Senior Business Relationship Manager

Brambles companies, including CHEP, help move more goods to more people, in more places than any other organisation on earth. Our 330 million pallets, crates and containers are continuously in motion, forming the invisible backbone of the global supply chain and the world’s biggest brands trust us to help them transport their goods more efficiently, sustainably and safely. As pioneers of the sharing economy, Brambles created one of the world’s most sustainable logistics businesses through the share and reuse of its platforms under a model known as ‘pooling’. Brambles primarily serves the fast-moving consumer goods (e.g. dry food, grocery, and health and personal care), fresh produce, beverage, retail and general manufacturing industries. The Group employs more than 10,000 people and operates in over 60 countries with its largest operations in North America and Western Europe. For further information, please visit www.brambles.com.

Job Description

Position Purpose

The purpose of the Senior Business Relationship Manager (BRM) is to build a true partnership between IT and the various business functions and countries he/she supports, with a focus on Employee Engagement. This is achieved by taking a leadership role in shaping and delivering technology services aligned to the strategic direction of Brambles and Global IT. This requires having a true understanding of the Brambles employee’s needs, the strategic direction of the business partners, underlying processes, required outcomes and corresponding pain points, then assuring user satisfaction throughout the technology-enabled Business Service Delivery lifecycle.

The BRM builds trust in being the first contact within IT for global employee engagement. Possessing an intimate understanding of the geographically dispersed businesses, they drive global standardization in solutions at an organizational level to provide maximum return on investment aligned to the overarching IT strategy. They help shape the vision, strategy, and outcomes for global collaboration through in-depth knowledge of the Microsoft tools. They measure the returns to demonstrate and promote the value of IT to their global businesses, through excellence in project delivery and change management. The BRM manages and ensures successful end to end delivery of IT projects or IT work to agreed time, cost, and quality. They lead the change to ensure business realisation of the benefits associated with the project outcomes and stakeholder satisfaction.

The BRM should act as the voice of the customer to IT and the voice of IT to the customer. The true value comes in being able to influence at the appropriate leadership levels on both sides, bringing together a strong partnership between the Business and IT. The key is ensuring the BRM is focused on meeting the current, future, expressed and unexpressed demands of the function they support and the business, while maximising returns on IT investment.

Major / Key Accountabilities

Responsibilities (Demonstrates Leadership to fulfil independently)

• Form strong relationships global stakeholders at all levels of the supported function to proactively advocate solutions in line with the business and IT strategies, rather than take orders.
• Possess an expert understanding of global Brambles, collaboration tools, processes and associated best practices.
• Formulate and apply a robust Governance model across Brambles Collaboration tools.
• Proactive research of new functionality release schedule to understand what is coming and the value it can offer Brambles, within existing cost structures.
• Intimate knowledge of existing and emerging technologies and how applications are leveraged across regions to share best and standard practices globally.
• Improve business awareness of existing and potential IT Services to enable unprecedented levels of value and customer satisfaction.
• The ability to understand and document business requirements for new services or changes to existing services and the outcomes they wish to achieve.
• The ability to identify changes to the customer environment that could potentially impact the services provided.
• Strong communication and customer service skills, able to concisely frame complex problems while selling effective solutions. Conduct leadership level briefing presentations and solution pitches.
• Act as a trusted conduit – the voice of the customer to IT and the voice of IT to the customer, ensuring the objectives of both parties are met.
• Pre-project definition, scoping, design and prioritisation of solutions aligned to desired business and technology strategies. Facilitate introductions between the business and IT specialists during detailed solution identification.
• Deliver end-to-end quality control for all aspects solution delivery in line with initiative objectives, benefits and success criteria.
• Ability to effectively influence key stakeholders, team members and peers not in your direct control, to design and deliver optimal solutions in line with the best interests and expectations of the business partner.
• Demonstrate the value of IT to the business.
• Identify potential process improvement opportunities and ensure process sustainability prior additional technology investment.
• Serve as the “single point of contact” for IT users throughout the Business Service Delivery Lifecycle.
• Project delivery responsible for managing all aspects of the project including the project plan, resources, budget, communications, change management, stakeholder management, risk management, steering committees, status reports and updates, PMO requirements, issues and risks and change requests etc. throughtout the Project Life Cycle (PLC) to deliver according to the project objectives.

