The posting
ROLE OVERVIEW
The Delivery Head leads an enterprise managed-services portfolio covering procurement and asset management, order management, supplier and catalogue management, software asset and licence management, trade and compliance, financial reconciliation and continuous improvement, amongst other shared services functions. The role is accountable for delivery against agreed service levels and for the performance of the teams delivering these services.
The role is the senior point of accountability for the client, leading governance and working with service owners and stakeholders across procurement, finance, legal, security and compliance. The successful candidate will combine senior leadership with a strong understanding of operational processes, risks and exceptions.
The Delivery Head will also lead improvement and automation, develop the operating model, and contribute to new business through solution design, bids and client presentations. The role is based in Hyderabad and requires working from the office, client-site presence and escalation availability across a 24x5 operation.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
1. Service Delivery Leadership & Operational Excellence
- Own delivery across every service line in the portfolio, with accountability for service levels, quality, throughput and customer satisfaction.
- Run daily, weekly and monthly reviews, using trends and leading indicators to manage performance.
- Act as the senior escalation point for operational issues, ensuring issues are resolved at the appropriate level.
- Ensure each service line maintains current procedures, controls and audit evidence, with consistent quality assurance.
- Plan capacity and coverage across service lines and shifts to meet changing demand.
2. Client Partnership & Governance
- Act as the single point of contact and accountability to the client for the portfolio, across service owners, procurement, finance, legal, security and compliance stakeholders.
- Chair operational, monthly service and quarterly business reviews, presenting performance, risks and corrective actions clearly.
- Translate client priorities into delivery commitments, and translate delivery constraints into language the client can act on.
- Build relationships with stakeholders responsible for the client’s budget and strategy.
- Gather client feedback, act on it and communicate progress.
3. Commercial & Contractual Ownership
- Own the commercial performance of the portfolio — cost to serve, margin, and the committed productivity and efficiency targets across the contract term.
- Govern the service-level and service-credit regime: understand where exposure sits, prevent avoidable credits, and manage relief and remedy provisions correctly when performance slips.
- Own change control and scope discipline — recognise out-of-scope work, price it through the agreed mechanism, and prevent unbilled scope creep from accumulating.
- Maintain and apply the rate card for ad-hoc and project work, and keep the boundary between baseline service and chargeable work defensible.
- Support annual pricing, volume re-baselining and contract amendment discussions with evidence from the operation.
- Work within the organisation’s delegated authority and contractual obligations.
4. Transition, Transformation & Partner Management
- Own the transition of scope into the portfolio — due diligence, knowledge transfer, shadow and reverse-shadow phases, gate criteria, cutover and the move into steady state.
- Ensure transition stages meet agreed acceptance criteria before progression.
- Manage subcontracted and partner-delivered service lines to the same standard as directly delivered ones, with a single accountable face to the client.
- Manage post-transition hypercare, including agreed specialist support, duration and exit criteria.
- Plan and execute structural change to the operating model, including consolidation of adjacent functions and the insourcing of scope where that is the agreed direction.
5. Continuous Improvement, Automation & Innovation
- Maintain an improvement pipeline and measure benefits against an agreed baseline, including cost, effort, cycle time and quality.
- Set the automation agenda across the portfolio, prioritising on operational return, and sponsor the cases that need investment.
- Apply process automation, workflow tooling and applied AI to high-volume transactional work, with human control retained over anything carrying commercial or compliance consequence.
- Resolve the root causes of recurring exceptions, working with client and third-party teams where needed.
- Use relevant benchmarks and operational insight to recommend improvements to the client.
6. Growth, Solutioning & Bid Leadership
- Identify and shape new opportunities in and around the account, converting operational insight into a credible commercial proposition.
- Contribute to formal bids — requests for information and proposal, solution design, delivery model, transition approach, assumptions and risk.
- Provide the operational and cost inputs that underpin pricing, and challenge commitments the operation cannot actually hold.
- Represent the delivery organisation in client presentations, site visits and orals.
- Carry agreed solutions into transition and ensure delivery commitments are understood and achievable.
7. People & Capability
- Lead and develop a leadership team of function managers and team leads, and build the bench beneath them.
- Own succession for every critical role, so the portfolio does not depend on named individuals.
- Set the capability agenda — technical depth, certification, cross-training across service lines and shift patterns.
- Own hiring quality and onboarding at scale, including the ramp associated with new scope.
- Manage attrition actively, and build an operation people want to stay in.
PERFORMANCE & SERVICE LEVELS
Indicative performance targets for the role; final service levels are confirmed on engagement and measured per service line.
- Service delivery: meet agreed service levels and quality measures across the portfolio.
- Service credits: manage exposure, investigate any credit events and implement corrective actions.
- Client satisfaction: monitor feedback and deliver agreed improvements.
- Commercial Performance: deliver the portfolio to the agreed margin and cost-to-serve, and meet the committed annual efficiency target.
- Transition: meet agreed milestones and acceptance criteria.
- Improvement Pipeline: deliver the agreed annual benefit, evidenced against a pre-change baseline.
- Audit and compliance: maintain effective controls and address audit findings promptly.
- People: develop direct reports, maintain succession plans for critical roles and manage attrition against agreed targets.
- Growth: contribute to the agreed number of qualified opportunities or bid responses each year.
TOOLS & SYSTEMS
- ERP & Procurement: SAP and enterprise procurement and guided-buying platforms across the purchase-to-pay cycle.
- Service Management: enterprise IT service management platforms such as ServiceNow, covering request, incident, and hardware and software asset modules.
- Asset & Licence Tooling: software asset management platforms such as Flexera or ServiceNow SAM, and floating-licence server environments.
- Contract & Supplier Systems: contract lifecycle management and supplier performance platforms.
- Analytics & Reporting: business intelligence platforms and service-level dashboards used for governance reporting and trend analysis.
- Automation: workflow automation, robotic process automation and applied AI tooling for high-volume transactional processes.
REQUIRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE
Mandatory
- 15+ years in managed services, business process outsourcing or enterprise IT operations, including 7+ years leading multi-function delivery at scale.
- Proven ownership of a large managed-services engagement, including its service-level regime, service-credit exposure, cost to serve and margin.
- Delivery experience spanning several of: procurement and asset management, software asset and licence management, supplier and catalogue management, trade and customs compliance, and financial reconciliation.
- Track record of transition and transformation — due diligence, knowledge transfer, shadow and reverse shadow, gated cutover and the move into steady state.
- Experience managing subcontracted or partner-delivered scope while remaining the single accountable face to the client.
- Senior client relationship management at director and vice-president level, as the named point of accountability rather than a reporting conduit.
- Commercial literacy: statement-of-work interpretation, service levels and credits, change control, rate cards and scope management.
- Demonstrated continuous improvement and automation delivery with benefit quantified against a baseline.
- Contribution to bids and solutioning — proposal responses, delivery and transition design, pricing input and client presentations.
- Excellent written and spoken English, and the executive presence to hold a difficult conversation with a client without losing the relationship.
Preferred
- ITIL certification, project or programme management certification, or Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.
- IT asset management or procurement certification such as IAITAM or CIPS.
- Experience running a 24x5 or follow-the-sun operation delivered from India.
- Experience displacing an incumbent provider and insourcing previously subcontracted scope.
- Exposure to international trade compliance, customs and dangerous-goods regimes.
- Experience applying generative AI or robotic process automation to operational processes at scale.
- Background that includes hands-on operational delivery earlier in career, not solely governance roles.
