installed software solutions and identify areas to improve standards, simplify, and enhance functionality and/or transition to packaged solutions to improve supportability and time to market.
• Lead analysis of leading technology, industry, and market trends to determine their potential impact on the enterprise architecture with a focus on aligning and enabling the business strategy.
• Provide leadership direction for the overall strategic application architecture plans, system design, and implementation.
• Provide broad understanding of platforms and applications across all technologies to both IT and business leadership.
• Work with project teams across the organization to develop and apply architectural best practices and standards, including performing a more involved advisory role on complex initiatives.
• Deliver application recommendations consistent with architectural standards that drive significant value back into the organization relative to IT investments.
• Ensure the “face of IT” and all things coming out of IT are consistent with the communication strategies and aligned with ease of use and agility principles.

GOVERNANCE:

• Develop and apply consistent, standardized system development life cycle processes that are regularly updated through lessons learned from previous projects.
• Understand and apply development methodologies to meet service delivery objectives.
• Ensure Project Delivery objectives are met.
• Create and maintain architectural best practices and standards that address applications, data, and technology across the Applications landscape.
• Develop IT communication strategies and process optimization across the different groups touching IT (employees, business, corporate, production, etc.)
• Manage internal application development projects to meet scope, goals, budget, schedule, resourcing and deliverables.
• Maintain effective communication with business partners, management and team.
• Follows change management processes.
• Effectively applies established methodology and enforces standards.
• Ensures the project management methodology is adhered and stores all project deliverables and documentation.
• Leads and may champion change management activities.

REGULATORY COMPLIANCE:                

• Support all applicable regulations such as SOX, HIPAA and GDPR.

ORGANIZATIONAL/OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT

• Develop department Cap ex and Op ex budgets and forecasts.
• Ensure team is structured and resourced to meet service delivery objectives. 

• Provide leadership and management of staff, including mentoring and career development.

• Manage vendor relationships and contracts.
• Optimize resourcing to meet service delivery and cost objectives, through use of managed services, offshore resources, contractors.
• Ensure cross training and documentation is in place to meet service delivery objectives.

Qualification Requirements

Core Skills / Requirements

• Excellent client relationship skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Strong project management skills
• Expert planning and organizing, decision-making and problem-solving skills
• Very detail oriented and organized
• Strong critical thinking and managerial skills, including managing of remote staff
• Strong interpersonal and diplomacy skills
• Solid working knowledge of entertainment industry (specifically, organizations similar to Deluxe) and industry context preferred
• Demonstrated ability to conceptualize, launch and deliver multiple IT projects on time, delivering expected business results
• In-depth knowledge of the system development life cycle especially, current and emerging application development tools/platforms and application program development alternatives
• Knowledge of multiple technologies including system analysis and design tools
• Works well under stress with tight timelines for deliverables

Education / Experience: 

• 10 years of experience implementing IT application projects with track record of handling multiple projects concurrently with successful project delivery across a broad footprint.
• Minimum of 10 years of experience in IT management, business analysis, solutions management or other related area.
• Experience with global delivery of SAAS application solutions.
• Experience successfully leading large, complex projects in business, IT consulting or management roles.
• Deep understanding of MS Project, Visio, PowerPoint, Word and Excel.
• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Business or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Experience with Financial and Operations ERP systems required, D365 preferred.
• Experience with Manufacturing systems preferred.