Accountable (demonstrates leadership to fulfil by coordinating others efforts)

• Help shape the vision, strategy and outcomes for collaboration tools through in depth knowledge of Brambles employee experience requirements and available toolsets.
• Lead decision making on if, or how, newly released functionality will, or will not, be implemented across Brambles.
• Understanding of cost structures to proactively maximise value from product features within the cost structures of Brambles collaboration toolset.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement and program delivery.
• Facilitate initial project budget and benefit estimates for cost-benefit and post project analysis.
• End to end quality control for all aspects solution delivery in line with initiative objectives, benefits, success criteria and user satisfaction.
• Issue resolution between the business/IT and vice versa, ensure resolution of IT issues impacting business performance – act as escalation point.
• Ensure projects and demand are handed over to the Support function with the required quality standard and agreed specifications in order to minimise adverse Business impact.
• Manage project team, resources, finance and budgets.
• Track and report progress and performance against objectives, service level agreements, budgets and agreed KPI’s and metrics.
• Make decisions which impact the success of assigned projects i.e. results, deadlines and budget.
• Analyse, design, plan, execute and evaluate work to time, cost and quality targets.
• Communicate effectively, both formally and informally.
• Facilitate collaboration between stakeholders who have diverse objectives.
• Take internal customer requirements into account when making proposals.
• Maintain an awareness of developments in the industry.
• Analyse requirements and advise on scope and options for continuous operational improvement.
• Demonstrate creativity and innovation in applying solutions for the benefit of the internal (and sometime external) customer / stakeholder.

Consultant (demonstrates leadership to advise on the following)

• Participates in technology aspects of business-sponsored and IT led RFx’s.
• Contributes to business transformation by providing technology insights.
• Evaluate project objectives and prioritise accordingly.
• Support CapEx and OpEx budget processes from an IT perspective.
• Collaborative approach conducive to creating an innovative environment, being a problem solver by nature to drive and deliver real value.
• Vendor engagement, relationship building, experienced in negotiation and vandor management.

Informed (is engaged by and advised of the following)

• Enterprise Architecture strategies, IT standards, Security, IT governance and emerging technologies.
• Underlying business strategies, competitor technology, Industry trends in the business and technology.
• Technical support across the various collaboration technologies.

Key Contacts

Internal

• Business Leaders and SME’s across all business units
• Global IT Functions
• IT and Business Communications Teams
• Business Partners at all levels and BRM peers
• PMO, Program/Project Managers

External

• 3rd Party Suppliers
• External Contractors
• Customers
• Industry Forums / Bodies

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business or related field, Masters preferred or equivalent combination of education/experience.
• Project Management certification (PMP or CAPM) from PMI (desirable).
• Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt (desirable).

Experience

• Significant previous experience in IT-enabled solutions or related IT Business Relationship role.
• 7+ years’ experience managing or influencing leaders, technical staff, and project teams.
• Proven success in improving the customer experience and demonstrating the value of IT to the business.
• Experience working within a matrix structure.

Skills and Knowledge

Project Management

• Takes full responsibility for the definition and entire management from start to finish including -but not limited to- costs, schedule, resources, risks, quality, testing, documentation and change management, through to production with satisfactory completion of medium-scale projects (typically lasting 6-12 months, with direct business impact, leading teams to deliver according to firm deadlines).
• Provides effective leadership to the project team and takes appropriate action where team performance deviates from agreed tolerances.
• Project management throughout the full Project Life Cycle (PLC).

