Application Support Director

Job Description:

We are looking to add a Application Support Director to join our IT team in West Des Moines, Iowa. Offering a forward-thinking, innovative, and vibrant company culture, along with the opportunity to share your unique potential, there really is no place like Holmes!

Basic Function:

The purpose of this position is to lead the Brokerage Services Application Services team, ensuring effective administration, support, operational health, and performance of applications critical to Brokerage Services business functions. This role partners closely with Business Operations, Delivery teams, IT Support and IT Operations to coordinate issue resolution, support application upgrades, monitor service health, identify systemic issues and trends, and drive continuous improvement initiatives that improve application stability, user experience, and business value.

Essential Responsibilities:

Application Administration & Support

• Lead teams responsible for application administration, access management, configuration support, and operational support of business applications.
• Establish and maintain processes for issue intake, triage, escalation, and resolution.
• Ensure timely and effective support for business users experiencing application issues.
• Partner with vendors and technical support organizations as needed to resolve application issues.
• Lead operational readiness activities associated with application upgrades and major changes.

Business Partnership

• Serve as the primary technology liaison to Business Operations and the IT Application Service Team.
• Develop strong partnerships with business stakeholders to understand operational needs, system challenges, and service expectations.
• Ensure clear communication regarding production issues, application health, planned upgrades, and support activities.

Delivery Team Collaboration

• Collaborate closely with Delivery Management and development teams to coordinate defect resolution, upgrades, enhancements, and production support activities.
• Provide operational input regarding application performance, support trends, and business impacts to help prioritize future improvements.
• Partner with Delivery teams to remain informed of project roadmaps, planned enhancements, technology modernization efforts, and upcoming solution implementations to proactively evaluate support needs, operational impacts, and application service readiness.

Service Health & Stability

• Monitor and report on application availability, service performance, and system stability.
• Drive initiatives that improve application reliability, support effectiveness, and user experience.

Management Responsibilities

• Lead and motivate team by:
  • Ensure right talent is in the right role for the success of the organization, which may include hiring and terminating employees.
  • Coach and counsel team members on areas such as workflow, process and procedure, customer service and client consulting.
  • Prepare and conduct performance feedback that defines future goals and objectives and hold employees accountable.
  • Foster a high-performance culture by supporting career development and advancement for team members.
  • Responsible for timesheet management, including responding to PTO/RTO requests and approving timesheets.
  • Participate in compensation decisions for team members, as applicable.
• Facilitate regularly scheduled meetings to foster teamwork.
• Attend team and enterprise meetings, as well as leadership training opportunities offered internally and externally.
• Coordinate initial and ongoing training with Growth & Development and team members on established processes and procedures.
• Support and maintain standardized processes to ensure efficient and effective quality service according to established quality guidelines.
• Provide backup assistance for team members, as necessary.

Additional Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with business leaders, department heads, and other IT teams to understand and address technology needs.
• Stay abreast of industry trends and emerging technologies.
• Performs special projects and other duties as requested.

Service Metrics & Reporting

• Develop and maintain dashboards, scorecards, and executive reporting related to application health and support performance.
• Monitor and report on support metrics and operational performance trends.

Continuous Improvement

• Analyze recurring issues, support trends, and operational risks to identify opportunities for continuous improvement.
• Recommend and support process, service, and operational enhancements that improve efficiency and user satisfaction.

Qualifications:

