ABOUT THE ROLE
The Application Services Manager is responsible for the day-to-day operational leadership, support, and service delivery of the organization’s enterprise ERP application portfolio. This role serves as the primary operational owner for the largescale mainframe/server/cloud-based, vendor hosted and internally developed applications which facilitate organization-wide operational “ERP” business workflows. The selected candidate will ensure ensuring the effective triage of requests for new/modified applications, the thorough creation of IT and end user testing and training plans, leading to SOX compliant change management for production implementation, and ongoing support. Strong coordination between IT teams, business stakeholders, and vendors is required.
Reporting to the Director of Enterprise Applications, the Application Services Manager enables the Director to focus on strategic initiatives by assuming responsibility for daily application operations, service performance, and minor enhancement prioritization. The role is critical to improving service levels, reducing ticket resolution times, and strengthening governance around application support and change management.
The Application Services Manager is expected to develop strong working knowledge of enterprise systems supporting accounting, finance, manufacturing, sales, and other business functions, and to translate business needs into effective operational execution.
KEY APPLICATIONS SUPPORTED
Enterprise systems may include, but are not limited to:
- Manufacturing and Retail ERP and operational tools (e.g., Deacom v17, Lasso, KPA, Great Plains, AS400)
- Financial and compliance tools (e.g., Stampli, Blackline, Sage FAS, AuditBoard, Visual Lease, OpenText Legalhold, Clover, etc.)
- Reporting and analytics platforms (e.g., SSRS, PowerBI, etc.)
- Integration and EDI: (e.g., SSIS, sFTP, S3, ANSI X12, etc. )
ESSENTIAL DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES Application Operations & Support
- Assume responsibility for day-to-day largescale mainframe/server/cloud-based, vendor hosted and internally developed production application uptime and timely processing working through members of the Enterprise Applications technical team.
- Monitor and mentor Enterprise application technical resources through production problem communications, escalations, issue resolution, and root cause analysis.
- Support onboarding new production applications, ensuring appropriate primary/backup support technical team members are assigned, appropriate application security and best practice configurations are implemented, and related IT teams are aware of critical go-live milestones and important support details.
- Manage application support ticket queues, including service requests, incidents, and enhancements, to ensure timely resolution and adherence to service level expectations.
- Serve as the primary point of contact for routine application issues, escalations, and P1/P2 incident coordination.
- Ensure incidents, problems, changes and requests are properly tracked, documented, and communicated.
Service Management & Performance
- Monitor service performance metrics, ticket trends, and user satisfaction; identify and implement continuous improvements.
- Drive application resiliency through effective incident management, root cause analysis, and remediation planning.
- Partner with the Director to support disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity planning (BCP) for critical applications.
Enhancement & Change Coordination
- Coordinate enhancement and change requests with business analysts, developers, and vendors.
- Assist in prioritizing minor enhancements and backlog items in alignment with business needs and capacity.
- Ensure changes follow defined governance, documentation, and testing standards.
Stakeholder & Vendor Coordination
- Act as a liaison between business units and technical teams to ensure clear communication and expectation management.
- Coordinate with third-party vendors on issue resolution, escalations, and performance monitoring.
- Support vendor SLA adherence and operational aspects of vendor relationships.
Process, Documentation & Governance
- Develop, maintain, and enforce operational best practices, procedures, and standards for application support.
- Ensure documentation and knowledge base materials are maintained for application processes, workflows, and common issues.
- Support compliance, security, and access control practices as defined by IT leadership.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor’s degree in a technical or business-related field preferred.
- 8+ years of progressive experience in enterprise ERP application support, large scale enterprise application management, or IT service delivery.
- 3+ years of experience in a lead or managerial role overseeing application operations or support teams.
- Strong experience supporting ERP and other enterprise applications in complex business environments.
- Strong technical knowledge of the wholistic application environment and interconnectivity including operating systems, databases, interfaces, application code, application security, and application configuration best practices.
- Working knowledge of ITIL-based service management processes (Incident, Problem, Change).
- SOX application control implementation and compliance or other regulatory support for applications.
- Experience coordinating across technical teams, business stakeholders, and vendors.
- Excellent organizational, prioritization, and problem-solving skills.
- Strong verbal and written communication skills.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience with ERP integrations, upgrades, or migrations.
- Familiarity with reporting, BI tools, and basic SQL querying.
- Exposure to both cloud-hosted and on-prem application environments.
- Background in manufacturing, finance, or operations-driven organizations.
- Demonstrated commitment to delivering high-quality user experiences
