Reporting to the CIO, the Director, IT Relationship Management will be responsible for working closely with business partners to develop and maintain comprehensive technology plans for the respective business unit. Responsible for IT Capital and Expense financial projections, planning, and oversight for technology systems supporting the business unit. Responsible for partnering with business stakeholders to understand challenges and needs and identifying technology solutions to meet evolving business needs. Eliminate redundant systems and manual operations, while implementing consistent and automated best practices. Consulting with business process owners on tools and solutions based on own area of IT expertise. Closely collaborate with other IT disciplines such as Service Delivery, Infrastructure, Business Analytics, and Application Development and Support to deliver solutions to meet business needs. Influence and partner with business leaders (Manager, Director, VP) to manage expectations and align the process specific IT portfolio. Also responsible for managing IT Vendor relationships, including contract negotiation and compliance.

Responsibilities:

• Provide expert oversight of systems and roadmaps.
• Provide expertise in the design, development, deployment, and maintenance of systems in support of business needs.
• Ensure integrity of processes and respective systems data.
• Liaise with IT, operations, and respective business functions.
• Responsible for compliance with applicable Corporate and Divisional policies and procedures. Operates with broad goals and objectives. Has direct impact on, expenses and project completion.
• Improve quality, and reduce costs by optimizing and integrating quality processes, and systems including management and reporting
• Facilitate conversations with stakeholders to help understand, document, and solve business needs
• Understand, document, and explain issues and requirements from both a technical and business point of view
• Collaborate with design and development teams to document business requirements, plans, workflows, risks, and estimates in shared services
• Analyze multifaceted business problems and issues using data from internal and external sources to provide insight to decision makers.
• Conduct analysis using standard practices and tools associated with data gathering and analysis.
• Actively participate as a member of IT leadership team to determine priorities, set expectations, and ensure successful organization alignment between business units, IT shared services, and vendors.
• Establish and maintain communication channels with process owners, key team members and internal stakeholders to support data gathering and analysis.
• Provide/coordinate user training and process hand-off for newly released functionality and enhancements.
• Establish a communication schedule to update stakeholders including appropriate staff in the organization on the progress of initiatives and other IT activities as appropriate.
• Align with key business unit stakeholders to establish and report on IT shared services service levels, addressing any shortcomings with action plans to improve performance.

Strategic Thinking

• Understand people, process and technologies required business operations.
• Building and maintaining expertise on the IT portfolio. Proactively analyzes business processes; elicits, analyzes, and documents business requirements; identifies alternative solutions, assesses feasibility, and makes recommendations typically seeking to exploit and leverage new or existing IT technology components in coordination with IT shared services.
• Champion change and innovation. Stimulates creativity, innovation and open to new ideas.
• Constant awareness of corporate IT standards, technology trends, evolving requirements and their applicability to the business process and IT portfolio, and influences the IT stakeholders and partners in addressing these evolutions in the most efficient way.
• Manages collaboration and partnership with Corporate IT Services including Plan/Design/Build/Run teams.
• Assess the costs, benefits, ROI, and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of proposed projects.

Vendor Management

• Contribute and define the vendor management strategy and process.
• Develop, maintain, and distribute standards and minimum requirements for agreements and various contracts.
• Partner with IT Leadership to manage vendors.
• Negotiate agreements and contracts in partnership with the Legal department, ensuring that the documents meet the expectations of IT Leadership.
• Review new contracts to ensure all necessary clauses have been added and follow company policies
• Manage on-boarding of new vendors and maintain current vendor relationships by communicating with internal legal, business, and IT teams.
• Manage contract documents through execution and ensure any contract addendums or amendments follow company parameters
• Monitor vendors to ensure they maintain compliance with the respective agreement and contract obligations.
• Schedule recurring business review meetings with vendors and key stakeholders.
• Publish monthly contract dashboard.
• Maintain a vendor contract inventory and track renewals in a timely manner allowing for renewal options review and negotiations
• Identify and ensure compliance for vendor SLAs and KPIs.
• Track IT contractors and ensure that they are associated with active contracts.
• Partner with IT Operations Team Members to ensure Managed Services vendor compliance with contract on operational activities.
• Ensure Managed Services vendors adhere to Company’s policies and procedures.
• Execute vendor surveys and compliance audits as necessary.
• Conduct regular contract reviews of strategic vendors.
• Periodically source and negotiate purchases and contract renewals that are out of scope for IT Procurement
• Coordinate review and approval of invoices for all IT spend, ensuring invoices are accurate and sent to AP for payment in a timely manner.

• Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, Computer Science, CIS or related field and Minimum of ten (10) years of experience in IT, IT Consulting, business analysis, or a related field

• Minimum ten (10) years in an IT management capacity
• Seven (7) years of experience working for in an IT organization
• Five (5) years of experience overseeing projects or programs requiring the integration of cross-functional technology and/or business solutions
• Five (5) years of experience overseeing the development and management of vendor relationships
• Minimum five (5) years managing operating budgets and/or project financials
• Five (5) years of work experience in a role requiring interaction with executive leadership (e.g., Vice President level and above)

• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Detail oriented
• Extensive experience leading and working with cross-functional teams
• Excellent organizational, analytical and communication (oral and written) skills
• Must be able to work independently and handle multiple assignments simultaneously
• Excellent inter-personal, influencing, negotiating, consensus building and conflict resolution skills
• The ability to process information from multiple sources and create innovative solutions and strategies
• Excellent problem-solving skills

• 40-hour on-site work week
• Sitting for extended periods of time
• Dexterity of hands and fingers to operate a computer keyboard, mouse, power tools, and other computer components