Director of IT ERP & Analytics Solutions - courtesy post on ERPCloudTalent.com
Apply Directly at IMS / Omnicom's site - https://interpublic.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/OMC/job/Skokie-Illinois-United-States-of-America/Director-of-IT-ERP---Analytics-Solutions_R17959
Location: Skokie, IL or Kenosha, WI (Hybrid - 3 days in office) | Salary: $150,000 - $170,000 | Req ID: R17959
Who We Are IMS represents leading brands at the point of purchase - in store, online, and behind the scenes - including digital and traditional signage, print and POP, branded merchandise, and more. Our marketplace is solution agnostic, so our clients achieve best execution at lowest price throughout North America. Our integrated platform (planning, procurement, freight, warehousing, kitting, fulfillment, field execution, analytics, and program management) empowers our clients to stay at the strategic level, knowing that we can help turn their marketing vision into a reality. Visit us at: www.IMSretail.com. IMS is wholly owned by Omnicom Group (NYSE: OMC), an interconnected global network of leading marketing communications companies offering a broad range of marketing solutions.
Position Overview IMS is seeking a dynamic, results-oriented Director of IT to lead the teams responsible for ERP solutions, business systems analysis, application support, quality assurance, and business intelligence reporting. Reporting to the VP of IT, this leader is accountable for the reliability, enhancement, and effective delivery of business-critical applications that enable our supply chain, financial, client, and operational processes. The Director leads four direct reports: the Business Systems Analyst Manager, Application Development Manager, IT Support / Quality Assurance Manager, and Associate Manager of Analytics. Success requires developing these leaders, aligning competing priorities, translating business objectives into executable technology roadmaps, and driving performance through clearly defined outcomes and accountability. This role owns ERP application functionality and ERP-facing integration readiness. The Director oversees EDI, file-based, batch, and other non-API integrations. API platform development/management and enterprise data warehouse operations belong to the Director of Data Management & Integrations; this Director partners closely with that leader to ensure APIs and data products connect effectively with ERP and meet business requirements. The Director also partners with the Director of PMO and the separate Salesforce team responsible for Salesforce, Commerce Cloud, and Service Cloud. A central expectation is visible, hands-on leadership in the adoption of approved AI and automation capabilities across development, analysis, support, QA, and reporting - delivering measurable gains in throughput, quality, responsiveness, and employee effectiveness while protecting company and client data.
Key Responsibilities
Leadership, Strategy & Accountability
- Lead, coach, and hold accountable four functional managers; build succession, cross-training, staffing, and professional development plans.
- Own the roadmap and operating performance of ERP-related applications, business analysis, application support, quality assurance, and analytics reporting.
- Partner with the VP of IT and business leadership on priorities, capacity, budgets, investment decisions, vendor performance, and business cases.
- Establish measurable service, quality, delivery, and productivity KPIs; review performance routinely and drive corrective action.
- Promote a culture of ownership, responsiveness, collaboration, continuous improvement, and effective communication across all teams.
ERP Application & Business Solution Ownership
- Provide overall functional and technical leadership for JD Edwards World on IBM i and associated ERP applications supporting end-to-end supply chain management.
- Direct the Application Development and BSA Managers in solution design, development, configuration, testing, deployment, documentation, and long-term maintainability.
- Oversee application lifecycle planning, modernization opportunities, technical debt reduction, change control, and production stability in coordination with infrastructure and security stakeholders.
- Ensure proposed solutions balance operational effectiveness, security, scalability, cost, technical feasibility, and downstream impacts.
- Sponsor process improvements and application enhancements that deliver demonstrated business value for internal teams and clients.
Integration Accountability & Cross-Team Coordination
- Own delivery and operational effectiveness of non-API integrations, including EDI, scheduled batch processing, managed file transfers, and other file-based exchanges associated with ERP.
- Define ERP-side interface requirements, mappings, validation, exception handling, reconciliation, testing, monitoring, and operational support for integrations.
- Partner with the Director of Data Management & Integrations, who owns API integration solutions, to ensure end-to-end API transactions integrate successfully with ERP and meet agreed functional, reliability, and support requirements.
- Collaborate with the separate Salesforce application team on Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, and Salesforce-to-ERP processes, including business requirements, interface testing, issue resolution, and release coordination.
Cloud Infrastructure, Availability & Disaster Recovery
- Partner with IMS's cloud infrastructure provider to ensure the ERP hosting environment meets business requirements for performance, availability, reliability, security, and capacity.
- Monitor system performance, resource utilization, and service availability. Work with the cloud provider to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks and infrastructure-related issues.
- Ensure backup processes, retention schedules, monitoring, and recovery procedures are properly maintained and regularly validated.
- Oversee disaster recovery and high-availability readiness, including annual failover and failback testing, recovery objectives, documentation, and remediation of identified deficiencies.
- Review cloud provider service levels, operational performance, incident response, and capacity requirements. Escalate issues and drive corrective actions when service expectations are not met.
- Collaborate with the VP of IT and cloud provider on infrastructure planning, technology upgrades, capacity expansion, and associated costs.
Support, Quality Assurance & Operational Excellence
- Direct application support and QA leadership to meet service expectations, manage escalations, prioritize incidents, and resolve recurring problems through root-cause analysis.
- Ensure disciplined QA, system integration testing, regression testing, UAT coordination, release readiness, and defect management across changes.
- Oversee application recovery readiness and ERP participation in disaster recovery exercises in partnership with infrastructure and other accountable teams.
- Establish clear procedures, knowledge management, change management, access control and audit support aligned with enterprise IT policies and security requirements.
Analytics & Business Intelligence Reporting
- Provide strategic direction for the Analytics team in delivering Power BI dashboards, operational reporting, financial insights, and client-facing analytics.
