Director IT, Regional Business Partnership (US/Canada)

ACCOUNTABILITY LEVEL:

The role is accountable for leading the regional IT organization in the development of strategies, scoping of investments, implementation of strategic projects and execution of local support to fulfill the needs of the regional Clarios business segment. This leadership position is expected to challenge the status quo, identify strategic opportunities to apply digital ways of working as well as technology and advise business leaders on organization changes required to achieve value. This position is accountable for the overall quality of IT customer service to the regional business segment, with internal direct reports in the region of responsibility located at both headquarters and manufacturing locations.

The role represents the IT function in regional business activities, with a dotted line reporting relationship to the regional President. This position is indirectly accountable to the President as technology advisor for the delivery of successful project outcomes, minimizing mission critical system downtime, enabling the regional team to meet their commitments enabled by technology and complying with global standards and regulations. This role is the leader accountable to fulfill regional needs while operating within company-wide standards, practices and policies.

As a member of the Global IT and Business leadership teams, this role needs to set the appropriate tone at the top. The position requires a leader who leads by example, is competent, confident, perseverant, inspirational, influencing, disciplined, pragmatic and dependable. In addition, this individual needs to be highly collaborative, a strong communicator and continuous improvement minded. The ability to deliver tactical projects while anticipating issues and thinking strategically is required.

The position requires a demonstrated ability to manage a diverse portfolio of requests, quickly mediate between competing priorities, and work effectively with IT colleagues, contractors, and business management both within and across reporting relationships, business units and geographic regions.

Finally, this leadership role is responsible for the management, development and engagement of its people, including the hiring of staff, their instruction, coaching and evaluation. The role is held accountable to optimize the mix of internal talent, purchased services and tools to enable business results at lowest delivered cost.

SCOPE:

Business Relationship Management

Work closely with Directory and VP level business stakeholders to understand strategies, business processes and pain points. Identify opportunities for Digital & IT enablement and respond to direct IT requests. Assist in development of business cases to prioritize, sequence and gain approval of IT initiatives. Establish a communication channel with business to provide regular updates in terms of status and steering committee updates along with channeling business updates back into the IT department.

Strategy Development

Fulfill a leadership role in IT strategic initiatives including; developing and implementing IT strategic roadmaps aligned with business strategy, expanding organizational capacity to execute on IT strategies; identifying emerging trends and disruptive technologies to introduce to Clarios.

Program Leadership

Work with business leaders to understand business strategies. Plan the annual investment plan of projects and operational expense for the area of responsibility, Assist with the development and implementation of goals, objectives, policies, and priorities. Make recommendations regarding administrative, organizational, and operational problems. Assist with the preparation and administration of the budget, maintain and monitor appropriate budgetary controls, assist with the development of information system standards, and designs and implements new and revised systems to ensure effective and efficient services.

Provides appropriate functional expertise and staffing for all projects in the area of responsibility. Accountable for the solution meeting the functional needs of the business as well as the successful execution of user training, change management and launch support. Flexes resource assignments to achieve the best business outcome.

Service Operations Management

Provide IT customer service within the region including local IT support at all manufacturing and distribution facilities and any HQ locations within the region. Provide feedback and engage with shared service owners to manage quality of service within the region. Oversee the team of local IT resources who support break/fix, inventory management, security patching and refresh activities for on-site hardware including but not limited to plant servers, PCs, printers, phones, network gear, handheld scanners and tablets. The role is responsible to engage and/or monitor all major incidents to ensure timely resolution, communication to stakeholders and validate root cause analysis and permanent corrective actions are implemented.

SAP Application Delivery & Support

Provide for the ongoing support, project and small enhancement delivery on the SAP application platform. Manage the team of internal and external resources who design/build/test application changes and provide end-user support to a formal SLA. Responsible to achieve and maintain SOX compliance for the application annually.

