AddressCollinson Group is a global leader in driving loyalty and engagement for many of the world’s largest companies. Predominantly through the provision of travel related benefits within a market leading digital travel ecosystem. The group offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market-leading experience in delivering products and services across four core capabilities: Loyalty, Lifestyle Benefits and Insurance.
The group provides unrivalled insight and expertise around affluent consumers and frequent travellers, creating and delivering products and services now accessible to over 400m end consumers.
We have more than 25 years’ experience, with 28 global locations, servicing over 800 clients in 170 countries, employing 1,800 people.
We have been bringing innovation to the market since inception – from launching the first independent global VIP lounge access Programme, Priority Pass to being the first to sell direct travel insurance in the UK through Columbus Direct and creating the first loyalty agency of its kind in the travel sector with ICLP. Today we still invest heavily in innovation to ensure that we continue to deliver superior customer experiences.
Key clients include: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, LATAM, Flying Blue, Accor, EasyJet, HSBC, Chase, HDFC.
Our mission is focused on doing good beyond profit, which for us means we seek out opportunities for our people to share in our success and that we give back to the communities and people within which we work.
Never short of ambition, the success of our business is delivered through the diverse and talented team of over 1,800 colleagues globally.
Purpose of the role:
The role of the Global Head of Business Applications is to uphold the delivery of excellent services and products to our internal clients and customers. Ensuring that the right technology decisions are made in line with Collinson technology and business strategies.
The Global Head of Business Applications is accountable for technology operation, developed, purchased or deployed across the following Collinson business units: Finance, People & Culture, Procurement, Customer Services, Risk, Legal, Sales and Marketing, Real Estate and Facilities and other Collinson central services.
The role will report to the Director of Global Business Systems, and will be responsible for managing delivery teams for our finance systems and for project delivery, transformation initiatives or programs of work. The will ensure Collinson continue to develop maturity across all its company functions, helping transform the way we work, improvements to our cost model, streamlining processes and helping simplify automate core processes.
Stakeholder engagement and business partnering is a key aspect of this role; establishing effective technology ownership where it has been lacking, especially coordinating with Enabling Functions leaders; developing a strong collaboration with CTO’s and their teams; working closely with the Collinson board and senior management team to support their growth and improvement plans, including improvements in employee engagement.
Success will be measured by the extent that a clear technology strategy is in place for each business function; that improvement measures are established and agreed; that delivery progresses well against agreed plans and that improvements in customer satisfaction are achieved.
Key responsibilities:
- Build and maintain multi-year technology strategies for all functional areas owned, ensuring that these reflect the business strategies, recognise synergies across other Collinson technology strategies and reflect the external market opportunities and aspirations of the Collinson group.
- Develop and leverage stakeholder relationships, establishing a firm foothold engaging with key decision points for technology investment and business change.
- Establish and then deliver an appropriate target operating model for the technology services provided for the functions in scope, including the development and delivery of an effective and engaging technical design authority, key measures of success, an appropriate product centric governance model and funding approach.
- Establish a strategic plan for all 3rd party technology providers and services for the functions in scope, including reducing dependencies or risks on vendors, ensuring value for money, an effective operating model and future proofing investments.
- Build a new culture of technology engagement, planning and investment with the functional areas owned, helping cultivate a new and successful model. Include key measures of success agreed with each functional owner.
- Pro-actively initiate measures to prevent degradation in performance, quality or value for money with existing technology services, providers and platforms.
- Seek out new ways of working, new areas or innovations that build more value for Collinson
Delivery:
- Own the technology relationship with each Collinson operating company (and clients where applicable). Ensuring 2-way communication and open dialogue for all stakeholders.
- Ensure delivery of services to internal and external customers according to established SLAs & KPIs using agreed processes
- Develop a sustainable delivery model, driving design, development and deployment initiatives, ideally using an agile based method, DevOps and a product centric approach.
- Initiate and/or run various technology delivery initiatives.
- Participate in pre-project/contract requests for information to assist internal business units to generate new business.
- Act as an escalation point for any related issues in scope for internal customers, proactively engaging where needed to ensure service levels are met.
- Be available to work with coordinators of the Digital Services team (Incident, change & problem management), owning critical issues to successful resolution, including client and customer approval.
- Contribute to group business development, product development, client consultancy or product implementation projects.
- Work closely with other company stakeholders to help drive improvements and enhancements to the scope of services provided by key service partners, engaging with new work and transformational initiatives.
- Measure and ensure customer/employer satisfaction; identifying service gaps and implementing improvement plans
- Initiate and actively participate in continuous improvement activities, specifically regarding quality of service and cost efficiency at both client, stakeholder and company levels.
Knowledge and experience required:
- Extensive technology delivery experience, with a strong agile mindset and agile methods expertise.
- Technology strategy development and execution expertise
- Functional knowledge of the business systems areas in scope
- Strong transformational experience, with a bias to service improvement, digital acceleration, process re-design and optimisation and cost savings.
- Keen and practical financial management skills, including business case development, cost re-engineering and savings tracking.
- Knowledge of the business systems technology marketplace, key vendors and emerging trends and tools
- Experience with client engagements, contractual, commercial and process and service design work, including good understanding of client and project financial management.
- Global, multi-service line business experience, with strong x-cultural experience.
- The ability to demonstrate through examples, the effective management of stakeholder relationships at all levels internally and externally. Plus, gravitas and maturity to handle senior level client discussions
- Excellent written and spoken business English and interpersonal skills, a servant leader approach with language and cultural skills relevant to the location.
- Ability to show initiative and to work independently
- Ability to thrive in a fast moving and changing environment
- Ability to work at pace, work through project challenges in a collegiate manner.
- Graduate level, likely with 10+ years’ experience managing project delivery and transformation initiatives. MBA or similar desirable.
- Effective Architectural and technical design authority
- Experience in Governance and Architectural Frameworks, ITIL, TOGAF etc
Collinson is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes differences in all their forms including: colour, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, family status, age, individuals with disabilities and people from all backgrounds, cultures and experiences as we strongly believe this contributes to our on-going success.
We are focused on continually evolving our purpose driven, high performing culture, providing an environment where our people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and do interesting and meaningful work. Our company values are: Act smarter, Do the right thing, One team and Be insight led. These help guide everything we do internally in terms of how we think, act and interact, right through to how we deliver value to our customers and clients.
In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example - she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc).
If you need any extra support throughout the interview process, then please email us at ukrecruitment@collinsongroup.com
We also have our very own Beacons (Domestic Abuse Advisors) supporting within each of our global offices. Our Beacons will be your point of contact if you or someone you know needs support.
