The posting
Key Responsibilities
1. Programme Leadership and Governance
• Lead the integrated Operational Excellence programme plan, roadmap, governance cadence and delivery controls.
• Establish clear workstream ownership, milestones, dependencies, decision points and quality gates. • Maintain programme-level oversight of scope, schedule, resources, budget, risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies.
• Drive timely decisions and escalation of matters affecting business readiness, market deployment or benefits realisation.
2. Requirements, Process Design and Operational Readiness
• Oversee business requirements, process mapping, fit-gap assessment and future-state design activities.
• Ensure global process standards and ways of working are defined, with justified local or regulatory variations documented and governed.
• Ensure QCore configuration, forms, templates, reports, workflows, user roles and security design are validated against agreed business requirements.
• Coordinate approval of SOPs, readiness checklists and operating procedures.
• Ensure each market has the required ownership, SMEs, capacity and readiness plans.
3. Data Readiness and Migration Oversight
• Provide programme oversight of business data readiness, including field mapping, transformation rules, remediation, deduplication and sign-off.
• Ensure clear ownership and decision-making for data quality, business rules and market-specific remediation.
• Coordinate dependencies between Operational Excellence, Technology, vendor and market teams for migration rehearsals and cutover.
• Ensure migration outputs are validated, issues resolved and business sign-offs secured before go-live.
• Oversee post-migration validation and closure of material data issues.
4. Integration Readiness and Interdependency Management
• Provide programme oversight across integration workstreams and align business, Technology, vendors and operational stakeholders.
• Manage cross-functional dependencies across QCore and integrated platforms, including SAP, Enate, VDP, Fenergo, Napier, EQT and future applications.
• Ensure the Integration Lead and relevant teams execute the definition of operational requirements, business rules, data flows and end-to-end process validation.
• Ensure operational workflows, data flows and process impacts are understood, documented and incorporated into business readiness plans.
• Oversee execution of integration testing, operational validation, issue resolution and business sign-offs.
• Escalate integration risks and dependencies that could affect readiness, cutover or operational continuity.
5. Testing, Go-Live and Hypercare • Oversee the business testing approach, UAT planning, test readiness, execution governance, defect management and business sign-off. • Ensure business, data, security and end-to-end integration scenarios are adequately represented and validated. • Coordinate operational cutover activities, go-live readiness reviews and escalation of unresolved risks. • Ensure effective business participation during go-live and hypercare, with clear triage and ownership. • Lead the operational transition to BAU, including support readiness, handover, lessons learned and closure of outstanding actions. 6. Training, Communications and Adoption Oversight • Provide programme governance and oversight of training, communications, adoption and change readiness activities. • Ensure the accountable Change, Training and Adoption leads develop and execute appropriate strategies, plans, materials and interventions. • Ensure change impact assessments, stakeholder engagement, champion and super-user networks, rolebased training and adoption activities are delivered to plan. • Monitor training completion, business readiness, adoption measures and emerging resistance or capacity risks across markets. • Drive resolution and escalation of readiness or adoption issues that could affect programme outcomes. 7. Stakeholder, Vendor and Resource Management • Build effective working relationships across Operations, Operational Excellence, Technology, Product, Finance, Compliance, markets and external partners. • Align senior stakeholders on priorities, trade-offs, risks and decisions. • Coordinate workstream leads and market resources, ensuring capacity and capability gaps are addressed. • Hold delivery partners accountable for agreed outputs, quality standards and timelines. • Facilitate cross-functional workshops, governance forums and decision-making sessions.
Key Deliverables • Integrated Operational Excellence programme plan, roadmap and resource plan. • Programme governance, RAID, dependency, decision and milestone controls. • Business requirements, process design and operational readiness governance. • Data readiness, migration validation and business sign-off governance. • Integration readiness, end-to-end operational validation and dependency oversight. • UAT, business go-live readiness, cutover and hypercare governance. • Training, communications and adoption readiness oversight. • Market readiness reporting, BAU transition and benefits realisation tracking. Experience and Skills • 10+ years leading complex business, operational or digital transformation programmes, preferably in a global, multi-market environment. • Demonstrated experience managing programmes spanning business operations, technology, data, integrations, testing and organisational change. • Strong programme governance, planning, financial management, resource management, risk management and executive reporting capabilities. • Experience with enterprise platform implementations, ideally within professional, corporate or financial services. • Sound understanding of data migration, systems integration, business testing, cutover and operational readiness, with the ability to challenge and coordinate specialist leads. • Proven ability to lead through ambiguity, resolve complex dependencies and maintain momentum across multiple teams and priorities. • Excellent senior stakeholder and vendor management skills, with the confidence to influence decisions and drive accountability. • Strong communication, facilitation and presentation skills, with a business-outcome focus. Education and Professional Qualifications • Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Technology, Operations or a related discipline. • Programme or project management qualification such as MSP, PMP, PRINCE2 or equivalent is preferred. • Change management, process improvement or business analysis qualifications are advantageous. Measures of Success • Operational workstreams deliver agreed scope and milestones with clear ownership and effective governance. • Critical dependencies across requirements, data, integrations, testing and change are identified early and resolved in time. • Markets achieve operational readiness before deployment, with required business sign-offs completed. • Data migration, end-to-end integration validation and UAT complete without unresolved critical business risks. • Training and adoption activities are delivered by accountable leads, with readiness and adoption measures actively monitored. • Go-live, hypercare and transition to BAU are controlled, with operational continuity protected. • Programme benefits, standardisation and improved ways of working are tracked and embedded.
