Sourcing Programme Manager recruitment

UBS is a leading global financial services firm. Our Investment Bank is one of the world’s top global investment banking and securities firms, providing a full spectrum of products to institutional and corporate clients, intermediaries, government and hedge funds worldwide.

CC IT (Corporate Center IT) is a cross divisional technology organisation providing support to all divisions of UBS (IB, WMSB, WMA and GAM). The remit of CC IT covers Group Finance IT and Regulatory Change, HR IT, Risk IT, Legal Compliance IT, Records Management IT, Group Data Strategy Reconciliations IT and Group Technology BCM Sectors for a total workforce size of nearly 2,200 internal and external staff. CC IT is responsible for nearly 600 different business applications, many with multiple components and supporting critical aspects of the Bank’s operations Front To Back such as Front Office risk platforms, Middle Office compliance and monitoring activities and Back Office reconciliations and financial accounting.

Approx 60% of the workforce is provided by external companies, ranging from hundred plus person teams based in offshore development centres in India to single person specialists embedded within teams in Zurich, London, Stamford, CT and across APAC.
The CC IT Sourcing Programme Manager will take responsibility for managing a number of key projects within the Sourcing area across CC IT, including:

a) ”L2/L3 Utility” which is the outsourcing of a number of applications from CC IT to one or more strategic partners on an end to end basis. This will involve working with key stakeholders from the CC IT organisation as well as partners in the central Group Technology teams to plan and execute on the transition of part of the CC IT portfolio to this new utility based arrangement as well as working with business stakeholders to help them understand and engage with the new operating model.

b) “KTLO Sourcing Optimization” of which the primary goal is the reduction of “Keep The

Lights On” costs through a more cost-effective sourcing approach for the support and maintenance of CC IT applications. This will require the CC IT Sourcing Programme Manager to acquire a thorough understanding of the role that external staff play in the delivery of KTLO services across CC IT and propose and oversee the transition of these services to alternatives by the relevant Sectors.

c) “QA Utility” which is the CC IT component of the implementation of a cross divisional QA / Testing function to provide a centre of excellence for multiple UBS groups to use. This programme will require understanding the current state across CC IT and then representing at a Group Technology level both the opportunity for change in CC IT as well as the existing best practices that exist in CC IT to ensure that the resultant utility is fit for purpose and genuinely an improvement on current state.

d) “Vendor Productivity Realisation” which is measuring and realising the productivity gains committed by vendors in their commercial agreements with UBS. We need to improve our access to these benefits consistently across suppliers and the project will require close collaboration with vendor account management teams to implement.

There will clearly be further projects and initiatives as required by the CC IT organisation but in general these will all require a high degree of interaction with CC IT stakeholders as well as a strong ability to organise and mobilise change projects within an existing organisation. CC IT is a highly focused and leveraged area of IT so support for these initiatives is generally high but poor execution or ill-defined approach will rapidly reduce the ability to deliver them so proven experience of getting things done is a key requirement.

Requirements

To succeed in this role, the ideal candidate will possess:
Excellent communication skills – be able to deal effectively with both AD/D delivery managers on the ground and senior stakeholders at an ED/MD level
Ability to work without constant guidance and to “own” their areas of responsibility – there is significant management support available to bring the candidate up to speed but they should expect to operate autonomously in role within a short period of time.
Prior experience of IT outsourcing arrangements either from a sourcing perspective or from being involved in their establishment and operation. Multiple engagements with different vendors would be ideal.
Project management experience within an IT organisation and the ability to influence decision making by others. Experience of change projects that involve the migration of staff from existing permanent / current vendor positions to new providers an advantage.
Background in Financial Services an advantage but not essential.