About the Insurance Council
The Insurance Council of British Columbia is the regulatory organization that licenses and regulates the activities of over 50,000 life and general insurance agents, general insurance salespersons, insurance adjusters, and restricted travel insurance agents in British Columbia.
Why Work for the Insurance Council?
Work with a great team of people in a rewarding career that makes a difference. We're in a downtown location with plenty of amenities nearby. The Insurance Council has a friendly and collaborative environment with a team who's committed to protecting the public.
- We offer a comprehensive health and dental plan.
- Work-life balance.
- This position is mostly remote work enabled. The incumbent would be required to come into the office as needed.
- Professional development.
- Equitable employment opportunities
The Opportunity
This multi-faceted role is a key member of the Insurance Council management team and is responsible for ensuring the relevance and effectiveness of our business processes and applications. This is a 2-year contract position.
Reporting directly to the Director, Enterprise Technology and Business Solutions, the Interim Business Solutions Manager/Solutions Architect must effectively cross-collaborate with multiple stakeholders to define the current and future state of Insurance Council's business processes, identify issues and risks, suggest mitigation strategies and drive towards technology solutions.
The Interim Business Solutions Manager/Solutions Architect owns and drives end to end business technology solutions throughout Insurance Council. This role must work closely with key stakeholders to gather requirements, translate them into clear requirements documents, write compelling business cases and proposals, and then implement those approved and prioritized by the executive team to deliver cost-effective solutions.
The Interim Business Solutions Manager/Solutions Architect is responsible to drive development of business solutions, accountability and oversight of project delivery, across multiple programs using a combination of agile and waterfall methodology.
The Interim Business Solutions Manager/Solutions Architect works with technical and business teams to develop, test, and release/support solutions throughout the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process. In addition, the Interim Business Solutions Manager/Solutions Architect will work with management and staff to help define operational processes, drive the launch, adoption, and training, of technology solutions, and track feedback in order to build improvements into future solution requirements.
The Interim Business Solutions Manager/Solutions Architect must be detail oriented, yet able to see the big picture and work with the overall business, both in the day to day and at management levels, to drive a strategy which optimizes Insurance Council's IT investment.
Duties and Responsibilities
- Manage the day-to-day operations and effectiveness of current “in-place” business applications
- Collaborate with all of Insurance Council's partners to find alternatives and solutions to business challenges. Seek out systems solutions (either internal to client or external 3rd party solutions) that can be leveraged to meet business requirements.
- Engage the business stakeholders (staff, management, licensees) early and effectively building solid relationships and pushing IT value upstream as key business direction is being set.
- Identify, understand, negotiate and document business requirements with various groups.
- Facilitate the IT solutions planning and estimating phases.
- Manage the delivery of business cases, project scope and requirements documents, test plans, and rollout communications.
- Act as primary liaison with business functions and solution teams during the development lifecycle, from needs analysis and bug tracking to UAT and rollout.
- Develop and manage direct relationships with key stakeholders and subject matter experts to ensure the business solutions are aligned with their goals and priorities, and how process automation through IT solutions will help them reach their goals.
- Balance requirements with technical constraints to ensure that the value of systems is realized.
- Clearly understand, articulate and document existing “as-is” systems & business architecture and define strategy for “to-be” architecture.
- Exercise independent judgment in developing methods, techniques, architectures and standards for obtaining solutions.
- Create and maintain a cohesive, coordinated plan to deliver solutions that meet the organization's priorities within budgetary and product requirements.
- Manage web/programmer staff priorities in meeting the needs of the various stakeholders.
- Budget management – Define and gain agreement on project budgets, ensure projects track to the budget.
- Provide in-depth business & technical strategy for systems solutions, identify business gaps and correlate to potential solutions.
- Drive the prioritization process by which decisions are made around the final project scope.
- Execute on project plans and assist others in executing on project plans across the various groups.
- Makes scope/schedule/resources (including budget) trade-off decisions with little or no guidance.
- Ensure line of business priorities and IT capabilities (technology and resources) are aligned.
- Analyze and document requirements and use appropriate techniques to refine, review and validate requirements.
Qualifications and Experience
- 7+ years of Information Technology experience, with some direct experience managing IT operations
- 5 + years in business solution management and project management
- Bachelors and/or Diploma in Technology/Computer Science (or Business Administration)
- Project Management certification is an asset
- Experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Customer Experience solution
- Holds sound understanding of IT technology concepts and software architectures, MS products, development tools, Office 365, etc.
- Experience working with customer/ member relationship database systems (or similar) in a regulatory environment is an asset
- Experience working with e-commerce platform systems (or similar) in a regulatory environment is an asset
- Understanding and working knowledge of web based customer focused applications
- Strong negotiation and consensus building skills when dealing with internal customers, stakeholders and team members.
- Ability to understand current/changing business processes, participation in defining application and platform functionality.
- A proven track record of successfully implementing business solutions with emphasis on software projects using Agile methodologies.
- Previous leadership experience with technology teams, with strong understanding of business analysis, solutions development project management, delivery, software development, and software quality assurance function.
- Strong leader who can focus on the vision and strategies of the business applications while attending to the day to day tactical support requirements
- Can identify business issues and develop risk mitigation strategies.
- Strong project management, business analysis and prioritization skills, including leading and coordinating multiple projects, influencing non-direct reports and peers, and ensuring on-time delivery
- Demonstrated ability to effectively manage and develop staff
- Ability to deal with the ambiguity associated with working in a fast paced and changing environment.
- Exceptional problem solving and cross-group collaboration skills.
- Ability to recognize and resolve conflict.
- Excellent analysis and critical thinking skills.
Salary Range: $109,158 - $156,915 with a midpoint of $136,448 per annum. Upon hire, new employees will be placed in a starting salary between the minimum and P50 (midpoint) of the salary range. The P50 of the range represents an employee that possesses full job knowledge, qualifications, and experience for the position.