CAREERS

We have an exciting opportunity for a confident and enthusiastic Talent Development Advisor to lead our Early Careers function across a rapidly growing multisite business. You should be a passionate self-starter, who is great at developing and maintaining Stakeholder relationships. Experience in a similar role is advantageous but we are most interested in your drive and determination to deliver results for our Early Careers offering.

This is a brand new role working within a supportive HR team. The successful candidate will lead the way in realising our ambitions for Schools Engagement, Apprentices, Graduates and Graduate Placements for Acora. This will involve connecting with schools, colleges and universities local to our current office bases, virtually and in person to drive engagement, recruitment and ongoing development for Early Careers. You will be based in our Solihull or Bletchley office with the expectation of frequent travel.

You will be leading the Early Careers offering throughout its (approximately) 2yr lifecycle. This will include driving Acora’s initial outreach work, recruitment, onboarding and ongoing pastoral support for cohorts of apprentices, undergraduates and graduates. There is also scope to develop your skills in facilitating training delivery for our new managers. You will be able to build and develop relationships with internal and external partners and training providers.

• A self-starter with the ability to work on your own initiative, being proactive and highly organised
• End to end project management experience, skilled at meeting deadlines with keen accuracy and attention to detail
• Excellent communication skills so you can effectively manage multiple stakeholders including schools, colleges, and universities, as well as prospective candidates and early talent
• Great commercial experience working in a similar role or the desire and skill to diversify and succeed
• Enthusiasm and energy when attending careers fairs or delivering presentations and talks at events and recruitment days
• A real passion for diversity, inclusion and removing barriers to working in IT
• An excellent working knowledge of Microsoft Office and Powerpoint
• A full UK driving license or the ability to travel to Acora sites as well local schools colleges and universities

The purpose of the Project Manager role is to deliver the largest and most high-profile projects to Acora customers in accordance to agreed quality, budget and timeframe, including compliance with any customer and Acora procedures.

• Ensure that all business and technical requirements for assigned projects are reviewed and understood by all Acora stakeholders, customer stakeholders and any third parties.
• Ensure that all key deliverables, dependencies/pre-requisites, scope clarity, assumptions and known issues and risks are formulated and documented in a quality Project Initiation Document (PID) for customer acceptance.
• Ensure that all milestones and gateways are formulated and placed into a coherent Project Plan, created in collaboration with the customer project stakeholders. This will be owned throughout the lifecycle, reviewed iteratively and accepted by all stakeholders.
• Proactive management throughout all engagements to act on any risks and issues that arise, including assessment on impact to quality, timelines and budget. Re-plan and rebook resources as needed and obtain approval from Acora management and customer stakeholders to new proposals
• Monitor and manage client expectations at all stages of the engagement.
• Host regular project update meetings in accordance with the communications plan as determined in the PID
• Produce regular quality project report documents that communicate key project information such as current status, completed and ongoing activities, and new risks and issues.
• Participate in regular internal project review meetings to articulate quality, timeline and budget adherence of all assigned projects.
• Lead by example, ‘living and breathing’ quality project management with particular focus on high-quality governance and an escalation point for other members of the Project Management Office
• Identify and surface further sales opportunities within engagements and at all times demonstrate an exemplary commercial mindset.
• Demonstrate a strong desire to improve Acora’s delivery to customers in whatever form that may take
• Will absolutely be expected to wholeheartedly pursue and endorse the company’s vision and values.

• Previous experience working within a finance team
• Basic excel skills
• Highly driven
• Good at problem solving
• Numerical aptitude
• Accuracy and attention to detail
• Confident in working in a team environment
• Strong communication skills, written and verbal

Working as part of Acora’s Tech Centre and reporting to the Technical Delivery Lead, this is a professional services role predominantly delivering technical implementation in core skill areas, technical expertise, and engineering support to a portfolio of contracted services or project customers.

