Purpose
This role is focussed on the strategic development and day to day oversight of the operations of the Aztec Group. The role includes leadership and accountability for strategic programmes, developing and delivering operational efficiencies and business improvements, achieving operational resilience, strategic oversight of business automation, development of our workplace of the future and the oversight and operations of our centres of excellence. The success of Aztec as an evolving and growing organisation relies on the effectiveness of this role in defining, tracking, managing, and subtly adjusting our operations as we grow, thereby ensuring we execute our 5 year plan while preserving Aztec’s market-leading elixirs - client, people, operations and technology.
The role will deliver a professional operating model, harnessing the power of technology and intelligently enabling our people to deliver excellent service to our clients. The role will contribute to the overall success of Aztec Group through the deliberate management of business operations and change.
The Group Head of Operations role will work in conjunction all members of the Executive Committee and the Executive Board to ensure our business operations serve our clients and our people, promote our culture and support the delivery of our strategy, mission, vision and our growth aspirations. The role will ensure that the delivery of all operational plans are on track and will be responsible for reporting to the relevant Group Board, Executive Board and Executive Committee meetings.
The role will report to the Group Managing Director and will be a member of our Executive Committee. The role will chair our Operations Committee, working with the operational leads on each Product Board to deliver our strategic cross product operations 5 year plan.
Key responsibilities:
Operations Office
- Provide Leadership and direct line management to the Operations senior leadership team in achieving the objectives of the teams to deliver initiatives aligning to our 5 year plan
- Oversee the Operations office
- Development and ongoing evolution of our Target Operating model
- Oversee delivery of approved improvements to the Operating Model
- Oversight and accountability for a robust Control Framework for the Group, including the ISAE audit.
- Oversight and accountability for business processes, controls and procedures ensuring operational resilience to support the delivery of service excellence to clients
- Chair the Operations Committee
- Stress test Group-wide initiatives from the perspective of operational delivery and controls
- Monthly operations reporting including production of dashboards for tracking progress against the five year plan for our operations.
Strategic Programmes and Business Improvement
- Leadership of strategic business transformation and improvement programs across the Group in line with the 5 year plan, ensuring programs are tracked, delivered on target and business objectives are achieved
- Provide leadership and direct line management to the Head of Strategic Programmes and Business Improvement in achieving the objectives of the team, to deliver initiatives aligning to our 5 year plan.
- Oversight and accountability for the successful delivery and adoption of the strategic projects programmes.
- Oversight and accountability for the successful delivery and adoption of the continuous improvement programme.
Workplace of the future
- Lead the Workplace team to deliver current and future workplace needs across the Group
- Facilities and Office Management
- Refurbs
- Reception /Mail /Filing teams
Business Automation
- Drive the Business Automation agenda
- Continued automation of current operation processes
- Harnessing the power of automation to deliver efficiency to our teams
- Reduction in risk through automation of tasks
Centers of Excellence
- Lead the Centres of Excellence
- Drive a continuous improvement culture, improving service and reducing risk
- Work with Product teams to deliver Hub and Hub and Spoke services
- Deliver excellent client focused service levels
- Provide ongoing feedback and insight to the Executive Committee
Day to Day Duties:
- Oversee the operations workstack and strategic projects
- Manage the control framework activities to ensure compliance and audit activities are completed within expectations
- Line Management of Operations Office, Strategic Programme and Business Improvement Team, Workplace/Property Team, Centres of Excellence Teams, and the Automation Team
Governance:
- Chair of Operations Committee
- Member of Executive Committee
- Member of the Strategic Projects Forum
KPIs
- Teams operate within agreed budgets
- No regulatory breaches based on processes and procedures
- Business Improvement and Strategic Projects delivered in line with plans and budgets and business objectives are delivered
- Delivery of Automation Programme and business objectives are delivered
- Centres of Excellence KPIs are achieved
- Workplace of the Future delivered, and workplace projects delivered on time, in budget and deliver objectives
- Internal project satisfaction score
- Gross Margin
- EBITDA
Reporting:
Reports to the Group MD and build relationships with Executive Board and Executive Committee members
Team:
- Operations Office,
- Strategic Programme and Business Improvements team
- Workplace team
- Centre of Excellence
- Business Automation team
Total: 38 staff
Skills, Experience, Qualifications:
- Well versed in operations, transformation programmes, control frameworks, compliance, process re-engineering, programme management, and operational resilience trends to build a relevant future-proofed strategy and risk management framework, to maximise likelihood of effective implementation and commercial success.
- Proven experience in a fast-growing and changing business with a demonstrable track record of success in Growth, Transformation, and Globalisation
- Understanding of strategic business planning and budgets, with the ability to build suitable supporting dashboards and operating principles
- Experience of delivery of a programme of automation and digitisation of business processes
- Experience in leading centres of excellence supporting business teams. Experience in establishing new centres of excellence
- Can work in ambiguity and the ability to extract the essence of trends from multiple data sources and develop these into various business scenarios
- Strong leadership and organisational abilities
- Problem solving capabilities
- Excellent relationship builder across all levels and cultures
- People leadership and management: motivate, grow, select and augment the team to ensure the right mix of capabilities is available
- Driven by a balanced “risk and reward” mindset
- Commercially driven
- Degree level education; Accountancy, or MBA or equivalent professional business qualification. Prince 2, LEAN, Six sigma or other project management programme experience highly desirable