Head of Enterprise Services

Description About Alvarez & Marsal

Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) is a global consulting firm with entrepreneurial, action and results-oriented professionals. We take a hands-on approach to solving our clients' problems and assisting them in reaching their potential. Our culture celebrates independent thinkers and doers who positively impact on our clients and shape our industry. The collaborative environment and engaging work—guided by A&M's core values of Integrity, Quality, Objectivity, Fun, Personal Reward, and Inclusive Diversity - are why our people love working at A&M.

Technology at A&M is operated as a platform serving the entire firm - corporate functions, business units, and client-facing engagement teams. As the firm has scaled, the Application Services portfolio has grown substantially in surface area, complexity, and business criticality. The firm's enterprise application estate now includes SAP S/4 HANA, in flight third party onshore and offshore managed service), Workday, Salesforce (Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud), Sales Engagement Tools, Expense, Timekeeping, and a growing portfolio of legal, compliance, and risk-tech platforms.

The Head of Enterprise Application Services is a newly created role, established to provide focused leadership over this portfolio.

The Head of Enterprise Application Services owns the design, build, run, and continuous evolution of A&M's enterprise application portfolio. The role is accountable for application platform reliability, integration coherence, vendor and SI partnership effectiveness, and the strategic roadmap that aligns application capabilities to firm growth.

This is a senior leadership role for a candidate who has run a multi-domain application portfolio at scale, who has held a world-class managed-service partner accountable through a major program, and who can deliver alongside System Integration partners without becoming dependent on them.

The role requires equal fluency in technology delivery and stakeholder leadership. A&M's consuming functions:
Finance, HR, Legal, Marketing, Growth, and Business Unit leadership - are sophisticated, intellectual users. The Head of Enterprise Application Services is the single accountable executive who translates their requirements into platform direction, while holding the line on configure-not-customize, integration discipline, and standards.

Vertical application domains: Operates the platforms that serve each consuming function:

• Finance Tech
• People Tech
• Legal Tech
• Compliance & Risk Tech
• CRM Tech
• Business Unit Tech

Horizontal application capabilities: Operates the cross-cutting platforms that serve all verticals

• Integration & APIs

• Custom Development & Low-Code
• Engagement & Workflow

System Integration (SI) and Managed Service Partnerships
:
Holds third parties accountable and defines performance metrics, governs the relationship, and escalates appropriately

Architecture and standards: Leverages and refines Firm architecture standards to manage portfolio. Configure-not-customize as default mindset.

BU technology federation: Works through the Practice IT Liaison construct to federate BU-dedicated technology to platform standards while respecting BU autonomy.

Cost and vendor management
:
Owns the application portfolio total cost of ownership, license optimization, and contract lifecycle for SaaS and SI partners. Partners with the OCIO/TBM function on financial transparency and show back to consuming functions.

Talent leadership: Builds and develops the leadership layer beneath the role.

Reports to:

Chief Administrative Officer

Peer pillar leaders: Chief Information Officer (Infrastructure & Operations). Chief Security Officer (Security & Global Security Office). Chief AI Officer (peer platform)

Primary internal stakeholders: CFO, Controller, Chief People Officer, HR leadership, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer, Chief Risk Officer, Chief Growth/Pursuit leadership, BU Growth leaders, BU practice leaders, CPMO and Technology Portfolio Leader, Executive Committee members (occasional, for major program review)

Organization scope: Approximately 60+ named application platforms in the firm's portfolio; team size scales with the role over the first 24 months.

• Multi-platform ownership at scale. Has run a multi-domain enterprise application portfolio (ERP, HRIS, CRM, plus legal/risk and engagement platforms) as a single accountable leader, not a federation of separate platforms.
• SI partnership discipline. Has held a global role working with world-class Managed Service and System Integrators accountable through a major program. Knows how to set scope, govern delivery, escalates, and avoid the failure modes of managed-service over-dependency.
• Architecture instincts. Configure-not-customize as a default mindset. Has resisted SI customization pressure before, with results to show for it.
• Domain leadership. Has built and developed a layer of seven or more direct reports across both vertical…