Company description

AstraZeneca is a global, innovation-driven biopharmaceutical business that focuses on the discovery, development and commercialization of prescription medicines for some of the world's most serious diseases. But we're more than one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies. At AstraZeneca, we're proud to have a unique workplace culture that inspires innovation and collaboration. Here, employees are empowered to express diverse perspectives - and are made to feel valued, energized and rewarded for their ideas and creativity.

The AstraZeneca IT function has undergone significant IT transformation to improve  performance and  perception of IT and is now focusing on delivering a great customer experience and overall service excellence.  The IT Transformation Programme will break the default outsourcing mentality, drive greater cohesion amongst senior IT leadership, begin the simplification of what has become an overly complex function and build a world class IT organization.

High Level Function and Role Overview

The purpose of Service Excellence is to provide a world class IT service to our customers. We focus on simplifying the current processes and technologies to reduce the overall cycle time of all IT outages and enhancing the ability to detect IT outages prior to the business being impacted. Using Strategic planning and Lean practices to enhance our customers experience of our processes and service provided.

The BSOC Manager role:

• Will have line manager responsibilities for a team of analysts and all the responsibilities associated
• Must have an in-depth knowledge and will be considered the subject matter expert (SME) lead within the BSOC (Business Services Operations Centre), for their direct reports.
• Will act as an escalation point, providing technical leadership and service expertise to support the team driving the recovery of Incidents.
• Will Lead, develop and implement a Service culture within the team
• Maintain and build internal / external relationships.
• Will proactively lead on the strategic direction, development, delivery and implementation in the team of the various tools available to monitor and assess service status.
• Will be responsible for ServiceNow development, testing and Implementation phases for Incident and Comms modules
• Deliver excellent customer service, through ownership, innovation and continuous improvement.
• Ensure that, in all aspects of the teams’ roles and compliance is maintained within the guidelines that regulate the AZ business, e.g. SoX and GxP.
   

Key Accountabilities

People Management

• Will have line manager responsibilities for a team of analysts and all the responsibilities associated (e.g. regular and productive 1-1’s, regular reviews / analysis of KPI data, process confirmation checks and quality IDP discussions on a minimum of quarterly basis)
• Will Lead, develop and implement a Service culture, thus up-skilling, through coaching, development and training staff to be more effective in Event Management, Incident resolution, communications and Lean processes/improvements
• Must ensure 24/7/365 cover is maintained with enough resource across the entire BSOC team
• Act as escalation point for team issues and address / resolve where possible or further escalating as required
• To drive the cross-training activities required to up skill to provide a multiple Line of business capabilities and resilience within the Service Operations Teams.
• Identify development needs in operational teams. Where appropriate, work with BSOC managers and team to design and deliver training.
• When required to progress any recruitment activities required
• Act as local POC for local policies, processes and engagements

Monitoring Centre of Excellence

• Working at a strategic level with BSOC Senior SOM, Tools team and other key stakeholders to deliver monitoring solutions for the team
• Document, Train and deliver monitoring solutions to the team
• Ensure governance in place to check effectiveness of the monitoring centre of excellence
• Act as liaison with tools team locally to deliver and maintain monitoring solutions
• Identify and develop improvements to monitoring tools, processes and documentation

ServiceNow Development, Testing and Delivery

• Once demand submitted for Event, Incident and communications modules will work with ServiceNow developers to deliver requirements as per Story/enhancement
• Responsible for Testing of modules on regular basis and following any upgrades as well as once development is completed to test, confirming satisfactory delivery and agree with demand lead sign off.
• Responsible for Delivery to live ensuring appropriate communications, documentation and testing complete prior to and post launch
   

Incident / Event Management

• Provide leadership, expertise and assistance for the team to drive rapid resolution of service impacting Incidents.
• Ensure incident communications to key stakeholders are completed to the expected standard and timescales.
• Ensure all Events / Incidents are progressed in accordance with documented processes and current undertakings.
• Ensure incident communications to key stakeholders are completed to the expected standards and timescales

Listening to our customers
 

• Put customers at the centre of everything we do and use their feedback to improve the service we provide, by updating any existing processes and procedures and creating new ones whenever necessary
• Act as local Liaison point for customer engagement with support teams within GTC and input any VoC into improvement activities

Continuous Service Improvement

• Via the Lean ways of working we identify waste within the role and own and drive the delivery of improvement initiatives as part of business as usual activities. 
• Via the Lean ways of working we support by coaching the BSOC team to identify waste in their area and for them to own and drive improvements. 
• Work closely with the BSOC Senior SOM and peers across the business to develop strategies capable of supporting product/service technical and operational requirements.
• Manage the continuous development of BSOC resources; people, processes, knowledge and tools, ensuring constant service improvement.

Candidate Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• 10+ years of total IT experience including 3+ years of running in ITIL based support
• Experience of operating in both physical and virtual teams, to deliver excellent results
• Previous practical experience in people management and leading people
• ITIL Expert certification / willing to work towards it
• IT Technical or functional support background
• Incident, Change and/or Problem Management experience; currently performing this or similar role
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Familiarity of working in an international, multi-time zone support environment.
• Key stakeholder management
• Experience with a variety of monitoring toolsets and their application
• Experience of working in a NOC / Command Centre environment
• Good General understanding of Lean/Agile ways of working and the application of them
• Experience of project-based improvement delivery

Other

• Direct Reports – Yes (Team of Analysts)
• Budget Responsibility – None.
• The role requires successful candidates to work a General shift pattern with potential for occasional calls / attendance during other shift patterns as needed for full completion of the role’s activities.

GCL:E1

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Date Posted

Closing Date

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity.  We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills.  We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.  We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics.  We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.