Management Improvement Job Listing

Process Improvement Manager

Description: The newly constituted Financial Management Consulting and Support department is working to create new tools and services designed to make work both simpler and more effective for everyone involved in Stanford's financial management. Guiding principles for the department are:

• Applying up-to-date skills in business process analysis, project and change management to drive high value and feasible projects
• Applying a coordinated approach to business practices and systems
• Selecting projects based on data analysis and ROI, with appropriate sponsorship and long-term change strategies
• Keeping focus on customer feedback throughout, with a balanced perspective on the drivers of process and system changes

Central to the department’s work is the interdependent relationship between processes, technology, comprehensive communications and training, and the absolute necessity for addressing all three in change efforts. The department will coordinate resources knowledgeable in all three areas to seek solutions to selected business problems, collaborating with critical subject matter experts and systems partners for specific projects. A primary objective is to tackle projects that will provide significant financial management benefits in areas that are not necessarily "owned" by one department, but require cooperative, cohesive efforts for successful project outcomes. There will also be a focus on using data / metrics to measure not only the cost of current situations, but also the benefits resulting from new solutions.

The Process Improvement Manager is the team lead for understanding, documenting, and ultimately improving Stanford’s financial management business processes. The role is part of the new Business Process and Metrics Analysis team under the Financial Management Consulting and Support department. The Process Improvement Manager will be responsible for helping to build an organization-wide process excellence capability from the ground up. The role requires strong partnering with many levels of the University’s department and academic units (including business owners, champions, process owners, operational staff) to drive process improvement delivery through exemplary process design/improvement/management skills using proven best practice techniques and methodologies (such as Lean Six Sigma, Value Stream Analysis, and Voice of the Customer).

Essential Job Functions:
• Lead multiple complex, high-visibility process innovation projects that span multiple central departments and disparate department and academic units
• Provide hands-on team facilitation, coaching and process improvement subject matter expertise
• Work closely with affected departments and academic units to build and secure support and resources for projects
• Help assess fit/gap of currently implemented enterprise applications to support process innovation solutions
• Facilitate discussions and negotiations to drive consensus on implementing recommendations within a highly complex and cross-functional environment
• Advise in defining and identifying key measures and performance metric targets
• Assist in development of complex cost-benefit and return on investment analyses for proposed changes to aid management in making implementation decisions
• Qualify, structure, and help prioritize process improvement projects
• Facilitate executive briefings, progress status reporting, and definition of measures

Required Skills:
• Technical mastery of Lean Six Sigma tools and methodologies
• Sound working knowledge and experience using and applying process improvement best practices and techniques in a structured project environment
• Experience modeling business processes using a variety of tools and techniques
• Ability to work with little or no direction in an environment that is not always open to change or able to change quickly
• Exceptional communication skills and the ability to communicate and present appropriately at all levels of the organization through written and verbal methods
• Excellent influence management skills and the ability to work across multiple functional groups including: analysis, systems, communications, support as well as other central departments and disparate department and academic units
• Strong peripheral vision with the ability to see the big picture and to deal with ambiguity
• Aptitude for understanding functional capabilities of implemented enterprise applications (both custom and off the shelf)
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Office, primarily comfortable working with dynamic financial models in Excel and developing process flows using Visio

Qualifications: BS/BA degree in Engineering, Accounting, Finance, Supply Chain Management or other Business. MBA preferred <br/>• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification <br/>• 3+ years of progressive process improvement/reengineering experience in large-scale business transformation and/or business process reengineering projects <br/>• Oracle Financials and eBusiness suite experience in the higher education industry a plus

Location: Palo Alto, California

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Job with: Stanford