Digital Program Leadership

Responsible to coordinate digital program activities within the region including the identification of digital initiatives, designation of leadership, on-time completion of status reporting and shaping of the program within the region. As initiatives require the creation of new digital technology, this role is responsible to implement local delivery and support models as required. Act as a digital evangelist.

Team Management

Responsible for hiring and professional development of staff. Selects, develops, coaches, and reviews associates/employees and contingent workers. Conducts interviews, individual performance and development planning performance reviews, other supervisory interactions and proposes salary increases.

Local Employee Engagement

Responsible to liaison with all IT employees physically located in the region. Coordinate annual employee engagement action plans, local recognition and compliance with local HR policy.

Departmental

Engages as an active member of the CIO's staff advancing the functions operating model, governing investments, completing program phase gate reviews and managing budget. Participates in forecasting and long-term planning, implements long-term plans, uses non-traditional/creative approaches to problem-solving, recommends new or revised standards, policies, etc. in areas of responsibilities.

TYPICAL RESPONSIBILITIES:

Business Relationship Management

• Business Relationships - Develop working relationships with a diverse group of business people and gain an understanding of the complex nature of the company's business. Maintain familiarity with the business plans of the company and the departments serviced.
• Business Alignment - Meets with user management and staff to understand business requirements and to determine system requirements for all functions in the area of responsibility. Works with customers to define and prioritize improvement initiatives. Assists in building strategic roadmaps and aligning the business initiatives with IT initiatives to shape the IT vision and strategy. Ensures participation of IT in business partner weekly operations, quarterly strategic reviews or annual planning sessions.
• Business Case Development - Responsible for contributing to business case generation and overall project strategies including project plans for major efforts that satisfy the business needs of that functional area for review and approval by management. Also responsible for assisting user management in setting priorities.
• Demand Management - Identify key strategic business and functional requirements for the areas of responsibility. Responsible for assisting users in setting priorities, resolving competing initiatives and aligning expectations throughout the portfolio.
• Issue Escalation - Key role in the management, impact analysis and communication of system performance or production downtime events. Acts as conduit between IT applications support and business leadership.

Program Leadership

• Program Structure & Governance - Works with the PMO team to properly structure projects for success. Qualifies functional resources as well as business SMEs and leads for participation in the project. Accountable for functional design, user training, change management and launch support for all projects. Together with the PMO selects delivery partners and constructs preferred commercial agreements with external providers. Develops methods for tracking and reporting status of IT programs to business partners.
• Resource Management - Directs, instructs, and coaches staff in order to meet project goals according to the agreed upon scope, schedule and budget. Allocates and balances work assignments to best meet needs of the portfolio. Evaluates and reports the performance of assigned team members.
• Collaboration - Works closely with IT management peers to ensure customer needs are being addressed, solutions are complete and not compromised because of functional boundaries and/or the capabilities of the technical architecture.
• Drive Standards - Oversees and ensures the quality of testing, application documentation, user training, change management, production release and on-going support.
• Issue Management - Key role in the escalation and resolution of issues during project delivery by working across IT functions, department boundaries and the business community.
• Delivery Partners - Selects, qualifies and manages internal and external delivery partners to ensure successful, high quality outcomes, on-time and on-budget. Builds relationships with delivery leaders to effectively overcome barriers to success.

Service Operations Management

• Regional Customer Service - Provide direction and staffing for support of all incidents and service requests that cannot be satisfied by global service desk, AMS or infrastructure support. Respond to all escalations for service help in the region. Measure customer satisfaction and take actions to improve results and perception of the department in the region. Provide VIP support.
• Plant Support - Manage local IT support to manufacturing, distribution and HQ locations within the region. Provide local application support (L0) across plant, enterprise and desktop applications. Direct changes that require local hands and feet to execute including plant server, monitor, network, printer and handheld device updates/refreshes.
• Major Incident Management - Engage in all major incidents that occur in the region through restoration of service. Act as a communication liaison between IT and customers. Provide 8D champion to ensure RCA and PCA's are identified to regional leadership acceptance levels.
• PC Lifecycle Mgmt - Establish regional management of PC refresh activities, idle inventory management and PC break/fix.

