Enterprise Core Banking Program Manager FINCA International

FINCA International, one of the world's leading MFIs, provides financial services to over 950,000 clients through 21 wholly-owned and operated subsidiaries in Africa, Eurasia, Latin American, and the Greater Middle East.

About the Job: 
FINCA International is looking for an Enterprise Core Banking Project Manager to be responsible for coordination, planning, implementation, execution, supervision and guidance of Core Banking application implementation and support process across the company.

Tasks and Responsibilities: 

• Under supervision and guidance by a vice president - chief information officer, the Enterprise Core Banking Program Manager will plan and organize (30%):
  • Leading the process of determining the methodology for efficient implementation and deployment of core banking application across the company;
  • Leading the process of developing the policies and procedures to implement best practices. Process management and knowledge management;
  • Provide standardization across the enterprise in field of core banking application support and maintenance;
  • Establish a formal, approved integrated plan to guide and control the core banking implementation process across the company;
  • Ensure the activities and interdependencies of multiple projects within a program are understood and documented;
  • Define, monitor and supervise roles, responsibilities, and compensation frameworks for Core Banking Application Implementation and support project personnel, including the requirement to adhere to management policies and procedures, the code of ethics, and professional practices. The level of supervision should be in line with the sensitivity of the position and extent of responsibilities assigned;
  • Implement a decision-making process to prioritize the allocation of regional and corporate level resources to the Core Banking Application implementation and support processes;
  • Coordinate the process of planning the implementation costs, activities, deliverables and recourses related to implementation of Core Banking Application across the company. Ensure quality assurance and adequacy validation for implementation plans and budgets related to core banking application implementation projects;
  • Coordinate the process of planning the implementation risks and mitigation measures related to implementation of core banking application across the company. Ensure quality assurance and adequacy validation for contingency plans related to implementation projects;
  • Implement a cost management process comparing actual costs to budgets. Ensure the costs are monitored and reported, the deviations are identified in a timely manner and the impact of those deviations is assessed. Together with the program sponsor take appropriate remedial action. Responsible for establishing lines of communication with vendor, including the issue reporting and resolution framework between FINCA and vendor;
  • Conduct a regular performance evaluation to Regional Core Banking Project Managers on a basis of individual objectives derived from the organization’s goals, established standards and specific job responsibilities;
  • Coordinating discussions related to implementation strategy and participation of vendor consultants in implementation process;
  • Expected to define strategy in a manner of collaboration, to secure alignment across FINCA International.
• Acquire and implement (25%):
  • Oversee the core banking application implementation and supporting activity across the company; supervise the team of Regional Core Banking Project Managers, ensuring delivery of the project objectives within the planned boundaries of time, budget, personnel and material resources;
  • Identify, document and analyze risks associated with the business requirements for Core Banking Application implementation across the company;
  • Identify, prioritize, specify and agree on business functional and technical requirements covering the full scope of the cross-regional initiatives and expected outcomes of Core Banking Application implementation process;
  • Develop and follow a set of procedures and standards that is consistent with the organization’s overall procurement process and acquisition strategy to acquire infrastructure, facilities, hardware, software and services related to core banking application implementation process;
  • Manage the formal change management procedures definition process to handle in a standardized manner all requests for changes to Core Banking application functionality, as well as implementation and supporting processes and procedures;
  • Establish a process for defining, raising, testing, documenting, assessing and authorizing emergency changes that do not follow the determined change process;
  • Manage the Change Control Process related to customizations and enhancements to the core banking application in coordination with project stakeholders;
  • Establish procedures in line with the organizational change management standards to require a post-implementation review as set out in the implementation plan;
  • Ensure the sufficient documentation of proposals and decisions pertaining to change control requests related to core banking application.
• Deliver and support (25%):
  • Define a framework that provides a formalized service level management process between the FINCA and Core Banking Application vendor. Ensure the framework maintains continuous alignment with business requirements and priorities and facilitate common understanding between the parties;
  • Continuously monitor service level performance criteria related to core banking implementation and support. Analyze the monitoring statistics and act upon to identify negative and positive trends for individual services as well as for services overall;
  • Establish and implement the costing model based on the service definitions for administration and accounting of costs related to Core Banking Application implementation and support;
  • Ensure the costing model is identifiable, measurable and predictable, as well as encourages proper use of resources;
  • Directing and supervising the regional project teams efficiently identifying and solving the project issues and conflicts escalated beyond Project Manager's level;
  • Integrate the related processes of configuration, incident and problem management to ensure effective management of problems and enable improvements;
  • Put in place a procedure to close problem records either after confirmation of successful elimination of the known error or after agreement with the business on how to alternatively handle the problem.
• Monitor and evaluate (20%):
  • Monitor the fulfillment of Service Agreement related to core banking application implementation process;
  • Monitor the execution of deliverables determined in SOW;
  • Periodically review performance against targets, analyze the cause of any deviations, and initiate remedial action to address the underlying causes;
  • At appropriate times, perform root cause analysis across deviations.
  • Monitor the status of the implementation program, periodical review of the planned milestones;
  • Identify the causes for the delay in the various phases of ongoing implementation projects. Follow-up on the outstanding items as the case may be.
  • Responsible for program reporting, producing the regular reports about deployment of core banking application within the company.

Qualifications: 

• Strong commitment with the social mission of FINCA;
• MBA and studies in Financial Services;
• Over 10 years of managerial experience inside the financial entities, microfinance organizations or banking environment;
• Over 7 years of experience in administration of technological projects in a field of financial services, preferably with experience in implementation of the banking software;
• Demonstrated knowledge of advance techniques in planning, monitoring and controlling programs;
• Demonstrated knowledge of project management methodologies, such as PRINCE2;
• Demonstrated experience with budgeting and resource allocation;
• Demonstrated sufficient seniority and credibility to advise project teams on their projects in relation to the program;
• Projects Administration Certification (Project Management Certification);
• Experience with FLEXCUBE Core Baking Application;
• Strong management skills with proven capacity to direct, to influence and to motivate the team under management;
• Excellent abilities of technical writing and documentation;
• Ability verified to resolve problems efficient and to communicate really with both audience the technique and of business;
• Ability of translating easily the needs of business in technical solutions;
• Capacity verified to work creative and analytic in the problems solution environment;
• Excellent interpersonal, written and oral communication skills of English and one of regional languages (Russian or Spanish); the ability to present information and ideas clearly and concisely;
• Excellent capacity to present and to explain the information, persuade to the others and promote the understanding and the consensus;
• Proven success in contributing to a team-oriented environment;
• Proven ability to balance, prioritize and organize multiple tasks;
• High level of energy, creativity, flexibility, enthusiasm and commitment· self-confidence and initiative;
• Accuracy, attention to detail and awareness of deadlines;
• Hard working self-starter with initiative, able to set own priorities;
• Disposition to travel out of his/her place of origin up to 75% time possible.

Closing Date: 07 Mar 2013

How to Apply:
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