CIO - Corporate and Business Platforms

at  WPP

WPP is the creative transformation company. We use the power of creativity to build better futures for our people, planet, clients, and communities.

WPP AND OUR AWARD-WINNING AGENCIES WORK WITH MOST OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST COMPANIES AND ORGANISATIONS – FROM FORD, UNILEVER AND P&G TO GOOGLE, HSBC, AND THE UN. OUR CLIENTS INCLUDE 61 OF THE FTSE 100, 307 OF THE FORTUNE GLOBAL 500, ALL 30 OF THE DOW JONES 30 AND 62 OF THE NASDAQ 100. WPP ARE THE LEADER IN THE BLOOMBERG GENDER EQUALITY INDEX AND 20TH IN THE FTSE 100 RANKINGS FOR WOMEN ON BOARDS.

WPP is currently driving the industry’s largest business transformation across the marketing and advertising sector. Dominic Shine has recently joined as our Global CIO and is driving a major transformation of our Enterprise Technology capabilities across the group. Key to this transformation is the strengthening of the Global Enterprise Technology Leadership Team and the introduction of a new operating model which will see 2500+ technology professionals across the group come together to form an integrated global team that services and enables the ongoing transformation of our agencies and functions. We are looking for a unique c-suite level candidate to play a role with a significant dual focus at the highest level of our organisation.
Firstly, we are looking for a Corporate CIO that will be a strategic technology partner to the WPP executive team and leaders of group functions (inc. Mark Read CEO, Joanne Wilson CFO, Lindsay Pattinson CPO, Andrew Scott COO and Laurent Ezekiel Chief Marketing and Growth Officer) driving business transformation across the group. This role will work closely to define and weave enterprise technology into our wider global operating model, partnering with our Chief Transformation Officer and core HQ stakeholders to transform the WPP back office operating model and associated processes. Secondly, this role will drive the strategic roadmap and adoption of global enterprise platforms and applications working closely with our WPP eExCo consisting of WPP agency leaders. They will lead a team of business platform leaders in each of our three agency clusters (Creative, Media and Production, PR and Specialist). The remit of this role is significant E2E responsibility for building, running and transforming enterprise platforms and shaping agency cluster-specific technology to grow our businesses (inc. Workday, Maconomy, Dynamics, Salesforce, Wrike, Monday)
This role would suit a seasoned leader influencing and advising c-suites in their technology decisions and strategies; alongside tackling and transforming a highly-fragmented legacy estate (e.g 300+ ERP instances) along with rationalisation of 1000s of applications across a FTSE 100 company; with a remit to drive consistency and enterprise buy-in and adoption whilst continuing to shape platforms unique to each agency cluster that will enable business growth.

EXPERIENCE

• Experience deploying enterprise-wide platforms across a large, dispersed and complex organisation
• Experience successfully working with other leaders within a highly matrixed structure where there is close alignment and accountability through direct reports (business platform leads) and agency CIOs to deliver outcomes
• Expert knowledge and experience of key platforms currently being deployed across WPP e.g. Microsoft, Maconomy, Workday, UHub,
• Ability to build diverse, augmented teams with the right mix of permanent, fixed-term, third-party resources to deliver programme outcomes with a firm eye on value and cost
• Strong portfolio management skills of multiple technology platform programmes considering the value, timing and roll out of these enterprise solutions
• Experience designing enterprise target state architecture, operating model and technology choices in a large, FTSE100- equivalent organisation

SKILLS

• Extensive experience in the large-scale roll-out of back-office technologies in big global organisations related to functions - HR, Finance, ERPs
• Operating model design and organisational transformation - strong ability to define target state org structure and implementing a matrix structure of business platform leads across each CIO organisation. Strong leadership skills and experience driving organisational change across a complex and globally dispersed organisation.
• Strong ability to guide corporate and agency senior stakeholders to consider the trade-off between group and agency objectives as it relates to platform decisions
• Ability to powerfully communicate the value of enterprise platforms whilst persuasively encouraging agencies to leverage enterprise rather than localised solutions
• Exec stakeholder management skills with the ability to create key technology partnerships and experience top present to board level and c-suite stakeholders - reviewing requirements and acting as an escalation point