SAP Application Delivery & Support

• Design/Build/Test - Responsible for the management of internal and external platform architects developing SAP solutions to meet customer demands across core ECC and all other SAP modules used in the region. Manage demand prioritization and backlog of requests to fulfill busines operational deadlines with quality.
• Application Support - Oversee third party managed application support and any escalations to L3 pertaining to the SAP application. Direct support team to operate with stated SLA, create and implement corrective action plans to reduce total number of tickets.

Digital Program Leadership

• Coordinate and Influence - Organize regional function leaders and VP GM to identify digital program initiatives in the region and stated benefits within 5-year horizon. Influence regional leaders to subscribe to new methods for milestone, KPI and benefits tracking to assemble digital program for the region and drive accountability for success through others.

Team Management

• Staff Management - Responsible for the professional development of staff. Responsible for hiring of staff personnel in area of responsibility. Conducts interviews, individual performance and development planning performance reviews, other supervisory interactions and proposes salary increases.

Local Employee Engagement

• Action Planning - Leads creation of annual EE plan activities. Champions ideas, funding and drives inclusion in the region.
• Communication - Organizes and leads recurring town hall meetings for all IT employees physically located in the region regardless of reporting structure.
• Local Liaison - Cascades and directs compliance to any local HR information relative to policy, facilities, training or other to IT employees located in the region.

Departmental

• Financial Responsibilities - Participates in creating of department budget and quarterly forecasts. Responsible for consulting, salary, travel and training budgets in designated areas of responsibility.
• Operating Model - Provides feedback and helps shape the operating model of the department to achieve balance between governance, speed, risk and quality required by the region.

REQUIREMENTS/QUALIFICATIONS:

• BS Degree in Information Technology or similar field. MS Degree or MBA preferred.
• 15+ years experience defining, implementing and supporting Information Technology systems with an emphasis on manufacturing processes and continuous operations.
• 10+ years leadership experience managing technical delivery teams and owning a project portfolio.
• Experience with Vendor Management for both product and service vendors
• Experience using structured project management methodologies with agile SDLC methods.
• Experience leading individual programs greater than $5M in size.
• Experience with aftermarket autoparts global sales channels a significant plus.
• Action oriented, with the ability to understand and willingness to get into systems development details when warranted. "Do what it takes" attitude.
• Experience with managing in house and contract staff; experience with off-shore development is preferred.
• Experience supporting applications in a 24x7x365 manufacturing environment.
• Strong analytical skills with demonstrated ability to convert business needs into system requirements.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Multi-lingual capabilities preferred
• Demonstrated IT leadership skills with a proven track record of success
• Willingness to travel internationally to support job responsibilities as required. (Approx. 20%)

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Who we are:

Clarios is the creator behind the world's most recognizable car battery brands. We are the car battery found in most new vehicles including leading brands such as Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. Our 16,000 employees develop, manufacture, and distribute batteries for virtually every type of vehicle. We recover, recycle, and reuse up to 99% of our battery materials, leading sustainability practices in our industry. Clarios, formerly Johnson Controls Battery Group, is currently a Brookfield portfolio company. Learn more about us at www.clarios.com.

We recognize that people come with a wealth of experience and talent beyond just the technical requirements of a job. If your experience is close to what you see listed here, please apply. Diversity of experience and skills combined with passion is key to challenging the status quo. Therefore, we encourage people from all backgrounds to apply to our positions. Please let us know if you require accommodations during the interview process by emailing [email protected]. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and value diversity in our teams in terms of work experience, area of expertise, gender, ethnicity, and all other characteristics protected by laws in the countries where we operate. For more information on our commitment to sustainability, diversity, and equal opportunity, please read our latest report. We want you to know your rights because EEO is the law.

To all recruitment agencies: Clarios does not accept unsolicited agency resumes/CVs. Please do not forward resumes/CVs to our careers email addresses, Clarios employees or any other company location. Clarios is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes/CVs.