Associate, IT Service Delivery & Vendor Manager

IT Service Delivery & Vendor Manager

Established in 1896, Knight Frank is the leading independent property consultancy in the UK offering agency and professional advice across Commercial, Residential and Rural sectors. Headquartered in London, Knight Frank now comprises a global network of over 523 offices in 60 territories.

We are seeking a highly talented, motivated and experienced IT Service Delivery & Vendor Manager to support us on the evolution of our IT Transformation.

This is a critical role within the Group IT department, responsible for ensuring the effective delivery of IT Services to our Knight Frank business across the UK and Global. The role will be the face of IT Services into our business partnering with key stakeholders to ensure IT Services are optimised and meet the business need.

The role will be the Knight Frank escalation point for IT Services and own business incident communications and the major incident management process.

This role is a senior leadership position reporting directly to the Head of Technology Projects & Operations with overall responsibility for the delivery of the IT Services to the business. Acting as their IT Service conduit back into our team and as the escalation point and partner for IT Service.

The IT Service Operations team consist of outsourced IT Service Desk, EUC Operations, Infrastructure and Information Security and in-house Application Support and Microsoft Power Platform support. The Service Delivery and Vendor Manager manages the day-to-day relationship with all technology vendors and owns the relationship with all non-strategic vendors unless otherwise defined. They are responsible for ensuring vendor service delivery aligns to contractual expectation and service levels and alignment with business need and expectation.

The Service Delivery and Vendor Management is responsible for reporting of the IT department performance and vendor performance to our business and owning and building a continual service improvement mindset across IT.

The role is responsible for IT service communications, ensuring quality, content and timing is consistent. They own the Major Incident Management process ensuring internal and external teams restore IT service in a timely and effective manner whilst managing business communications.

The role will work collaboratively across the organisation to affect positive and measured change and ensure that the Service Owners and Vendors that underpin the SLAs we offer are performing, optimised and that we are driving the best value from our third-party relationships.

In addition, the role owns the CSI process, commissioning SIPs where appropriate to focus the energies of technical teams to sharpen the delivery and ensuring that are services are always looking to evolve, refine and improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Responsibilities:

• Vendor Relationship Management – Develop, manage and maintain both tactical and strategic out-sourcing vendor relationships and ensure service obligations and levels or performance are being met.
• Provide vendor service management capability for all third parties that supply an underpinning service or technology to Knight Frank. This includes managing all aspects for the Vendor's service delivery that could or is impacting the live Service delivered to our customer. Build relationships with key partners to ensure they work as an extension of technology services and drive value-add from their offering.
• Commercial Vendor Management – Ensure our IT Services vendor portfolio is managed and optimised to ensure appropriate sizing and capability breadth.
• Identify service improvements and potential financial opportunities and benefits.
• Liaise with the wider IT team and support IT Procurement in the onboarding and management of new vendors including owning the creation of contract service schedules and IT service non-functional requirements.
• Service Reporting & Performance - Ensure regular Service performance reviews are held with key Vendors to ensure they deliver against expected contractual performance and quality.
• Create key metrics around IT Services' performance, reliable and availability which will enable better decision making, financial and resource allocation. Be responsible for delivering, improving, and reporting on the SLAs agreed with the business.
• Define clear metrics with stakeholders that align business-based targets with the IT service performance, coupled with each service as listed in the Service Catalogue.
• Design a framework for all Live Service reporting, working with our partner Microland team to deliver a roadmap of iteratively improving dashboards that visualise the key metrics and insights.
• IT Services Business Partnering - act and be the main interface for Live Services offered and delivered to the business, being responsible for the performance and availability of those services.
• ITSM Excellence – ensuring Knight Frank colleagues receive the best customer experience available. Achieving this through developing strong relationships with colleagues across the business to better understand their day-to-day IT challenges and ensure Knight Frank IT continuously strives to improve.
• Understanding the Organisation – Knight Frank is complex, and changes frequently. Ability to under-stand the organisational structure, business and user requirements and key programmes will enable the Service Operations Manager to provide the best service.
• Vendor Problem Management – Leading IT Service Operations team to ensure identification and effective management of recurring IT problems is a key requirement for this role. Performing proactive trend analysis and post Incident review to prevent future problems, eliminate recurring or unnecessary inci-dents and to minimise the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented.
• Major Incident Management – Responsible for ensuring timely identification and effective resolution management of Incidents including consistent, informative and high-quality communication, especially during Major Incidents.
• Continual Service Improvement - Identify and implement Continuous Improvement Plans. Commission, track and report on all SIPs where focus is required to improve the Service offered. Contribute to the identification and delivery of medium to large scale SIPs that require a change to the Service.
• Commercial and Contractual Management – a deep understanding of the commercial and contractual aspects of vendor contracts that provide IT services and products to Knight Frank is essential to this role. Understanding the scope and boundaries of a contract and maximising the value for Knight Frank.
• Senior Management Team – be part of the IT Service Operations management team, contribute and challenge ideas in a constructive and progressive manner.
• Service Assurance - Chair regular Service assurance and performance reviews with key stakeholders to transparently present the performance they receive.
• Projects & Initiatives - Work on Ad-Hoc projects that relate to Service offering and maturity as required.

Skills:

• Strong leadership and coaching with evidence of inspiring and maturing a IT Service Operations team consisting of a mix of internal colleagues and external vendor colleagues.
• Strong knowledge of IT infrastructure and a general interest in technology and future trends and opportunities.
• Commercially aware, forward-looking, and attention to detail.
• Ability to construct, review and manage a complex vendor contracts including those with SIAM.
• Understanding of Critical Service Levels and Key Measures along with the associated KPIs that underpin them.
• Ability to own activities, initiatives and issues and work independently and take decisions where necessary to resolver and/or deliver.
• Track record of successful delivery against commitments and deadlines.
• Promotes and supports standardisation and continuous improvement.
• Presentation and Reporting skills to demonstrate process performance in Service reports to the SIAM Ecosystem and management.
• Financial management including forecasting and budget management.
• Excellent communication skills (written and oral), with experience interacting with all levels of man-agement both within Company and Client organisations.
• Ability to create a collaborative environment, highly developed stakeholder management.
• Ability to work effectively under pressure and manage multiple priorities.
• Strategic thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Strong analytical and reporting capabilities.
• Willingness to take charge and provide direction.

Knowledge:

• An ITIL expert, with experience taking strategic responsibility for managing vendor performance and contracts.
• Good technical knowledge in Networks, Infrastructure, Applications and Information Security.
• Knowledge of running or historically running a IT Service Operations 'run' environment with a minimum of 10 years' experience managing IT operations teams across Incident, Problem, Release and Change management.
• An understanding of Cloud and Digital Transformation technologies and experience of transitioning to such services and service design around cloud and digital technologies.
• Practical knowledge and experience of Service Design, Transition and Continual Service Improvement.
• Able to manage customer and SIAM Ecosystem relationship.
• Knowledge of IT control frameworks and their implementation, e.g. COBIT, ITIL, ISO27001 etc.
• Knowledge of commercial and financial management techniques and tools.
• Knowledge of vendor procurement (RFI/RFP), team management and recruitment, training and motivation.
• Knowledge of business continuity planning and IT service continuity planning techniques and tools.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including the ability to explain technology solutions in business terms, establish rapport and persuade others.

Qualifications:

• Masters/Bachelor'