Head of IT Service Management

The role holder: Service Management Strategy: Define and implement a comprehensive IT service management strategy aligned with business goals. Team leadership: Lead and manage a team of service management professionals, including service desk, incident, problem, service design, and transition specialists. IT operations management: Oversee service operations, ensuring efficient incident and problem resolution, high service availability, and user satisfaction. Tooling management: Select, implement, and manage IT service management tools to optimise processes and workflows. Continual service improvement: Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance the maturity and effectiveness of service management practices. Service level management: Establish and maintain service level agreements (SLAs) with internal and external stakeholders. Business partnering: Foster a culture of collaboration between IT and business functions working to understand their service requirements and designing service management capability to deliver on these requirements. Service design and transition: Provide expert guidance and recommendations on service management best practices to product teams as they design, build, and implement new or updated products to the IT environment. Budget Responsibilities The role holder: Has an high level of commercial awareness and budget management capability. Will have budget responsibility as part of wider budget up to GBP 20m Competencies Knowledge: IT Service Management Frameworks: In-depth understanding of frameworks like ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and its core processes (incident, problem, change, etc.). IT infrastructure and software delivery and support: Solid understanding of IT infrastructure and operations, including networking, hardware, and software. Service management tooling: Knowledge of service management tools like ticketing systems, configuration management databases (CMDB) utilising standards such as CSDM (Common Services Data Model from ServiceNow), discovery tooling for hardware and software assets. Strategy: Ability to translate business goals into a robust IT service management strategy. End user experience: Understanding of how service management impacts user experience and business value and not just cost. Prioritisation and resource management: Skills in cost optimization and resource allocation within the IT service management function. Team leadership: Strong leadership skills to motivate and manage a team of service management professionals. Stakeholder management: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to bridge the gap between IT and business stakeholders. Negotiation and conflict resolution skills to manage diverse priorities and expectations. Problem solving and process improvement: Commitment to continuous improvement methodologies like Lean IT and Six Sigma. Ability to analyse service management data and identify areas for improvement. Industry good practice: Knowledge of industry best practices and emerging technologies in IT service management. Skills: Strategic thinking: Aligning IT service management with business goals. Leadership: Building and motivating a high-performing service management team. IT Service Management (ITSM) and Service Integration and Management (SIAM) knowledge: Deep understanding of frameworks like ITIL and ITSM best practices. Operational expertise: Overseeing service desk, incident, problem, design, and transition. Communication: Clearly bridging the gap between IT and business stakeholders. Qualifications: Proven experience in IT service management, ideally with a recognised certification (ITIL, ITSM, SIAM). Behaviours Strategic Vision – Anticipates and plans for the future business landscape Collaboration – Drives high standards of performance through cooperation and teamwork Adaptability – Responds to change with positive action Creativity – Balances imagination and information to identify solutions Courage – Takes appropriate risks and leads with humility Recruitment Summary Role Title for Market: Head of IT Service Management This role in a nutshell: This role reports to the Director Digital Services and owns IT Service Management processes for the business including first line support (L0 self help, L0.5 chat, L1 service desk), service design and transition capability to support product teams, and service management (SIAM) and improvement capabilities.  Your role is all about delivering an exceptional end user experience for our users making sure that the tools they have work and there is an appropriate support wrapper around all of our services and feedback loops in place to continually improve services. What you will deliver: Design the Service Management team: Collaborate with stakeholders to design a fit for purpose service management organisation with appropriate skills and capacity to meet the requirements of the business as it grows now and in the future. Scope and source internal and external delivery partners: Work with the Product teams to understand the products being delivered and the support services they will require and design appropriate sourcing strategies for Service Management including retained teams, internal partners, and external 3rd parties. Develop Service Management delivery plan: Work with Product teams to understand the business requirements and develop a plan of activity to establish service management capabilities. Monitor and control delivery: Establish governance including external or internal suppliers, CSAT, or other performance monitoring mechanisms to capture service performance, progress, plans, and problems that require support Stakeholder engagement: Establish strong stakeholder relationships across IT, the programme, and our internal customer teams (engineering, manufacturing, enabling functions) to understand performance as experienced by our end users, communicate service commitment, and resolve issues. Within your first 6 months you will: Establish the team including confirming the roles and numbers required to enable IT service management and the ramp up plan to build out the capability. Work with Product teams to understand product service management requirements, develop and prioritise the backlog, and create and communicate a service management plan to communicate to the product teams and business. Engage with product team leads, establish a regular cadence of interaction and ways of working that allow for sharing of understanding and plans across the business. Implement appropriate systems to capture service performance and control service delivery. Implement appropriate ITSM tooling to manage core ITIL processes. Define the sourcing strategy for IT Service Management and contract managed service providers as appropriate. Be able to demonstrate the value of IT Service Management to the business by delivering the capabilities required at the right time to enable the programme to be successful