Specifically, the team will deliver Acora’s implementation services, with a focus on:

• Produce high quality, customer-facing solution documents in line with Acora deployment, monitoring and QA standards which will be owned throughout project delivery
• Create JV templates for the core technology area and utilise them to deliver consistent output
• Demonstrate a high level of commercial awareness, focussing on proactivity and efficiency, and constructively
• challenging decisions that cost money
• Lead by example, ‘living and breathing’ the technologies in the core area and using that enthusiasm to drive
• changes in either process or product.
• Deploy all technologies in accordance to approved designs and with the company’s technical standards
• documentation, agreed best practice standards (including external accreditations) and our project management framework. This is particularly critical in the disciplines of Change Management and Service Introduction. Certain deployments are expected to require evening or weekend work.
• Provide support to Sales in your technical stack throughout the Pre-Sales process and be credible as an expert in your field, working in partnership with customers to advise and deliver technology solutions that best meet their business objectives and/or overcome problems.
• Work in partnership with customers to advise and deliver services-led technology solutions that best meet their business objectives and/or overcome problems.
• Proactively recommend improvements to customer systems and Acora processes that would benefit both the customer and Acora.
• Create high quality deployment, monitoring and QA standards/installation guides, work instructions, key customer documentation and maintain CMDB/asset information.
• Maintain your skill levels in the core technology set to a satisfactory minimum standard through a combination of self-study, company provided training and external courses.
• Proactively manage your diary of upcoming work to drive efficiency and minimise non-chargeable time

As a Service Delivery Manager, you will own the service experience of one or more allocated customers, adding value to key functions within the Service Operations department that enable the delivery of a high quality of service.

Your time will be spent across the following areas:

• Service Management – Helping Acora meet agreed service levels on an ongoing basis for one or more customers
• Service Transition – Working with the aligned Project Manager and Service Operations to successfully onboard new customers into Acora Service Operations. This may be a customer you will have ongoing responsibility for or a time-bound engagement, typically the first three months of live service.
• Service Remediation – Owning and managing to conclusion specific identified service defects that require management ownership and leadership in order to effect a positive, lasting change.
• Pro-Active Analysis – Leading and contributing to regular activity to analyse ticket patterns to help the Service Desk team identify to common issues that require Problem Management or identify risks/eliminate false positives based on Event Management data.
• This position is a customer facing role and requires that you establish and manage expectations within your customer portfolio in alignment with contracted service levels whilst seeking to strengthen and develop relationships for the longer-term.
• Pro-actively work to support the day to day client relationship and drive customer satisfaction.
• Provide high quality Service Reporting to the customer as outlined in the Master Services Agreement.
• Maintain ownership of Service Reviews with customers, including the maintenance of the agenda, minutes and actions.
• Service Review attendance and presentation of monthly service report pack.
• Owning and managing any annual client external audit activity where included in the Master Services Agreement.
• Own and manage service remediation plans to ensure Acora contracted services are delivered to the agreed services levels and quality.
• Identify areas of further service development and liaise with the Account Director to raise sales opportunities as they arise.
• Play an active part during any major incidents that may affect your customers, including reviewing and approval of MIRs and involvement in the Problem Management process.
• Overview and involvement in Projects as a key stakeholder, including supporting Acceptance Into Support (AIS) activities
• Own to conclusion any operational escalations or formal complaints
• Act as a stakeholder in CAB, providing input to the process and adding value.
• Drive third party service review meetings covering performance against SLA/KPI, service improvements, customer satisfaction, quality and processes
• Generation of monthly reporting on contractual services, risks and issues
• Oversight of Onsite Technical Resources where applicable
• You should be able to demonstrate the ability to undertake the above responsibilities.

As the End User Computing Manager (EUCM) you will be responsible for the day to day operation of End User services delivered team, this includes line management of deployed Service Desk Managers & Team Leaders.

You will be required to:

• Operational accountability for the EUC Services delivered by Team Sigma
• Productivity / Capacity
• Agree standards for monitoring Analyst performance / Service throughput with SOMs / EUC Director
• Ensuring all line managers are measuring the individuals within their teams in accordance to the standards
• Monthly reporting of Service volumes / capacity utilisation
• Process Adherence
• Agreeing single processes for key EUC Support activities with SOMs / EUC Director
• Implementation / monitoring of process adoption
• Major Incident Management
• Definition of a single Major Incident Management process for adoption by existing Team Sigma Services
• (where possible) and into new clients
• Part of the escalation matrix for clients
• Building relationships across the Acora business, especially with other EUC Managers and SOMs, to ensure
• the adoption of single processes and knowledge sharing
• Play active role in the adoption of new Services into Team Sigma including resource planning and training in
• line with the agreed transition plan
• Overall responsibility for ticket management according to defined process and to agreed targets
• Attendance at monthly Service Review meetings as required
• Maintaining good communication and relationship with the client and Service Delivery team
• Monitoring and anticipate business trends and requirements, ensuring all Services have the necessary
• resources