Director, Operations Finance - Procurement

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts•Toronto, ON

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Operations Finance - Procurement will collaborate with the Senior Director, Operations Finance to support Property Finance Business Process Management and is responsible to ensure current and future business objectives for all areas of procurement at Four Seasons – properties, residential, Corporate and other lines of business. This includes standardizing and automating tasks, developing best practice processes, tools, and templates, and facilitating their deployment across the global portfolio alongside property teams and the business process outsourcing (BPO) partner, with the aim to drive efficiency of accounting processes globally while keeping in mind the impact and capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics 365. The role will provide clear accountability and leadership across all stages of Procurement-processes and will own policy and process, ensuring Standard Operating Procedures are best in class, in compliance with internal controls and USALI, and support up and downstream system integrations. At all times these activities are to drive adoption and maturity of the goals of Enterprise Performance Transformation. The Director, Operations Finance - Procurement is an expert in hospitality procurement, with on-property experience and familiar with procurement-related capabilities of Dynamics 365. A deep understanding of hospitality-related procurement processes and master data management (vendors, products) to support activities in the Procurement Excellence Program and spend analytics is critical to the success of this role. The role will oversee all development (from a business support lens), process mapping, deployment, training, change management, master data management, and internal control and policy update support in the procurement space. The role is also the Data Owner for all procurement master data and champion of data governance in this space. The role is the primary liaison between the business, the BPO and both the Product Owner – ERP and Platform Owner – ERP when it comes to system processes and functionality optimization. Strong partnership with both these roles will be required to maximize the value of Dynamics 365 in the procurement space, ensuring the solution continues to drive value for the organization. The Technology, Innovation & Data (TID) services team will be responsible for technical solutioning, development, technical implementation and Level 1 support. This role will work closely with the TID team to build out support capabilities and facilitate support items unable to be resolved by the TID team.

Requirements

University degree and hospitality procurement experience required.
Three (3) to five (5) years of experience in a senior procurement role in the hospitality industry.
Working technical knowledge of D365 procurement processes and workflow.
Familiar with the procurement process in a hospitality environment.
Working knowledge of all positions in Accounting, Purchasing and Food & Beverage control at properties.
Experience with analyzing large data sets to determine trends or drive business decisions.
A working knowledge of hotel systems and operations.
Hospitality procurement business process acumen from L1 - L5 with demonstrated experiential delivery in sustaining and evolving Standard Operating Procedures, Internal Controls, Master Data Management, and global training guides.
Techno-functional acumen: Knowledge and experience in both business and functional aspects of D365 for procurement to effectively communicate with stakeholders.
Training: Capability to deliver training courses and support to stakeholders on the effective use of D365 for procurement.
Change management: Ability to drive and manage change within the organization, ensuring smooth adoption of D365 for procurement and its enhancements.
Requirement gathering and prioritization: Ability to gather and prioritize requirements from key stakeholders as they align with business goals.
Stakeholder management: Skilled in effectively managing and collaborating with Finance, Procurement, TID and Operations stakeholders to ensure their needs are met.
Proven leadership skills in both a Property and Corporate environment.
Highest level of integrity and transparency.
Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills to work with cross-functional teams, to negotiate for resources and influence stakeholders and to gain acceptance of and commitment to plans, ideas, initiatives, etc.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills to prepare and deliver reports, training material, effective presentations and to facilitate meetings.
Apply an ethical approach to influence the outcome of situations.
Serve as a role model for others by demonstrating appropriate business conduct and ethical principles.
Continuously seek to improve/develop the performance of others and continuously strive to improve their own performance.
Work in a safe, prudent and organized manner.
Ability to work in a fast-paced, customer service-focused environment.
Strategic, analytical and solid business acumen.

