EDI Systems Manager

at  Alliance Automotive Group

Alliance Automotive Group (AAG) is a subsidiary of Genuine Parts Group, a US listed company and the world’s largest distributor of aftermarket spare parts for passenger cars and commercial vehicles. The group has global revenues of US$22 Billion with operations in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The UK & Ireland Group has annualised sales of c.£1bn.
The UK & Ireland Group is a dynamic business growing both organically and by acquisition, operating from over 300 locations and employing over 5,500 staff in the UK. The AAG network supplies 30,000 repairers, auto centres, fast fitters, transport operators, and body shops every single day. With over 250 million cars and 70 million commercial vehicles on Europe’s roads, our sophisticated supply chain and logistics infrastructure ensures the efficient delivery of spare parts to repairers in our markets.
Our UK & Ireland IT Department is integral to our success and ensuring that a complicated application estate runs smoothly to keep our customers moving. Following success in Germany, we have embarked on a journey to rationalise and standardise our homegrown electronic system integrations into Lobster EDI, a no-code off-the-shelf data integration software package. To facilitate the delivery of this transformation, our IT Department is recruiting a new EDI Systems Manager to lead the embedding and run operations of our Lobster EDI and FTP software estate.
Role Overview
The EDI Systems Manager is responsible for ensuring our systems integration estate is fit-for-purpose and adopted correctly by the UK & Ireland IT Department. This an autonomous role that will work with the Head of Digital & Internal Applications to embed and standardise Lobster EDI run operations across UK & Ireland. You must be comfortable working independently and taking ownership of problem resolution by co-ordinating with other team members or 3rd parties.
Since this a key position in the UK & Ireland IT Department, the candidate must have a technical background. You are required to become our resident Lobster EDI subject matter expert and primary liaison with the European Centre of EDI Excellence, where you will correspond on new opportunities, future releases and shared feature dependencies. You may need to complete research tasks to advise on problem statements and thus contribute to continued improvement of our EDI environment. At times, you may be required to troubleshoot production issues, co-ordinate appropriate resolutions or even manage incident response in some extreme circumstances.
You are expected to be a technical problem solver and thus capable of getting into the detail of specific issues so you can either resolve it yourself or co-ordinate with 3rd parties. You need to be a quick learner and not afraid to take control of situations when a complex problem occurs. To be successful, you need to be invested and engaged with the portfolio of work and technology, and ultimately have ambition to become a subject matter expert in this discipline. Custom training plans in Lobster EDI and SolarWinds Serv-U will be provided but you should have knowledge of core EDI concepts and be familiar with electronic transmission protocols such as XML, CSV & JSON and web services technology such as SOAP and REST.
The development of profiles and integrations is delegated to the respective implementation teams; however, you are responsible for ultimate change control and environment management, so knowledge of what is running in your estate is vital. You will be required to design, install and govern a “standards” framework for your colleagues and system users to follow and implement change advisory boards where necessary. You are also responsible for collaborating with our global cyber team, to ensure that Production integrations are compliant and secure.
The EDI Systems Manager is a hybrid working position based at our National Distribution Centre in Rotherham. Details of the hybrid working agreement can be discussed during the interview stage. Occasional trips to our EDI HQ in Münster (Germany) may also be required.

Core responsibilities include:

• Designing, implementing and governing a “standards” framework for Lobster EDI & FTP system users
• Co-ordinating deployments, software upgrades and server patching with respective parties
• Routine health-checks on the environments and driving any necessary implementation improvements
• Resolving problems, incidents and service requests for assets within your portfolio via the ITSM software
• Reviewing change requests and implementations for quality control and cyber security purposes
• Managing system access to internal and external system integration platforms
• Running change advisory boards and risk management with upgrades or releases
• Collaborating with the European Centre of Excellence to improve UK & Ireland standards and 3rd party service

What we are looking for:

• Minimum 2 years’ experience working with EDI technology and concepts

o Good knowledge of electronic transmission protocols such as XML, CSV & JSON
o Good knowledge of web services technology such as SOAP and REST

o Good knowledge of internet transfer protocols (FTP, FTPS, SFTP, SSH) and experience working with FTP servers

• Excellent self-management skills and ability to adapt to changing priorities and time keeping
• Broad knowledge of Microsoft Technology stacks and exposure to SQL technologies
• Exceptional collaboration skills and ability to work effectively with a variety of IT professionals
• Delivery focused with excellent attention to detail and strong drive to resolve issues
• 3rd party management/vendor experience

Alliance Automotive Group (AAG) is a leading distributor of light and commercial vehicle parts to the automotive aftermarket, serving over 35,000 repairers across the UK & Ireland.
AAG is owned by Genuine Parts Company (GPC), the number one parts distribution business in North America, leading to an increased level of synergies helping achieve record growth

• Designing, implementing and governing a “standards” framework for Lobster EDI & FTP system users
• Co-ordinating deployments, software upgrades and server patching with respective parties
• Routine health-checks on the environments and driving any necessary implementation improvements
• Resolving problems, incidents and service requests for assets within your portfolio via the ITSM software
• Reviewing change requests and implementations for quality control and cyber security purposes
• Managing system access to internal and external system integration platforms
• Running change advisory boards and risk management with upgrades or releases
• Collaborating with the European Centre of Excellence to improve UK & Ireland standards and 3rd party servic