IT Service Assurance Lead

JobSpecification – IT Service Assurance LeadJob Title: IT Service Assurance Lead(Gas Control/Front Office/BackOffice) Base Location: Walton Park (Front Office/Back Office)Horley (Gas Control)Reports To:Product Group Manager Salary Range: Purpose of the Role:  This role is responsible for ensuring IT Services are owned for specific business areas aligned to key business functions and departments (including regional offices and depots), ensuring the effective delivery of end-to-end services.  They are responsible for protecting the integrity of all relevant IT Services, ensuring support and escalations are handled effectively, to meet the changing requirements of the business and the external environment.  They act as a point of escalation for service outages and disruption, in the role of IT service representative within SGN locations or specific business areas. Key Responsibilities:Build and maintain business relationships, regularly maintaining contact with key operational staff and supporting any escalations or issues.Support of all significant IT changes affecting areas of responsibility, checking the impacts of each change and that full end to end testing is carried out before entering production within the product groupChampioning the delivery of continually improving and optimised IT services.Managing service escalations with the Product Group Manager, Service Quality & Assurance manager and Head of IT Operations.Ensuring regular and consistent business communication of service events, planned and unplanned outages in conjunction with the Service Management Major Incident process.Managing and being part of 24/7 coverage on a rota basis across IT Operations, to maintain SGN management oversight in any high priority incidents or those with significant business impact.Working closely with the Major Incident Team to ensuring that all HPI’s are being progressed as quickly as possible to avoid prolonged impact to the Business. Working closely with IT Service Assurance Lead in other Product Groups to ensure any cross-Product Group dependencies are understood and managed.Working closely with Suppliers of SaaS services to ensure that their contractual needs in respect to SLA’s, JPI’s are being met and attend regular service reviews.Raise any Requests For Change for any SaaS supplier changes to production.Review Qualys reports and work closely with our support partner to ensure that all vulnerabilities are addressed via regular patching.Ensuring that all Knowledge Articles are reviewed on at least an annual basis to ensure they remain current.Responsible for arranging relationship between CGI and our support partner in respect of resolving Problem Records. |Ensure Problem Records are reviewed on a regular basis to avoid long running Issues to the Business. Key Accountabilities:Assurance of the end-to-end IT services delivered to the business with respect to quality, performance and efficiency.Responsible for assisting service resolution and clarification, to ensure service providers can achieve or exceed their service level targets, focused on minimising business impact.Meets senior business stakeholders regularly to monitor progress against issues and ensure that an agreed level of service is maintained.Meets Suppliers regularly to monitor and assess the services provided are within any contractual limits.Driving a continuous service improvement culture, ensuring creation and ongoing management of Continuous Service Improvement Plans. Ensuring all business service requirements are understood and aligned to service improvement or new demand activities.Stakeholder & People Management:Actively participate in Major Incidents and Problem Management activities in liaison with Product Group Manager, Service Quality & Assurance manager, Head of IT Operations and any relevant IT service providers.Monitoring of all key performance indicators, including customer satisfaction and perceptions of service, and taking action to prevent and address under-performance. Developing relationships of openness and trust with business colleagues and system integrators to allow a better understanding of their business and a shared understanding of any issues.Developing strong internal networks with business functions operating as the owner of quality IT services.Developing a strong relationship with the Service Management provider and key Ecosystem partners, for the delivery of high-quality IT services.Reporting and quality assurance:Monitoring of all key performance indicators, including customer satisfaction and perceptions of service, and taking action to prevent and address under-performance; agree priorities and actions to be taken by with Product Group Manager, Service Quality & Assurance manager, Head of IT Operations and associated IT Service Providers.Audit and Compliance:Responsible for understanding short to long term interest of the business and managing all IT Service Providers and associated services in line with business objectives and goals.Responsible for identifying opportunities for maximising efficiency, driving value and meeting business goals and objectives through innovation, technology initiatives and partnership with technology suppliers, working closely with SGN’s Technology and Strategy team to agree common strategy and roadmap for optimised services.Key Skills:Experience and knowledge:       Extensive IT experience at management level.The delivery of IT Services in a multi-sourced environment.Minimum of 3 years customer service experience, preferably at a senior level.Proven experience in working with a wide range of stakeholders – both internal and external. Strong interpersonal, influencing and leadership skills. Strong stakeholder relationship skills.Excellent communication skills at all levels, with the ability to translate complex IT issues into business related vocabulary.Strong drive for continuous improvement.Experience of working within an ITIL (ideally Certification at Foundation Level) disciplined environment.Collaborative approach and proactively building networks working effectively across the business to address challenges and make improvements. Required Key behaviours and style indicators:Willing to travel to main SGN office locations, as required.Able to think strategically and translate this into deliverable actions.Good at developing people and managing for improved performance.Good at challenging and support their teams on self -development and keeping up to date with technology.Good attention to detail and focus on customer service.Good interpersonal and communication skills.Collaborative team player.Ability to lead and take control when required to do so.Assertive and driven.Good at building rapport and influencing at all levels.High energy and a desire to succeed.Good at obtaining information, assessing the options and making quick decisions when dealing with high priority issues.