Job Description

Our education sector client, is seeking a Program Director!

Key Details:

• Contract Length: 1 year contract (with high possibility of extensions)
• Hours: 7 hours/day, 35 hours/week
• Location: Primarily REMOTE within Ontario, with occasional travel to Guelph for workshops and vendor meetings.

Project Details: Reporting to the Business Delivery Executive and the Technical Delivery Executive, the Finance ERP Program Executive will lead our high-profile, multi-year enterprise-wide Finance ERP initiative. The initiative will be crucial in preparing and enabling the organization for transformational change in providing financial services to the organization. This will be supported through a new world-class and cloud-based ERP system that will enable the organization to modernize our current financial system and processes.

The new financial system will modernize our applications and support the institution’s new “Our Time” Strategic. This new system will provide the ability for timely information and data to be delivered to organizational leadership for ease of access to information for efficient and informed decision making.

Taking direction from the program’s Executive Leadership Team, the Program Executive leads the Finance ERP initiative from concept through to solution acquisition, implementation and sustainment. This role works in collaboration with stakeholders across campus and external vendors to initiate, plan, execute, and control all project related activities from initial project planning through project execution, including managing project scope, cost, timelines, risks, and reporting throughout the project lifecycle and evaluating project outcomes. Ensuring effective change management is vital to this role.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• In collaboration with the Leadership Executive Team, develop and implement the strategies and project framework aligning them with the organization’s overall business objectives to ensure successful delivery.
• Provide leadership and direction to the program team. This includes mentoring and coaching project resources and ensuring that they have the support they need to succeed. Implement quality control processes to ensure that all projects meet the required standards and deliverables.
• Bring forth impediments and changes of scope that require Executive guidance and decision making.
• Provide briefings, risk assessments and status updates to Executive Sponsors and program governance committees.
• Develop materials required and participation of project steering committees which help guide decision making within the project.
• Ensure strategic benefit realization throughout the program.
• Ensure that the Program Team understand and are aligned to the program vision and benefits.
• Develop, monitor, and control program through definition, benefit delivery, and closure.
• Provide oversight, coordination, and manage dependencies of program components.
• Monitor and respond to decisions, issues, and risks. Assume responsibility for scope, time and cost management, development of lessons learned throughout the projects.
• Create and oversee the execution of a detailed program plan and schedule and monitor the status of the many workstreams as part of the plan.
• Recommend and support the program resource planning based on timelines and project scope. Identify gaps in allocation of resources.
• Project leadership defining the project goals, objectives and deliverables, scope, budget, resource requirements, project tasks and timelines.
• Ensure that project resources follow the PMO standards, best practices, templates, and tools regarding project management, change management, and business analysis.
• Support the coordination of activities when requiring the services of non-project team services and resources.
• Developing and maintaining positive relationships with various stakeholders across the University. Acting as primary liaison between the University and vendors in project planning/execution.
• Work with the Organizational Change Manager to ensure the change management plan is incorporated into the overall project plan and to follow agreed upon organizational change management processes to identify, document, review, approve, prioritize, communicate, and implement all changes.

Qualifications and Skills:

• Proven experience working at a senior leadership level. Interacting with senior leaders across the institution including Board of Governors, Senate, VP-level, Steering Committees.
• Strong technical competence and experience leading complex, large enterprise-wide Finance initiatives including procurement strategies, RFP coordination and Finance ERP implementation across multiple and diverse stakeholder groups.
• Experience in negotiating large and complex multi-year contracts. Working with vendors, stakeholders and legal counsel through contract negotiations.
• Proven track record managing programs and projects using industry standards (such as PMI) to execute in an agile, waterfall or hybrid environment.
• Experience working with an integrator and delivering on a solution with multiple vendors as partners.
• Experience with using Microsoft Azure Dev Ops for project tracking and traceability, is desirable.
• Experience working in the higher education and the financial industry sector is highly valued.
• An undergraduate (master’s degree preferred) in Business, Information Technology or related field plus at least five to ten (5-10) years’ related project management experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Project management certification (PMP) or equivalent is required.
• Demonstrated understanding of and experience utilizing organizational change management principles and approaches.
• Strong leadership and influencing skills.
• The ability to coordinate the efforts of many sub-teams (technical, non-technical, internal, external) simultaneously.
• Facilitation and conflict resolution skills.
• Excellent organizational, time management and planning skills.
• Flexible and able to adapt project planning to meet stakeholder and leadership needs.
• Excellent communication skills, both oral and written, with demonstrated ability to liaise with internal and external stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
• Strong interpersonal, decision making, and teamwork skills as well as a strong client focus.

Nice to Haves:

• Other certifications in Program Management Professional (PgMP), Competency in Business Analysis (CCBA) or Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) or Change Practitioner (Prosci) is considered an asset.
• Experience with SAP ERP solutions is an asset.