Responsibilities
- Define and lead the mission, vision, and long-term strategy for the Global Digital & Business Foundation, ensuring strong alignment with enterprise business priorities and technology-enabled growth objectives for Business units.
- Partner closely with Business Unit senior leadership & IT to shape and enable strategic ambitions, advising on the optimal use of digital platforms, applications, and services to maximize business impact, efficiency, and scalability.
- Establish and sustain trusted, value-based relationships with senior business and IT stakeholders by deeply understanding business needs and ensuring the cost-effective delivery of high-quality digital and IT solutions that are fit for purpose
- Develop and maintain a clear Digital & Business Foundation value framework, linking strategic business outcomes to future-state capabilities, platforms, and enabling technologies.
- Own and govern the Digital & Business Foundation budget, ensuring disciplined financial management, transparency, and alignment with enterprise IT and Business Unit strategic objectives.
- Design, build, and manage a cohesive and future-ready digital ecosystem, leveraging best-practice processes, architecture, standards, and toolsets across platforms and services.
- Collaborate closely with Group Information Security and Audit & Risk leadership to ensure that all digital platforms and business solutions are secure, resilient, and aligned with enterprise risk and security strategies.
- Establish and operate robust governance frameworks to ensure effective oversight, control, and compliance across Digital & Business Foundation activities, supporting audits, risk reviews, and regulatory requirements as needed.
- Apply strong influencing and negotiation capabilities across IT and Business Units to drive innovative, value-driven, and cost-effective digital solutions that advance enterprise business goals.
- Provide strategic direction on emerging and evolving technologies (like AI, Analytics, Automation), ensuring their thoughtful adoption into platforms, products, and services to support business transformation and long-term digital strategy.
- Champion innovation within the Global IT organization, positioning the Digital & Business Foundation as a key contributor to experimentation, continuous improvement, and the exploitation of new business opportunities.
- Co-create and govern enterprise roadmaps and initiatives with key stakeholders across Business Units, ensuring a committed and prioritized portfolio of initiatives delivered within agreed scope, timelines, and investment parameters.
- Provide end-to-end strategic leadership and oversight across the full lifecycle of business systems and digital/data platforms, from architecture and design through development, operations, and ongoing support.
- Work collaboratively with business leadership to assess priorities and manage capacity, ensuring resources are effectively allocated and high levels of end-user satisfaction are consistently achieved.
- Ensure enterprise business applications (including ERP, customer platforms, corporate systems, Operations and data platforms) deliver measurable value, enabling efficiency, insight, and strategic business outcomes.
- Drive the adoption and maturity of cloud, integration, automation, and data platforms, enabling Business Units to become more agile, scalable, and future-ready in support of transformation objectives.
- Ensure successful delivery of complex initiatives and programs through effective stakeholder engagement, leadership alignment, issue resolution, and proactive opportunity optimization.
- Lead and inspire global teams, including internal staff and outsourced partners, ensuring programs and services are delivered on time, within budget, and to defined quality standards, while maintaining reliable application support and operations.
- Own and manage strategic partnerships with outsourcing, implementation, and operations providers, ensuring performance, value realization, contractual compliance, and long-term partnership effectiveness.
Requirements
- Ten or more years of progressive leadership experience in leading cross functional Digital & IT teams and enterprise-wide programs, operating and influencing effectively across the organization and within complex contexts.
- Prior experience in interacting with C-Suite level executives and working in a complex-matrixed environment.
- Effective leadership skills. These skills include team building, consensus building, the ability to balance team and individual responsibilities and achieving goals through others not directly under the lead’s supervision, by working ethically and with integrity.
- Strong interpersonal skills. Ability to work across business lines at senior levels to influence and effect change to achieve common goals.
- Expertise in strategic thinking and strong business acumen.
- Experience with operational finance and cost management, forecasting, and cost optimization
- Experience leading, developing and coaching high-performance teams.
- Proven track record of delivering technical/digital solutions with complex business needs.
- Excellent working knowledge of enterprise-class ERP, CRM and other Corporate Applications (HR/Finance/Procurement).
- Excellent working knowledge of Enterprise Platforms like Integration, Automation, Data & Analytics
- Excellent working knowledge of Service Management & Digital Workplace
- Excellent working knowledge of Cloud-based architectures (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS) and key products based on Microservices enabled via APIs.
- Awareness of Kanban, Scrum, Azure DevOps, Lean and Prince 2 concepts and their application.
- Experience in strategic technology planning and execution, as well as policy development and maintenance
- Experience with outsourced delivery, preferably including offshoring teams in India.
- Speaks and writes fluently in English.
Nice to Have
- Consulting experience desirable.
Benefits
- An opportunity to work in a broad range and make an impact on the projects you will be involved in.
- The opportunity to contribute to a more sustainable world.
- Working for a company that cares for its employees and has focus on diversity & inclusion.
- An attractive salary to the position with good primary and secondary benefits.
- Flexible working arrangements to work hybrid from home and the office.
- A modern high tech office located right next to the Hoofddorp station with great facilities and an open work plan.
Additional Information
- Willing to travel internationally approximately 10-20 %
- This position is best performed with the following competencies: Leading and supervising. People management (including remote teams). Vendor management. Program leadership. Change leadership. Financial Acumen. Critical thinking. Continuous Improvement. Subject matter expertise. Communication and collaboration. Designing strategic metrics and scorecards. Analytical and problem-solving abilities. Excellent oral and written communication skills.
