Job Description
Job Description Summary
Role: Business Architect
Location: Edinburgh or NL
Closing Date: 16th March 2023
People are living longer than ever before, and we’re excited by the opportunities this brings. As a purpose-led business, we’re focused on supporting our customers as they navigate through new stages of their lives and all the moments that matter. We’re here for everyone who wants to make the most of their time on the planet and leave it a little better than they found it – however grand or humble their ambitions. Working at Aegon Asset Management, you’ll play an important part in helping achieve this. We have three behaviors that are central to how we operate as a team and a business: we step up, we tune in and we’re a force for good.
Aegon Asset Management (Aegon AM) is a leading global investor. Our 390 investment professionals manage and advise on assets of US $329 billion for a global client base of pension plans, public funds, insurance companies, banks, wealth managers, family offices and foundations.
We organize our firm around four investment platforms: fixed income, real assets, equities and multi-asset & solutions, which includes a fiduciary and multi-manager business. Each investment platform has dedicated teams with deep asset-class expertise, organized globally and committed to maximizing client benefit from their specialist areas.
We have an exciting opportunity for a Business Architect to join us in either Edinburgh or the Netherlands.
The Business Architect is responsible for facilitating the realisation of business strategy and targeted business outcomes. They act as a key enabler in the digital transformation of the company, collaborating with stakeholders involved in digital strategy and digital innovation planning, helping business leaders visualise both the current state, target state and the art of the possible. They understand how to monetize and operationalise the delivery of new technologies by applying existing, new, and emerging technical capabilities to new and evolving business and operating models within the change planning and execution processes.
The Business Architect reports to the Head of IT Strategy and Architecture.
Job Description
Responsibilities:
Drives and facilitates the right discussions with business leaders to support business and technology innovation that drives the organizations’ top and bottom lines for a specific business domain.
Clarifying strategic intentions and anticipating business trends, identifying business outcomes and regulatory / risk issues as a basis for recommending large-scale technical, function or operations improvements.
Partner in the strategic planning process by providing input to the scope, definition of strategic initiatives and how best to leverage new and existing capabilities. Translating these into roadmaps and heatmaps, which help provide visibility to impacts, dependencies, overlaps and opportunities.
Oversees and influences multi-year business and technical capability roadmaps of business domain vendors to align with continuous process optimalisation and AAM technology roadmaps.
Demonstrates technology risks for their domain, e.g., application and technology obsolescence, including vendor lifecycles and any required business change initiatives to be included within the change portfolio/runway.
Advises on execution of IT strategy and leads the development and deployment of functional programs or initiatives within their business domain, e.g., Investment Management, Sales & Distribution, Investment Solutions and Products, Finance and Risk. Works closely with the Transformation Office during change portfolio planning activities. Identifies and owns architectural risks and issues and leads problem resolution for project/programs.
Uses innovative thinking to develop solutions to new and existing challenges, engages stakeholders to act; serves as a source of expert advice/IT consultancy, influences change; frames information in a broader organizational context.
Creates and maintains business capability, data, process, and technology catalogues and inventories. Works with multiple capability and functional teams to gather and document the structure of their specific Domain business and technology landscape.
Works closely with the solution/technical/data architects to deliver business architecture artifacts required for end-to-end architecture, Solution Architecture and Data Architecture deliverables.
Skills and Qualifications
Senior specialist providing advisory services to executives, business leaders and governs the requirements for own work, effectively managing own priorities, deliverables, and timelines with little need for escalation.
Recognized as a top-level expert with significant in-depth and/or breadth of expertise in a complex Domain and knowledge of broader related areas
A broad, enterprise-wide view of the business and varying degrees of appreciation for strategy, processes, and capabilities, enabling technologies and governance
Highly strategic thinker, capable of recognising structural issues within the organization, functional interdependencies and cross-silo redundancies and defining practical business and technology combined solutions to address them aligned with business strategy
Capable of applying architectural principles to business solutions and to visualize and create high-level models that can be used in future analysis to extend and mature the business architecture
Extensive experience of planning and deploying both business and IT initiatives
Experience modelling business processes using a variety of tools and techniques
Exceptional communication skills and the ability to communicate appropriately at all levels of the organization; this includes written and verbal communications as well as visualizations
The ability to act as liaison conveying information needs of the business to IT and data constraints to the business; applies equal conveyance regarding business strategy and IT strategy, business processes and workflow automation, business initiatives and IT initiatives, and benefit realization and service delivery
Presents recommendations and solutions clear and concisely and can focus on key points to portray the intended message or purpose
Team player able to work effectively at all levels of an organization with the ability to influence others to move toward consensus
Strong situational analysis and decision-making abilities
Experience:
IT Leadership, IT Architecture experience and/or IT Change
Deep understanding of Business Architecture focussing on modelling capabilities, value streams, processes, and technologies
Proven ability to set direction and effectively execute multiple operational initiatives, influencing senior-level management and key stakeholders
Expert in Requirements Management
Strategic perspective to oversee business processes; inspire and challenge teams to continually make improvements.
Proven track record of success in large scale IT organizations and transformation projects
Experienced in managing external IT providers and/or complex projects
Extensive experience of the asset management industry is essential.
How we look after you
Outside of a competitive salary, working with us comes with a range of benefits that you can access from day one, including:
Non-contributary pension between 9-13% dependant on age
Life assurance cover
Private medical cover and health assessments
Access to Peppy – a digital health app for employees of all genders with a range of support covering areas such as general health, menopause, fertility, baby etc
Critical Illness cover
A suite of enhanced parental leave policies to support you in the moments that matter
Holiday trading
Private GP appointments with Doctor at Hand
Cycle2Work scheme
2 paid days per year for charitable volunteering
Employee wellbeing is key to our culture. We offer a range of online classes to support this, including yoga and meditation
We champion a collaborative, supportive working environment where you’ll have the opportunity to develop yourself and your career in a way that works for you. Our reward programmes encourage peer-to-peer recognition, and we offer a discretionary annual bonus dependent on company and individual performance.
How we look after the community and the environment
Aegon Asset Management supports local causes that align with our purpose and ambitions. Our goal is to serve and strengthen the communities where we do business and create a better quality of life for everyone. Our employees are encouraged to support charities they feel passionate about and are offered volunteering days.
Responsible investment is a key element of Aegon’s company-wide approach to sustainability. Aegon is committed to Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing, we have over 30 years' experience managing responsible investments and offer over 200 responsible investment options across our platforms.
Flexible working
We’re transitioning to our new normal and we’re welcoming everyone back to working in new, collaborative, and exciting ways. We’ve adopted a hybrid environment of remote and office working, so it’s important that you live within a commutable distance to our offices.
We know that people have busy lives and commitments outside of work, so we offer flexible work arrangements where possible to support our employees.
We’re an equal opportunities employer
We are proud to be a recognised Disability Confident Employer. We welcome applications from all suitably qual