Systems Manager - Application Management

Why we need this role

The Systems Manager – Applications will lead a small, high-performing internal team and multiple external partners responsible for ensuring our core business systems are reliable, efficient, and continuously evolving to meet organisational goals. This role balances day-to-day service management with driving a roadmap of improvement and value creation from our business system investments and; offers the opportunity to drive meaningful system improvements that enhance efficiency and user experience.

What you will do

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the Business Systems Support team, providing direction, coaching, and prioritisation across L2/L3 support and change activities.
• Ensure business systems within the team’s domain remain fit-for-purpose, stable, and aligned with evolving business needs.
• Manage third-party providers who perform much of the hands-on build and support work, ensuring quality and alignment to standards.
• Define and deliver an incremental roadmap for business system enhancements, optimisations, and integrations to maximise business value.
• Own and report on BAU service performance, including incident management, problem resolution, and service metrics.
• Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and feedback loops to measure and report on the success (health, adoption, performance) of business systems within the domain.
• Partner with business stakeholders across functions to understand priorities, evolving processes and regulatory requirements and; translate these into clear technical deliverables and solution designs.
• Evaluate new features, releases, and technologies within the business systems landscape.
• Stay abreast of industry trends and emerging technologies and drive innovation within the organisation making use of approaches such as proof of concept to demonstrate value.
• Champion best practices in system governance, documentation, release management, and user adoption.
• Contribute to enterprise-wide initiatives to strengthen systems alignment, interoperability, and process consistency.

• Champion automation and standardisation across processes and system usage.

Skills and Experience

• Proven experience managing business or enterprise application support teams.
• Hands-on familiarity with business systems such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 F&O, Workday, and SugarCRM.  Demonstrable experience with D365 F&O is advantageous.
• Skilled at managing third-party service providers and ensuring quality, value, and compliance.
• Strong track record managing vendor relationships and delivery through mixed internal/external resources.
• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and engage stakeholders at all levels.
• Ability to translate complex system functionality into understandable business context and outcomes whilst also translating complex business requirements in to unambiguous technical design.
• Experience balancing operational delivery with roadmap planning and continuous improvement.
• Strong project management capability, ideally with exposure to Agile and ITIL ways of working.
• Strong analytical and reporting capabilities to track service performance and outcomes.

• Experience with business process mapping and optimisation methodologies.
• Background managing integrations between ERP and data/BI platforms is useful.

• Experience within the construction industry can be advantageous.
• Strong project management skills and experience managing cross-functional teams.
• Vendor Management, particularly Managed Service Providers
• Experience balancing BAU operations with project and change delivery.