Responsibilities

Maximize efficiency of onsite processes.
Support the implementation of the onsite target operating model.
Assist in establishing/enforcing policies, rules, internal controls and safeguards.
Proactively engage in identifying opportunities for continuous improvement.
Continuously deliver the highest level of service with respect to property support and maximize property satisfaction of outsourced services.
Provide hotel users with support for standard tools, templates and processes.
Support both property and deployment teams through planning, deployment, and stabilization phases of property onboarding.
Provide valued analysis and insight on property readiness assessment materials and property data.
Execute and/or support property readiness and transition activities including process mapping, localization identification and clarity, data migration activities, User Acceptance Testing, Property Acceptance Testing, training validation and execution (where necessary), hypercare and transition to support.
Manage and/or participate in a variety of stakeholder communications, updates and change management efforts to ensure smooth property transitions and progress tracking.
Work closely with Product, Platform, Deployment, Data and other teams to align deployment and ongoing solution roadmap activities with business goals.
Perform within Azure Dev Ops (ADO), Jira, ServiceNow and other collaborative work management tools for assignment, completion and cross-team transparency of transition tasks across our global deployment program.
Collaborate with Technology, Innovation & Data, Change Management, and the Project Management Office to ensure cohesive execution.
Provide Hypercare support and assistance.
Accountable to collaborate and make business decisions, in co-operation with Product and TID stakeholders to understand their requirements, gather feedback, and align D365 future initiatives with business goals in the procurement space.
Act as the primary business point of contact for D365-related procurement business queries, issues, and requests from stakeholders.
Engage with the TID Finance support team to address trends identified related to system support and usability in the procurement space.
Accountable for defining gaps or opportunities in the D365 procurement product and defining clear acceptance criteria for each feature.
Facilitate regular communication and status updates with stakeholders to ensure transparency and to manage expectations.
Act as the central point of contact for Product, TID, Data Governance, and the business to relay business and process requirements related to procurement.
Work closely in collaboration with TID and Product to define, communicate, and manage the product vision, roadmap, defining user stories, and strategy for D365 related to procurement, considering business priorities, hospitality, and industry market trends.
Partner with Product Owner – ERP and stay connected with D365 community, including Microsoft, their partners and clients.
Conduct market research and stay updated on D365 best business practices for procurement to identify opportunities for innovation.
Work closely with global Finance and Procurement stakeholders to prioritize features and enhancements based on business value and user needs.
Continue to motivate operational teams to adopt new technologies and capabilities as and when they become relevant and available.
Ensure customer-driven design considering user experience requirements and solution usability, using market and industry knowledge.
Own, manage, design and update procurement-related process design and implementation in related systems.
Support the Product team in the creation and prioritization of the product backlog related to procurement, ensuring that it reflects the most valuable and feasible items.
Collaborate with the Platform Owner – ERP and Product Owner – ERP, who together will provide a list of future features to refine backlog items, ensuring they are well-defined, estimated, and ready for implementation.
Continuously prioritize and reprioritize backlog items based on changing business needs, market conditions, and stakeholder feedback.
Partner with Platform Owner – ERP and Product Owner – ERP to build the Product roadmap that reflects the organization’s procurement priorities, capturing any available innovations and improvements.
Nurture the engagement between the Finance, Procurement, Data Governance, Data Analysis, and TID departments to ensure the D365 platform for procurement is evolving to its fullest potential.
Proactively share knowledge between TID and Product Owners to drive D365 business functionality and business process learnings in the procurement space.
Understand the delta and business ramifications between how technology is currently working and how it should be working in a leading business practice as it relates to procurement.
Responsible for collaborating with Corporate and property procurement teams to identify vendors to onboard onto D365.
Manage correspondence with vendors to gather necessary information related to technical requirements to onboard punchout vendors.
Manage process to collect relevant vendor data such while onboarding a collab vendor, including but not limited to information related to tax IDs / forms, contact information, payment details and terms.
Provide training to new vendors to the Four Seasons D365 ecosystem on how they should interact with the platform for both Four Seasons and the vendor to have a successful relationship.
As Data Steward for all procurement-related data at Corporate, properties and other lines of business, lead all related master data management activities.
This includes working closely with the Procurement Excellence Program to identify and manage standardized procurement categories, channels, nomenclature and hierarchies related to products.
Work closely with the Procurement Excellence Program and other internal stakeholders to develop governance around and manage vendor data, standardizing and consolidating where possible.
Partner with Procurement Excellence Program to support the development of a data-driven culture enabled by technology, allowing related analytics to drive action for the organization.
Work closely with various Corporate stakeholders including but not limited to Finance, Procurement and Data Analytics to support spend analytics and related activities.
Be the organization’s in-house recipe and menu engineering expert, working closely with Corporate and property teams in Finance, Procurement, Food & Beverage and TID to manage a best-in-class solution.
Day-to-day support to be managed by the TID support desk.
Recipe and menu engineering activities will include but not be limited to developing processes and guiding development activities from a business requirements perspective, working closely with various internal stakeholders.
Support procurement onboarding activities for new implementations of D365.
Review and evaluate property performance issues as it relates to procurement, providing ad-hoc training and evolving best practice standards to be adopted.