• Education: Associate degree or a minimum of 5 years of experience in related field
• Experience: 7+ years of IT industry experience Proven ability to lead a team, with a focus on application management and support. Experience with Agile/Scrum and Waterfall project methodologies and practices preferred.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Align with organizational core values.
• Ability to act in the liaison role, between business stakeholders, vendors, and Enterprise teams.
• Substantial exposure to data processing, hardware platforms, enterprise software applications and outsourced systems.
• Ability and willingness to consistently participate in internal and external educational opportunities to enhance knowledge of current insurance topics or relevant system improvements.
• Ability and willingness to pursue a technical designation and/or continuing education, as appropriate.
• Excellent analytical, planning, organizational and technical and skills
• Displays intellectual curiosity and integrity.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
• Problem-solving mentality leveraging internal and/or external resources, where and when needed, to do what’s right for the customer, partner and for HMA.
• Ability to be available for work on a daily basis and extended hours as necessary.
• Ability and willingness to consistently participate in internal and external educational opportunities to enhance knowledge of current insurance topics or relevant system improvements.
• Ability and willingness to pursue relevant designations and/or continuing education, as appropriate.
• Ability to apply common sense understanding to carry out instructions furnished in written, oral or diagram form. Ability to deal with problems involving several concrete variables in standardized situations.
• Ability to exert up to 10 pounds of force occasionally, and/or negligible amount of force frequently or constantly to lift, carry, push, or pull objects.

Competencies

In addition to the responsibilities, knowledge, skills, and abilities outlined in this job description, the Company also assesses and develops employees based on core and technical competencies through a performance management process. Competencies applicable to this role include:

Core Competencies

• Trust: Build trust through honest and caring actions and consistently do the right thing.
• Communication: Seek understanding to convey messages and information to others in a caring and constructive manner.
• Client Focus: Establish meaningful relationships with clients (internal and external) by supporting their unique potential and delivering an impactful experience.
• Teamwork: Contributes to the success of the organization by effectively influencing others and uplifting their experiences and unique strengths.

Technical Competencies:

• Business & Technology Knowledge: Invests in the development of technical knowledge, understands business needs to make informed decisions and deliver technology solutions, including effective related processes and procedures.
• Problem Solving: Ability to efficiently identify problem(s), leverage resources to determine root cause(s) and propose and implement solutions or make improvements.

Here’s a little bit about us:

In addition to being great at what you do, we place a high emphasis on building a best-in-class culture.  We do this through empowering employees to build trust through honest and caring actions, ensuring clear and constructive communication, establishing meaningful client relationships that support their unique potential, and contributing to the organization's success by effectively influencing and uplifting team members. 

Benefits:  In addition to core benefits like health, dental and vision, also enjoy benefits such as:

• Paid Parental Leave and supportive New Parent Benefits — We know being a working parent is hard, and we want to support our employees in this journey!
• Company paid continuing Education & Tuition Reimbursement — We support those who want to develop and grow.
• 401k Profit Sharing — Each year, Holmes Murphy makes a lump sum contribution to every full-time employee’s 401k. This means, even if you’re not in a position to set money aside for the future at any point in time, Holmes Murphy will do it on your behalf! We are forward-thinking and want to be sure your future is cared for.
• Generous time off practices in addition to paid holidays — Yes, we actually encourage employees to use their time off, and they do. After all, you can’t be at your best for our clients if you’re not at your best for yourself first.
• Supportive of community efforts with paid Volunteer time off and employee matching gifts to charities that are important to you — Through our Holmes Murphy Foundation, we offer several vehicles where you can make an impact and care for those around you.
• Inclusion & Belonging Programs — Holmes Murphy is committed to celebrating every employee’s unique potential. Through inclusion and belonging initiatives, titled Uniquely United, not only do we offer employees a paid Diversity Day time-off option, but we also have a Uniquely United Committee, Employee Resource Groups, and development programs to advance our culture of belonging. We encourage employees to engage in ways that are meaningful to them to enhance their overall experience! 
• Consistent merit increase and promotion opportunities — Employees are reviewed annually for merit increases and promotion opportunities because we believe growth is important — not only with your financial wellbeing, but also your career wellbeing.
• Discretionary bonus opportunity — Yes, there is an annual opportunity to make more money. Who doesn’t love that?!

At this time, we are not considering candidates who require any type of immigration sponsorship now or in the future. This includes candidates whose current work authorization is temporary or set to expire and who would require employer participation in any renewal, extension, or new authorization process to continue employment.

Holmes Murphy & Associates is an Equal Opportunity Employer.