Managed Services Business Solution Architect

The opportunity

Assurance Managed Services provides expert led annuity services in support of our Assurance Advisory practice. Each of our Services, consists of multiple solutions designed to meet specific market needs.

The design and development of our managed services is led by our Solutions Team, which is made up of service, process, data and technology specialists. We work with domain experts from our Assurance Advisory teams to define, design and build new managed services to drive the growth of our business. Our role is to ensure new services are built to be standardized and repeatable, integrating with and reusing our common managed services process, data and technology assets. With clients increasingly looking to digitize their own operations, it is essential that we design our managed services to support client adoption of the latest technologies (including robotics, AI and machine learning) to enhance their processes.

To drive the expansion of our range of services, we are looking for an experienced Business Architect to work within our Solutions team across our Finance, Forensics and Sustainability solutions. To start with, they will work closely with our Integrated Finance Solution Leader supporting the industrialisation of our SAP-based Integrated Finance solution. Overall, the Architect will operate across our managed services portfolio to foster a capability-based approach to building high quality, flexible, digital and repeatable managed services.

Your key responsibilities 

• Lead the development of the business architecture for the Integrated Finance solution.
• Collaborate with the Portfolio Solution Lead to ensure effective linkage between business stakeholders, the development and operations teams, and other teams building and operating the solution’s wider technology ecosystem.
• Align to the Solution Owner’s vision for each solution. For Integrated Finance (IF), you will own and shape the vision for our SAP S/4HANA product configuration, operation and management.
• Serve as the voice of the business in discussions with Client Technology, vendors and other technology-oriented teams.
• Ensure business stakeholders from across Service Lines are engaged to shape the design and build of our solutions. For our SAP-based Integrated Finance (IF) solution, you will engage with stakeholders across Finance, Procurement, Sales, Tax, Payroll and other services.
• Be the evangelist for SAP standard processes within the business and raise business awareness of SAP capabilities that can be leveraged to optimize and enhance the Integrated Finance solution.
• Cooperate with Solution Leaders and Delivery Managers to scope and prioritize the development backlogs.
• Communicate the solutions vision, strategy, release plans and architecture to stakeholders at all levels.
• Support development teams (e.g. SAP) to validate solutions, configurations and process changes.
• Ensure Integrated Finance development accounts for and aligns with the SAP Public Cloud release cycle.
• Oversee User Acceptance Testing and business sign-off (e.g. for IF, for the SAP and SAP integration components of each IF solution release).
• Support deal teams in understanding how to leverage the respective solution and to identify how new solution features required by potential clients could be met through further development.
• Ensure our architecture aligns with, and leverages, the broader EY ecosystem and our alliance partner agreements.
• Collaborate with colleagues in Solutions, as well as domain, data and IT specialists to ensure new managed services are defined, designed and documented in-line with our architecture and standards.
• Ensure our solutions define a clear configuration-only service options aligned to a fit-to-standard model that reflects the variations in client requirements, and clearly defined deliverables and outcomes.

Skills and attributes for success

The successful candidate will be able to:

• Communicate effectively with, and mediate between, stakeholders at all levels. You can manage stakeholder expectations and moderate discussions about risk and complexity.
• Cooperate with Solution Leaders, Product/Solution Owners and Business Product Managers to identify and rapidly unblock issues affecting solution, product and platform development.
• Communicate effectively with finance professionals using recognised business finance language and terminology.
• Demonstrate a good working knowledge of SAP S/4 HANA Private and Public cloud and associated technologies, such as SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC), SAP Concur, SAP Ariba, and SAP SuccessFactors.
• Use their knowledge of Finance Operations and SAP to ‘bridge the gap’ between finance and technology operational teams.

To qualify for the role, you must have:

• At least five years of experience in SAP implementation, with the majority of that experience in the Finance and Accounting capabilities of SAP.
• Ideally, experience or at least some knowledge in the Forensics (eDiscovery & Compliance) and Sustainability domains.
• At least two years of experience in a Business Product Owner, Business Architect or similar role.
• Understanding of fit-to-standard methodology and Agile delivery.
• Experience of change management and training for SAP or other large ERP systems.
• Ideally, experience of developing and/or operating managed services.
• A sound understanding of technology architecture and the ability to act as an intelligent customer of technology architects, ensuring technology architecture aligns with our broader capability, business and data architectures.
• A good understanding of business finance operations with the ability to communicate articulately and knowledgeably to finance professionals in a business finance language and terminology.

What we look for:

• Ability to operate effectively within a geographically dispersed team.
• Ability to influence and direct activities in a global network, balancing the need to drive forward our global strategy with the need to highly varied needs across countries and industry sectors.
• A strong team-player with coaching and mentoring skills who is keen to act as an advocate and community builder for enterprise architecture within Assurance and EY more broadly.
• Travel may be required from time to time to complete assignments and meet with clients, internal and external stakeholders.