Job Description

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Role overview:
The Business Platforms Strategy & Architecture Lead is a dynamic, brave and empathetic leader with a wide ranging portfolio of business capability. Their accountability spans the full set of dentsu business platforms which are the core "operating system" of our business - both the target global platforms and the heritage estate.
This role will lead a global team accountable for partnership with all of the functions, service lines and regions to drive the following key outcomes:

• Definition and ongoing refinement of the target state architecture for dentsu, encompassing the technology and data aspects which marry to the business architecture;
• Mapping of the current state architecture across ALL the dentsu entities globally, across more than 100 countries;
• Application portfolio management, strategic planning, and driving business cases to achieve the target business objectives;
• Definition of architecture standards for documentation and governance, and driving adherence to those standards;
• Analysis and shaping of the business platforms organisation, driving special projects to transform our delivery

Key Responsibilities
General

• Sets the standards for enterprise, solution and integration architecture across the organization, to include defining high-level design principles and defining/owning architectural decision-making processes (and chairing global design governance forum)
• Supports the CIO Business Platforms to define, develop and communicate their broader platform strategy, and translates their strategic ambitions into core principles
• Develops and is responsible for the execution of the strategic cross-platform roadmap
• Accountable for structuring the decision-making processes for platform vendor selection, in addition to development of a supplier/sourcing strategy, and vendor selection guidance for local market solution selection processes
• With the platform lead, accountable for ensuring that design principles are grounded in a user-centric/customer-experience-led view of business platforms
• Develops strong awareness of the full range of business platforms architecture within Dentsu, including legacy solutions and legacy optionality, becoming a subject matter expert in the way the organization's technology is structured
• Manages a team of solution, enterprise and integration architects staffed to platform, deployment or other teams as required, ensuring their approaches are consistent
• Liaises with business "customers" of the full range of platforms, including end users, to understand wants, preference and overall employee experience goals for platform
• Builds the "brand" of the business platforms organization within Dentsu, leading external comms about the capabilities and successes of the function
• Support global business platforms leaders embedding a culture of teaming, development and recognition of success against measured objectives.
• Supporting the development of strategic people plans, through talent mapping, succession planning and coaching initiatives.

Operation

• Own integrated reporting and dashboarding of business platforms service coverage, architecture, opportunities and roadmaps
• Optimise delivery of the business platform architecture teams to leverage shared services and tools, ensuring we are scaled appropriately and driving great career experiences across the team;
• Operate the business platforms architecture governance, including the global technical design authority and supporting the business platforms change control process, ensuring we are efficiently impacting, costing and managing changes to business platforms;
• Drive prioritisation and estimation of the transformation portfolio and integrate the process of budgetary planning across the business platforms, responsible for holding the leads to account.

Optimisation

• A core part of the cross-organisation capability of this role is in identifying and initiating (and in some cases owning) transformation projects to optimise and improve the delivery of business platforms globally
• This includes:

• Identifying and driving standardisation of operational tooling across the organisation (i.e. enterprise architecture, data architecture, documentation repositories and requirements management etc);
• Identifying core process disciplines and standard;
• Driving the pooling and sharing of resources, creating either formal or informal centres of excellence
• Partner with other parts of Global and Regional technology leadership to understand dentsu technology standards, architecture, policies and capabilities to leverage maximum value from internal technology service providers;

• Interlock with capability groups across the business platforms domains to create virtual teams and global disciplines;
• Support business platforms leads in vendor management, including supporting SoW negotiations (budget and scope), scaling up/down team based on demand requirements and ensuring smooth operations and integration between on-shore and off-shore team members.

Person Specification
Experience:

• Specialist architect with

15 years of experience * c.10-15+ years total experience of strategy, transformation and programme delivery and 5+ years of experience in senior leadership positions, working with CIO/CTO level executives

• Managing global teams / working in an international and cross-cultural organisation
• Broad technical expertise combined with strong leadership and communication capabilities to drive innovation and change globally

• Operational experience of costing and resource planning large global teams
• Expertise in TOGAF, Archimate, and general system and business analysis methodologies and notations (User stories / BPMN etc)
• Enterprise business technology - HR, Finance, Sales, and other core standard enabling processes and technology stacks
• Application Portfolio Management - building holistic views of the application landscape and using it to drive strategic enterprise transformation

Other key Competencies:

• Has demonstrated the ability to set out core architecture principles for an organization and drive that organization's engineering workforce to adhere to those principles
• Must be able to collaborate effectively with the CIO Business Platforms, Platform Effectiveness Lead and Integrated Portfolio Lead
• Ideal experience would be in global federated organisations, regardless of vendor landscape
• Must be an adept manager of senior technical professionals, able to diplomatically balance and prioritise the needs and preferences of platform leads, end users, platform best practice, and the business
• Experience of major digital or platforms transformation at the global enterprise level
• Strong underlying technical expertise is critical, preferably at the enterprise or cross-multiple-platform level
• Must be able to manage and communicate effectively with senior business stakeholders
• Direct experience of a platforms organization or a range of business platforms would be highly desirable
• Direct experience of platforms technology within a global matrix-structured organization would be highly desirable
• Demonstrable ability to motivate and foster collaboration within a team of senior leaders
• Proven leadership and influencing skills, to effectively lead transformative change by originating ideas, championing, and gaining commitment at executive and management levels
• Proven strategy development, working with business and senior stakeholders, to build strategies and roadmaps ensuring clear customer focus and input
• Proven experience in leading teams - both direct and indirect reporting lines - across different geographies, cultures, and parties
• Proven ability to plan and manage technology budgets in an effective and efficient manner driving cost transparency

About dentsu international
Part of dentsu, dentsu international headquartered in London operates in over 145 markets worldwide with more than 48,000 dedicated specialists. We help clients to win, keep and grow their best customers and achieve meaningful progress for their businesses. With best-in-class services and solutions in media, CXM, and creative. www.dentsu.com
Working with us
Joining dentsu international, you'll join a team of 48,000 people. It's an opportunity to produce career-defining work. Along the way, you'll team up with inspiring colleagues and encounter a richness of clients, cultures and experiences. We offer exciting challenges, memorable experiences and opportunities to shape your future.
Inclusion and Diversity
We're proud to be different and that starts with our people. We believe in equal opportunities for everyone. We won't define people by their race, gender, sexual-orientation, age or disability. Individuality is what makes us great, we want everyone to bring their full self to work and create something amazing. That's what we care about. So, whether you're joining us, or looking to move to a different part of the business, we work hard to make sure we create equal opportunities for everyone.
We are happy to discuss flexible and agile approaches to working for all our roles - we can't promise we will be able to offer you everything you want or need but we do promise to discuss it with you openly and honestly. If you have any reasonable adjustment needs arising from a disability or medical condition to fully participate in the recruitment process, please discuss this with our recruitment teams.
Location: London
Brand: Global Technology
Time Type: Full time
Contract Type: Permanent

Skills Required