Associate Director, Operational and Hyper Support Lead – ERP

Background/IRC Summary:

The International Rescue Committee helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC works with people forced to flee from war, conflict and disaster and the host communities that support them, as well as with those who remain within their homes and communities. At work today in over 40 countries and 25 U.S. cities, the IRC restores safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. Learn more at Rescue.org and follow the IRC on Twitter & Facebook.

The IRC is currently implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Management system, known internally as Integra, across the Finance, Supply Chain, Programs and Grants Management functions in all IRC locations. Integra will retire several existing systems, bringing them into a cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics 365 environment. Integra is the largest investment in systems that the IRC has ever made and will change the way we work.

Job Overview/Summary:

The Integra Operational and Hyper Support Associate Director is crucial to the IRC’s successful transition to its first ever global ERP system; this person will be responsible for leading the support provided to all IRC offices during the deployment/ go-live phase, hyper support phase immediately after go-live, and ongoing operational support. The Integra Operational and Hyper Support Associate Director will report into the Sr. Director, Global ERP Program and work with the Director, User Support on SLAs. The Integra Operational and Hyper Support Lead will be responsible for leading each deployment through hyper support and ensuring a smooth transition to operations while maintaining the SLAs that have been communicated. Beyond deployment, the Integra Operational and Hyper Support Associate Director will be responsible for managing ongoing delivery of support to users in operations. Across support areas, the position is responsible for ensuring escalation of high priority issues, bringing visibility to the Integra Leadership Team as well as trend analysis to inform enhancement and systemic bug resolution. The candidate must possess excellent interpersonal skills, and the ability to work well in a diverse, multicultural environment.

Major Responsibilities:

Primary responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Drive systematic approach to providing immediate support to ERP system users post-implementation across dispersed teams. This includes coordination across multiple teams and countries of targeted hyper support and operational open offices, trouble-shooting meetings, stand-ups, and knowledge sharing.
• Develop and institute continuous improvement culture across hyper support team by evaluating performance metrics and identifying areas for improvement across support approach, training guidance, and support materials.
• Establish direction to ensure all support providers (technicians and subject matter experts) provide consistent responses, follow a consistent approach and are aligned on system and process enhancements throughout deployment, hyper support and transition to operational support.
• Act as escalation point for risks and issues that could block adoption or have large scale impact to offices.
• Monitor support backlog to ensure quality and timely resolution of user issues.
• Manage application and hyper support teams to ensure proficient knowledge in key ERP business processes and system navigation
• Ensure hyper support model provides quality support for subject matter experts and end users, and recommend adjustments to model as needed throughout deployment process
• Leverage an end user centric model to ensure that the entire team is focused on providing acceptable and timely solutions to issues reported by end users, and to increase end user satisfaction
• Ensure operational support model provides quality support to offices and includes trend analysis to drive process change and system enhancement where necessary
• Ensure the teams
  • provide timely and high-quality L1 and L2 support for ERP, Grants, GSC, and Finance systems, leveraging specialized knowledge and training in aforementioned applications
  • escalate L3 support requests to Project Managers, Business Systems Analysts, or Developers as necessary and track issue through to completion
  • develop recommendations for application enhancements using comprehensive reporting and results of trend analysis identifying user issues
  • build and maintain ownership of knowledge base for commonly encountered issues within applications
  • collaborate with Change Management to enhance and ensure accuracy of technical documentation necessary to facilitate usage and adoption of applications, including user and admin guides
  • collaborate with Functional teams and Change Management to plan and host ad-hoc webinars, tele-conferences, and/or in-person meetings to better train and support application users
• Utilize issue trend analysis to contribute to project planning and priority setting

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: Sr. Director, Global ERP Program
Position directly supervises: ERP operational and hyper support L1 & L2 technical team
Other Internal and/or external contacts:

Internal: Integra Business Systems Manager, Business System Analysts, Functional Leads, Project Managers, Help Desk
External: N/A

Job Requirements:

Experience Requirements

• Minimum 10 years of IT and business/industry work specializing in application support, preferably ERP

Knowledge and Skill Requirements

• Experience leading post-implementation technical support teams, ideally for global applications
• Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationship with a service-oriented attitude in a team environment. Includes interaction with internal staff as well as customer staff members and the ability to effectively convey computing concepts to non-technical staff.
• Possess excellent interpersonal skills, and the ability to work well in a diverse, multicultural environment.
• Ownership over the smooth daily operation of Integra.
• Strong written and oral communication and interpersonal skills
• Strong sense of customer service
• Working knowledge of applications being implemented
• Works well with others in an integrated team environment
• Fast and independent learner
• Intercultural competence
• Self-motivated and a problem solver
• Strong computer literacy, including proficiency in Microsoft Office and Office 365

Preferred Additional Qualifications

• Experience with support of Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations
• Strong command on English and/or French Languages, Knowledge of other languages will be a plus
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, business administration, or related field; or equivalent work experience
• Knowledge of Agile development methodology a plus
• Experience with ServiceNow as an incident management tool a plus

Working Environment

• This position can either be based in the NY HQ office, Nairobi iHub or as a fully remote role

The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way – Standards for Professional Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity, and Anti-Retaliation.

IRC et les employés de IRC doivent adhérer aux valeurs et principes contenus dans le IRC WAY (normes de conduite professionnelle). Ce sont l’Intégrité, le Service, et la Responsabilité. En conformité avec ces valeurs, IRC opère et fait respecter les politiques sur la protection des bénéficiaires contre l’exploitation et les abus, la protection de l’enfant, le harcèlement sur les lieux de travail, l’intégrité financière, et les représailles.