Stakeholder Relationship Management

• Develops and maintains one or more defined communication channels and/or stakeholder groups, acting as a single point of contact.
• Gathers information from the customer to understand their needs (demand management) and detailed requirements.
• Facilitates open communication and discussion between stakeholders, using feedback to assess and promote understanding of need for future changes in services, products and systems.
• Agrees changes to be made and the planning and implementation of change. Maintains contact with the customer and stakeholders throughout to ensure satisfaction. Captures and disseminates technical and business information.

Business Process Improvement

• Analyses business processes; identifies alternative solutions, assesses feasibility, and recommends new approaches.
• Contributes to evaluating the factors which must be addressed in the change programme.
• Helps establish requirements for the implementation of changes in the business process.

Business Analysis

• Takes responsibility for investigative work to determine business requirements and specify effective business processes, through improvements in information systems, information management, practices, procedures, and organisation change.
• Applies and monitors the use of required modelling and analysis tools, methods and standards, giving special consideration to business perspectives.
• Conducts investigations at a high level for strategy studies, business requirements specifications and feasibility studies.
• Prepares business cases which define potential benefits, options for achieving these benefits through development of new or changed processes, and associated business risks.
• Identifies stakeholders and their business needs.

Requirements Definition and Management

• Facilitates scoping and business priority setting for large or complex changes, engaging senior stakeholders as required.
• Selects the most appropriate means of representing business requirements in the context of a specific change initiative.
• Drives the requirements elicitation process where necessary, identifying what stakeholder input is required.
• Obtains formal agreement from a large and diverse range of potentially senior stakeholders and recipients to the scope and requirements, plus the establishment of a base-line on which delivery of a solution can commence.
• Takes responsibility for the investigation and application of changes to programme scope.
• Identifies the impact on business requirements of external impacts affecting a programme or project.

Systems Development Management

• Agrees, with business management, systems development projects which support the organisation’s objectives and plans.
• Ensures that management is both aware of and able to provide the required resources, and that available resources are properly utilised and accounted for.
• Monitors and reports on the progress of systems development projects, using appropriate quality assurance processes to ensure that projects are carried out in accordance with agreed standards, methods and procedures.

Change Implementation Planning and Management

• Creates the business readiness plan, taking into consideration IT deployment, data migration, capability deployment (training and engagement activities) and any business activities required to integrate new processes or jobs into the "business as usual" environment.
• Determines the readiness levels of business users with regard to upcoming changes; uncovers readiness gaps and creates and implements action plans to close the gaps prior to going live.
• Assists the user community in the provision of transition support and change planning, and liaises with the project team.
• Monitors and reports progress on business readiness targets, business engagement activity, training design and deployment activities, key operational metrics and return to productivity measures.
• Defines the series and sequence of activities to bring stakeholders to the required level of commitment, prior to going live.

Benefits Management

• Identifies specific measures and mechanisms by which benefits can be measured, and plans to activate these mechanisms at the required time.
• Monitors benefits against what was predicted in the business case and ensures that all participants are informed and involved throughout the change programme and fully prepared to exploit the new operational business environment once it is in place.
• Supports senior management to ensure that all plans, work packages and deliverables are aligned to the expected benefits and leads activities required in the realisation of the benefits of each part of the change programme.

Change Management

• Develops implementation plans for dealing with more complex requests for change, evaluates risks to integrity of infrastructure inherent in proposed implementations, seeks authority for those activities, reviews the effectiveness of change implementation, suggests improvement to organisational procedures governing change management.

Languages

Required

• English

Preferred Education

Bachelors – Information Technology

Preferred Level of Work Experience

7 – 10 years

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and we are committed to developing a diverse workforce in which everyone is treated fairly, with respect, and has the opportunity to contribute to business success while realizing his or her potential. This means harnessing the unique skills and experience that each individual brings and we do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state, or local protected class.

Individuals fraudulently misrepresenting themselves as Brambles or CHEP representatives have scheduled interviews and offered fraudulent employment opportunities with the intent to commit identity theft or solicit money. Brambles and CHEP never conduct interviews via online chat or request money as a term of employment. If you have a question as to the legitimacy of an interview or job offer, please contact us at recruitment@brambles.com.