Role Purpose:
Majid Al Futtaim is constantly focusing on operational excellence by continuously identifying opportunities to maximize efficiency and effectiveness across teams, functions and businesses.
The financial transformation program falls under the operational excellence initiative and is strongly driven by Finance and Technology. This role for the project Manager is specially targeted for leading financial transformation projects. The financial transformation projects are typically related to areas like reporting and consolidation across heterogeneous financial platforms, robotic process automation related to financial processes, balance sheet reconciliations etc. A strong financial functional and applications knowledge combined with project management excellence is pre-requisite for this role.
• Execute typical project management activities to ensure delivery of financial transformation projects on time and within budget. The project management activities are:
• Analyze project proposals to determine time frame, funding limitations and appropriate process for accomplishing projects.
• Facilitate business cases and support in consolidating requirements and form a project requirement matrix to baseline the scope.
• Develop and formalize a project charter for each project.
• Identify and schedule project deliverables, milestones and required activities and tasks.
Role Details - Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities:
• Leads project planning, scheduling, controlling and reporting activities for strategic, high impact, high risk, financial transformation projects. These projects would typically fall under one of these categories (but not limited to it):
• Reporting and Consolidation (eg Intercompany recharges Automation etc)
• Budgeting and Planning (eg cash flow forecasting, capital allocation, workforce planning etc)
• Robotics Process Automation for Financial Activities.
• Implementation of Balance Sheet Reconciliation Systems
• Implementation of Tax Compliance Tools / systems
• Do the adoption and adaptation of project management methodologies based on the context of
the project and select appropriately from predictive (plan-driven) approaches or adaptive (iterative/agile) approaches.
• Provide leadership and motivation to project team members throughout the project life cycle and confer with project staff to outline work plan.
• Establish work plan and staffing for project activities, iterations or phases, and arrange for recruitment or assignment of project personnel.
• Assign duties, responsibilities and scope of authority to project personnel.
• Direct and coordinate activities of project personnel to ensure project progresses on schedule and within budget.
• Monitors and control resources, revenue and capital costs against the project budget and manages expectations of all project stakeholders.
• Develop and Implement project communication plan. Continuously communicate with various project stakeholders to align them towards set project goals.
• Periodically track and assess the project risks and develop plans to mitigate such risks.
• Report to the steering committee about the project progress, risks and issues that require attention.
• Review status reports prepared by project personnel and modify schedules or plans as required.
• Ensure that project goals are accomplished and in line with business objectives through benefit realization phase.
• Align with established standards and procedures developed by PMO for project reporting and documentation.
• Benchmark and report on project performance to PMO to identify areas of improvements and thus support the drive towards higher capability maturity for the PMO function.
Definition of Success
• Management and delivery of projects within the triple constraints.
• Clear and timely reporting on the progress and performance of the projects in line with the developed standards.
• Effective Management of Stakeholders expectations for the projects.
• Ensure that benefit realization is captured and reported for all the projects (post closure).
Functional/Technical Competencies
• A distinctive blend of functional (financial domain) and technical (financial applications) knowledge base with advanced level of skills in both predictive and adaptive project management styles. (This is a highly visible position with substantial impact).
• Experience with one or more project management methodologies (mainly PMI PMBOK, PRINCE2, SAFE, DA or SCRUM).
• Experience with one or more of the commonly used project management and planning tools (eg MS Project, Asana, Freedcamp, Jira etc)
• Experience with one or more of the commonly used enterprise grade financial applications eg Oracle Financials, Hyperion, SAP , MS Dynamics / Axapta ;
• Proven leadership skills with the ability to develop and communicate the project objectives while ensuring its alignment with functional (department level) objectives and goals.
• Can communicate fluently, both formally and informally and present complex information to both technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Can work effectively under general direction within a clear framework of accountability, while exercising substantial personal responsibility and autonomy in order to meet set objectives.
• Analyses, designs, plans, executes and evaluates work to time, cost and quality targets.
Personal Characteristics and Required Background:
• 10 or more years of experience in finance with strong exposure to financial platforms and systems (applications).
• 5 plus years of experience in managing and executing technology intensive projects.
• Strong collaboration, negotiation and persuasion skills for driving projects in a highly matrixed organization.
• Build and sustain effective communications with other roles involved in the project.
• Bachelor's or master’s degree in commerce, financial management, information systems, business administration or related field.
• Certification in Project Management (PMP or Prince) is a definite plus.
• Knowledge of agile methodology is highly desirable.