Technology Business Engagement Lead (Africa)

The Business Relationship Management (BRM) team is looking for a person to lead executive engagement between Enterprise Technology and EY Africa leadership, driving technology strategy, service performance, investment planning, governance and stakeholder satisfaction across the Africa sub-region.

The position is at the Associate Director level and requires someone with all round technology experience, excellent communication skills, is people orientated, strategic in their approach and a high tolerance for complexity and ambiguity.

The opportunity 

An opening exists for a Technology Business Engagement Lead to serve Enterprise Technology as the Africa sub-region lead and maintain a relationship with business stakeholders. The candidate will report to the India-Africa BRM Leader. The position is location based, i.e. Johannesburg, South Africa. The role requires EY Johannesburg office presence at least 4 days per week.

The candidate will engage with the COO of the Africa sub-region and member firm leadership in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mauritius, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana & Nigeria (i.e. the customer) and internal Enterprise Technology (ET) stakeholders on:

• Understanding the needs of the customer (in connection with new demand as well as performance expectations) and matching these needs with the solutions provided by ET
• Help the customer navigate within the ET delivery organisation to facilitate effective and efficient operation of relevant ET solutions used within the sub region.
• Account planning and prioritization of solutions brought forward during service adoption campaigns launched by ET (push demand) both from a needs and affordability perspective
• Defining Member Firm specific investments, sharing the associated costs and driving compliance to ensure business case goals are achieved
• Continuously assess the satisfaction with existing services
• Understanding the cost implications of all ET solutions and sharing the required insights in a transparent and timely manner to allow appropriate decision making

Your key responsibilities

• Understanding the relevant country markets, priorities and overall business issues and managing overall IT Services’ customer satisfaction in the sub-region
• Overall accountability for smooth running of ET operations and foundational services within the sub region
• Facilitating discussions on ET Product & Services performance with the regional leadership and communicate business needs for to the appropriate service delivery and operations leaders and managers
• Proactively communicating Enterprise Technology direction/strategy to Sub-Region and Member Firm leadership and end-users and providing timely updates on large cross-organization programs and technology infrastructure initiatives
• Maintaining close working relationship with Finance in the region to manage budgets and deal with finance issues effectively
• Support the effective budgets planning across the sub region for all the ET technology costs
• Manage the Mobile Device Policy as it relates to users in South Africa (i.e. Employee Choice Programme to enable access to Mobile Devices and the Cellular Scheme to provision cellular services).
• Serve as the Budget owner for local technology costs in South Africa.
• Manage the relationships with vendors providing ET services in Africa.
• Coordination of Critical ET outages and related end user and executive communication.
• Provide general advice to the EY Risk function on technology risks associated with IT infrastructure, data privacy and/or cyber risk.
• Manage the process to ensure purchases for Local IT hardware, software and services comply with EY’s independence policies.

Skills and attributes for success

• Relationship Building: Develops strong relationships with diverse stakeholders by anticipating needs, collaborating across teams, fostering commitment and asking for feedback. Cultivates internal and external networks and uses them to connect customers with subject-matter specialists. Finds the right cadence with customers to become a trusted business advisor. Shows versatility in understanding and working in culturally diverse environments
• Business Process Improvement: The identification of new and alternative approaches to performing business activities. The analysis of business processes, including recognition of the potential for automation of the processes, assessment of the costs and potential benefits of innovative approaches and, where appropriate, management of change and its implementation.
• Structured Problem Solving: The ability to define, analyse, and address clients' business issues.
• Market Insights & Intelligence: Understand how to analyse technology costs and communicate its value to a business
• Trust: Ability to establish this very quickly from competency, consistency and a positive intent.
• Influence: Strong ability to influence external teams and negotiate customers’ expectations; balances the needs of the business and IT, maintaining fairness and objectivity
• Credibility: General all round skill and experience within the fields of data centre operations, networking, end user device management, audio visual technologies, end user support and IT service management.
• Communication: Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to engage effectively with C-suite executives, management, and staff at all organizational levels.

To qualify for the role, you must have 

• 10+ years experience in supervision positions in an IT infrastructure role, demonstrating progressively greater responsibility
• A degree in information systems or related discipline or equivalent work experience
• A strong customer service orientation. An understanding of customer expectations gained through developing formal and informal relationships with customers
• Excellent executive presence and business acumen
• Strong people relationship and management skills with excellent interpersonal, communication and organizational skills
• Excellent written and verbal English language skills
• Demonstrated ability to deliver presentations of complex financial and business information to a diverse audience
• Good understanding of the Africa IT market and ability to bring knowledge of this to help facilitate the growth and integration of EY across the sub-region
• Financial budgeting and cost control
• 3+ years’ experience in technology vendor management & data privacy matters
• Exceptional judgement, tact, and decision-making ability
• Demonstrated ability to clearly communicate vision, mission, goals and themes to both business and IT audiences
• Demonstrated ability to develop and maintain strong working relationships with colleagues at different levels of the business and the IT group, to the most senior levels
• Flexibility to adjust to multiple demands, shifting priorities, ambiguity and rapid change.
• Possesses cultural intelligence – Understands and integrates cultural differences and motives to participate in cross-cultural teams; functions effectively in settings characterised by cultural diversity; adapts verbal and non-verbal behaviour so it is appropriate for different cultures
• Politically savvy – can manoeuvre through complex political situations effectively and astutely.
• Must be able to work within a matrix organization – balancing the needs of the customer against firm initiatives and goals on a daily basis

Ideally, you’ll also have

• A Technology degree; or equivalent work experience
• 10 years of related experience in a supervisory position, with a minimum of 7 years in Technology infrastructure requiring customer interaction.
• Strong working knowledge of ITIL and project management

What we look for

Experienced leader in Technology Infrastructure management with a wide array of exposure to end user technology, networking and data processing operations. The candidate must have an outgoing interpersonal style with excellent communication skills at executive level. He/she should see approaching problems long before other people in the team sees it and offer/advocate for solutions to these problems.

The candidate must be able to deal with a high degree of complexity and ambiguity.