- Prioritize analytics demand based on business value, data accuracy, usability, stakeholder needs, and available capacity.
- Partner with the Director of Data Management & Integrations on data definitions, data quality, availability, and changes to warehouse-managed datasets; do not own warehouse architecture, pipelines, or platform operations.
Project Portfolio & Stakeholder Partnership
- Work closely with the Director of PMO to establish project priorities, scope, resource plans, schedules, dependencies, governance, and transparent delivery reporting.
- Provide accountable functional and technical team leadership for projects while PMO coordinates project organization, methodology, and portfolio tracking.
- Build trusted relationships with Finance, Operations, Client Services, business owners, vendors, and external customers; communicate plans, decisions, risks, and results clearly.
- Oversee vendor evaluations, solution recommendations, contract/service performance, and operational investments within assigned areas.
Policy Governance, Security & Business Resilience
- Ensure policies, standards, and operating procedures governing the software development lifecycle (SDLC), data governance, business continuity, disaster recovery, and information security are current, documented, communicated, and consistently enforced across accountable teams.
- Establish regular reviews and evidence of compliance with applicable enterprise policies, audit requirements, access controls, change management, and security practices; identify gaps and lead timely remediation.
- Partner with the Director of Data Management & Integrations on enterprise data governance and with infrastructure, security, and business continuity owners on shared controls, while remaining accountable for compliance within ERP applications, reporting, and assigned teams.
- Ensure ERP application recovery procedures, dependencies, runbooks, and participation in business continuity and disaster recovery testing remain current; track findings and corrective actions to completion.
Budget Planning, Spending & Vendor Management
- Develop and manage annual operating and project budgets for assigned functions, including staffing, software maintenance, subscriptions, professional services, and other technology expenditures.
- Evaluate, prioritize, and manage spend requests, renewals, and investment proposals; prepare cost estimates, business cases, and recommendations for VP of IT approval in accordance with delegated spending authority.
- Monitor actual spending against forecasts and approved budgets, explain variances, identify savings opportunities, and communicate financial risks and tradeoffs.
- Oversee vendor financial performance, contract deliverables, and commercial commitments in coordination with Procurement, Finance, and other accountable teams.
AI Enablement, Automation & Measurable Productivity
- Champion a practical, disciplined AI-first improvement mindset; identify high-value use cases across RPG/SQL development, requirements, documentation, test design, support triage, root-cause analysis, and analytics delivery.
- Expect managers to incorporate approved AI tools into daily workflows, develop reusable practices, train teams, and share outcomes across functions.
- Set baselines and measure adoption and impact using metrics such as cycle time, throughput, defect escape rate, time to resolution, documentation effort, and hours saved.
- Evaluate AI-assisted outputs for accuracy, security, privacy, maintainability, and compliance with company policies; retain appropriate human review and approval.
- Promote experimentation with clear business outcomes rather than technology adoption for its own sake.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Business, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 10+ years of progressive enterprise applications, ERP, or business technology experience, including 5+ years leading managers or multiple technology teams.
- Demonstrated ownership of complex ERP-based solutions and business processes in distribution, supply chain, order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, warehousing, transportation, or finance.
- Strong working knowledge of ERP application delivery, business systems analysis, production support, QA, non-API integrations (EDI and batch/file-based), and business intelligence reporting.
- Ability to lead technical specialists without needing to serve as the primary hands-on developer; sufficient fluency to challenge designs, diagnose risks, and make sound decisions.
- Experience collaborating across integration, enterprise data, Salesforce/eCommerce, infrastructure, security, and PMO functions with clear ownership boundaries.
- Proven ability to manage managers, establish and enforce IT policies and controls, lead budget planning and spend governance, manage vendors, and drive measurable service and delivery outcomes.
- Demonstrated practical adoption of AI and automation tools, or strong evidence of successfully driving transformative technology adoption and measurable productivity improvement.
- Excellent executive communication, leadership, problem-solving, stakeholder management, and organizational skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with JD Edwards World, IBM i (AS/400), RPG, SQL, DB2 for i, and IBM i application delivery tools such as Rocket DevOps / Aldon.
- Experience with EDI X12 transactions, managed file transfer, batch schedules, and integration monitoring/exception handling.
- Familiarity with REST APIs and ERP-facing integrations, including interfaces to Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Service Cloud.
- Experience leading Power BI reporting and collaborating with modern enterprise data warehouse teams.
- Knowledge of Jira, ServiceNow, agile/waterfall/hybrid delivery methods, and enterprise change management.
- Experience leading AI-enabled process improvements across multiple IT functions.
Key Competencies
• Strategic Leadership & Accountability: Sets direction, develops managers, makes decisions, and follows through on results.
• Business Partnership: Translates business needs into stable, scalable, measurable technology solutions.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Aligns ERP, PMO, API/data, Salesforce, infrastructure, and business stakeholders without blurring ownership.
• Operational Discipline: Balances service stability, delivery quality, risk, controls, and continuous improvement.
• AI Mindset & Change Leadership: Challenges established practices and scales secure, measurable productivity improvements.
• Communication & Execution: Resolves competing priorities, explains complex decisions, and maintains transparency with executives and teams.
IMS offers a comprehensive compensation and benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, and 401(k), generous work from home and paid time off policies and more! Salary range: $150,000.00 - $170,000.00. To the extent permissible by local law, Omnicom’s policy requires employees to work in the office for a minimum of three days a week, unless additional in-office days are directed by their agency or manager. IMS is an Equal Opportunity Employer. It is the policy of Omnicom and any of its affiliates to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, religion, color, ethnic origin, gender, gender identity, age, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, disability, or any other basis prohibited by applicable federal, state, or local law. EOE/AA/M/D/V/F.